Broadband cut-off for over an hour for scheduled works without notice

[andydenyer]

Just a warning to anyone if they suddenly see any engineers tampering with telegraph poles outside their homes!

Last Wednesday, whilst on a Zoom call to senior management in the company I work for, my connection was cut suddenly and I was left looking like the woman in the BT commercial where they say "if only she was with BT", except I am!

After seeing that my Hub was flashing purple, I noticed a team of engineers outside disconnecting all the cables to the telegraph pole!  I went out to remonstrate with them and ask why I hadn't been notified.  They said that was down to BT to do as they only get allocated the jobs that morning.  When I asked how long they would be, they said "3-4 minutes", but that turned out to be 75 minutes as they were replacing the telegraph pole itself!

Needless to say, I was straight on to Customer Services to complain, and a formal complaint was submitted.  I received a call back this morning along with an apology and compensation to be applied to my next bill.  The Customer Service rep admitted that I should have been notified and that it was a failure on the part of BT.

So all is now sorted, but it really should never have happened in the first place and reflects badly on BT.

[Starwire · Accepted solution]

The Telephone Pole will have been replaced by Openreach and or their Poling Contractors.

Depending on why they’re replacing the Pole it’s not always possible to give notice.

If say a Pole Tester identifies a Pole that is in immediate danger of collapse then they will replace it there and then as they have a duty of care to protect the public. I’ve seen first hand the damage a falling Telephone Pole can do to a car, so I wouldn’t even want to imagine the damage it would do falling on a small child!

For reasons like this I do believe it does state in your contract that they can not guarantee any disruptions to your service and that they will keep them to a minimum where necessary. 

[DavidM]

Hi @andydenyer and thanks for posting.

I'm sorry the works disrupted your meeting. @Starwire is correct. There are occasions when it's not possible to notify customers when pole replacements are done for the reasons he has posted. I'm glad you were able to speak with our customer service guys who compensated you for the inconvenience. Thanks for bringing this to our attention.

Cheers

David