Address misspelled on Openreach database / BT Retail website - unable to place order

[bart_sz]

Hello,

I'm wondering if a moderator could help as I have seen similar issues in this community forum which were ultimately resolved by the team.

I'm about to move into a newly built property with FTTP modem already installed (and the S/N known). I did manage to place an order over the phone but ended up cancelling having spotted a typo in the delivery address. The customer advisor recommended I did so as they said this could cause issues with the service further down the line - even if the BT Hub was delivered to the correct address and even if the line activated just fine.

As it turns out, my property (as well as most of the properties in that postcode) has the street name misspelled (Land****** Gardens), while selected few have the correct name (Law****** Gardens). This is confirmed by the availability check for the postcode on the BT's Full Fibre webpage:

I have followed the suggestion of the customer rep and reported the missing address to Royal Mail - got a confirmation the claim was valid a day later, then another one the day after saying the address has been added to the RM's PAF (Postcode Address File). They said, although usually it happens faster, it could take a few months for all of the RM's PAF clients to receive the update. Currently waiting on the data to trickle down to the BT website so I can order again.

However... I noticed that the misspelled street name (Land****** Gardens) did not appear on the Royal Mail lookup page at all, which suggests BT / Openreach use another data source for addresses. It seems that while the Royal Mail-provided addresses are spelled correctly on the BT site, there is a whole cohort of misspelled entries which did not come from Royal Mail.

It would be really helpful to have the street name corrected for both my address and the others in our postcode area, both to resolve the current issue with ordering and to avoid any potential problems in the future. The lines are installed, modems are in place and - as seem to be the standard practice - all properties in the development are locked to BT for the first 2 years. But most of them can't order using the correct address.

Quick Google search pointed me to this forum (as well as some other ISPs'), where Openreach Data Integrity has been mentioned in this context. I'm struggling to find a way to contact that team directly to submit a change request, but it seems that ISPs themselves (incl. BT retail) can have such issues fixed on the customer's behalf in order to be able to deliver their service to them.

I would welcome a PM from a moderator so I can share the address details.

Thank you very much in advance.

Bart

[pippincp · Accepted solution]

You don't need to share the address with anyone. Provided the address is now correct in the Royal Mail database then an ORDI request is all that is needed for it to be corrected on the Openreach database.

You can either check with the FTTP team now to see if it's best requested now or later. Personally I'd see if I could put in the order now and if not request the ORDI be put in for.

The BT website will catch up eventually. Don't hold your breath though.

[bart_sz]

Thank you @pippincp. I followed your advice and while this hasn't been resolved things did move forward - hopefully the update below can save someone else some time.

Attempted to order again - while the sales rep has been able to find the updated address based on the Royal Mail entry, they also said they couldn't progress with the order as the system showed the address wasn't ready for service. 

I suspect there must be some outstanding exercise of marrying up the modem/circuitry to the address entry on the Openreach system - sounds like this would be the ORDI request mantioned by @pippincp.

The rep said BT normally had a team who dealt with this on customers' behalf, but due to COVID-19 they currently didn't do it. Being a new development, he asked that I speak to the site and ask them to get in touch with Openreach to get this fixed. Apparently - once raised by developer - this takes Openreach around 2 working days to amend, at which stage the address would become available for new orders, online and over the phone.

I've requested this from the developer yesterday but haven't had a confirmation so far. Hope to speak to them tomorrow and will post an update should I have one. 

[pippincp]

Thanks for the update, looks like it's moving forward. At least you are in a better place than before.

BTW it is the ORDI (OpenReach database Integrity) that I was referring to.

[bart_sz]

The site have updated the whole list of addresses provided to Openreach and sure enough those appeared correctly on the website after a couple of days. We also got a response from Openreach independently following an enquiry made a few days earlier.

Strangely enough, BT had still sent the Smart Hub 2 to the incorrect address (which Royal Mail have worked out), but the service runs as expected after connecting.