Lay My Hat

We had Sky Broadband and Talk installed last Friday. We will see how it goes. We were a bit worried as there is a live telephone line now and obviously open to guests making expensive phone calls so we have barred international and premium rate numbers. We haven't left a telephone there so somebody would have to go out and buy one (would they bother for a short stay?). My husband spoke to Sky about this and they advised that for a payment of £4 a month (evening and weekend calls) or £8 a month (calls at anytime) it could be a useful extra to offer guests. We could also switch this on and off on a month by month basis. Does anybody else do this? Thanks.

I have BT phone and broadband. For a small fee I have a system (using a code) which bars outgoing calls, except for 999. This means that visitors have the facility for incoming calls, and I can switch the phone for outgoing calls when I holiday there. Very simple system, which is what I need with my lack of techie skills.

I'm a remote owner, so it means I can phone visitors on their arrival. Mobile phone reception in the house is not that good, but iPads and iPhones now get over that problem.

My holiday let is in rural Cornwall. On purchasing any appliance or service I always take into account the response time of the maintenance/repair service. Some suppliers are very poor in this respect in our area.

Also with Wifi, make sure you advertise it as a free service, with no responsibility on your part if it goes down.

If you've got wifi and they want wifi I'd be very surprised if they don't also have their own mobile phone. Also, if you install a phone is there not a chance the number will find its way onto the unwanted calls radar? I'd not be a happy guest with the phone constantly ringing with automated calls and calls from media trying to list my holiday home on a top Swedish website

I don't advertise the telephone number of my holiday let. Visitors are provided with it before their arrival. I cannot think of a way in which these media companies, even if they found the number, could associate it as a holiday let. But please correct me if I am wrong. The only unwanted calls I have ever received when I am on holiday there are the " have you got PPI?", and these are rare.

Being a remote owner, I try to make everything easy to use and as full proof as possible, especially for fire regulations and emergencies. I have 5 fixed landline phones around the house (it's large and spread out). Perhaps OTT, but it gives me peace of mind and avoids missed calls. PS. I don't have portable landline phones as I know these will get lost.

I made sure that my master socket / phone line / router was installed in a secure cupboard so that it could not be used or tampered with.

No body has said anything at all or complained so far.

If you have a professional router it is extremely rare indeed that it will require rebooting because it has / should have firmware / hardware that reboots / recovers itself on error.
A professional router will allow remote access even if it appears to the guests to be dead, faulty or missing. The only exception being that the fault is on the line and caused by the isp.

Puffin Lodge Filey wrote:We have signed up with Sky Broadband and got a Black Friday deal of £15 a month fixed for a year.

We got it with £75 pre-paid card and I think £70 cashback through topcashback, worked out at c.£60 for whole year.

As for the wifi enabled thermostat - it was the first thing I did so we could manage frost protection remotely while we do the place up. Seems to work well (once we got the boiler working/gas leak sorted!).

Netatmo was £99 during Black Friday and is really easy to fit, just replace the existing thermostat and plug in the relay, use the Netatmo app on a smartphone to pair to your wifi, done.

A warning - be very careful with Vodafone hubs/routers, I got one with 30GB per month (they don't do unlimited) and I expected it to be capped, but it was not, I just got a bill for excessive usage of £680.

Nigel Goodwin wrote:A warning - be very careful with Vodafone hubs/routers, I got one with 30GB per month (they don't do unlimited) and I expected it to be capped, but it was not, I just got a bill for excessive usage of £680.

That's outrageous!! All my capped SIM based deals have been set up in terms of 'use it then lose it' with the service being cut off until the 1st of the next month once the data allowance was exhausted.