Sellers' phone contract still live - no broadband for us. What can we do?

[MovingOnUpMovingOnOut]

We've just completed on our new house and trying to sort out phone and broadband (fairly essential for me for work). The sellers' still have the phone line in their name and although it's pending closure it's still theirs and we can't get our phone and broadband set up.

Is there anything we can do? Should this have been sorted out with the sale stuff? I can't recall seeing anything beyond details of who the existing contract was with and that they're taking their phones.

I have bought a house before but can't recall any issues like this

are you being fobbed off by Bangalore?

If this is BT, raise a formal complaint, which will get you the UK staff who actually have the power to do something.

if the sellers have arranged closure they've done all the right things. Surprised it wasn't done on completion day though, as they may be without phone in their new house now.

Today is completion day. They were with BT, we want to take out a new broadband/phone contract with someone else (this will involve taking over the BT line).

They're not moving locally so I don't think they're bothered about taking their old number with them.

I wonder if BT can do ought?

Thanks for replying. Just when you think you have it all sorted..!

We had a similar problem when we moved in and it took 3 weeks before we had a phoneline/broadband - I had to really hassle BT to get it sorted

The lady who lived here before us had cancelled everything but BT and the BB company kept insisting there was someinhtg (think it might have been called a tie) on the line preventing them changing it over to us.

I realise it's no consolation if you have a business to run but I actually found 3 weeks of being uncontactable (no mobile signal here) quite pleasant and productive.

We had all sorts of nonsense trying to get broadband when we moved.

If they own the line today it may switch over at midnight? although you need to talk to your supplier, when we moved Sky told us it would be at least 6 weeks to get it set up-so we went to BT.

You should be able to do a working line take over . You may need a Mac code for your BB.

Noooo! cries

aaaargh!!!!!!

BT can do it for £50 and an obscene 12 month contract, the people we want to do it with reckon it's impossible.

Bastard SSE refuse to put in a request to take over the line. Nice man at BT says this is how it's done and SSE are not playing

SSE are new to this, you've probably spoken to captain clueless in their call centre.

raise a complaint with them and ask to speak to the organ grinder rather than the monkey. Twitter is also good for getting attention.

BTW most contracts are 12 months.

Yeah I got a particularly irritating one but he did go to check with his manager.

I don't mind a 12 month contract, it was paying 4 x over the odds I minded. I'm going for an 18 month one if I can get it.

Practically, this happened to us too and I bought a wireless internet dongle, but also check what networks you have access to in your house, as sometimes there are BT ones you can pay for access to. It's annoying and costs money, but I needed internet for work and it let me be a bit more zen about waiting. Took about two weeks for me.

I can use my iPhone to create a hot spot so it will be ok but it is an almighty pain in the arse. I should be ok if I can get all my invoices done before we move in 15 hours...

Still packing though