So to clarify, when you signed up you were told you needed an engineer to come out, but before your activation date they told you they could activate the line remotely and cancelled the visit? If that's the case then sounds like you have gone through the Saved Visit process, which basically means that their line tests have been detected a suitable stopped line at your property which can be restarted without the need for an engineer. As tour engineer told you it should test for capacitance to the NTE so that's really odd that it picked it up. This process is very accurate, though there is fall out from it. (the fault rate is slightly higher when compared to jobs which have an engineering visit) Regarding compensation you will need to follow BT's complaints process - i guess details will be on their website