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Message 21 of 29

Re: 9 months waiting for FTTP

I’ve got some more good news at last.  I’ve been awarded £750 compensation for the 6 months and missed appointments before my fibre was installed 😃 it’sa Bill credit so means free 1gig fibre for 15 months lol.  I told you I wouldn’t give up in my fight!   Sorry to learn of your struggles but read our posts on here and you’ll understand you’re not on your own with this saga!

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Message 22 of 29

Re: 9 months waiting for FTTP

That's great to hear buddy 😄

A little good news for a change in all this mess.  Excellent!  Never give up the fight people 😉

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Message 23 of 29

Re: 9 months waiting for FTTP

Hi all,

Thanks for the posts everyone, been holding off commenting while I waited for BT's response...

 

They've paid £456.70 compensation:

£131.20 for missed appointments (5 days @ £26.24)

£325.50 for delay of service (62 days @ £5.25).

 

The dates they've offered this are confusing; this compensation started on 23rd September, only 5 days after placing the order and ended November 24th.

The first date I have in writing that my service would be activated on was December 20th. The order was cancelled on June 10th, so this compensation should run from 20/12/2021 to 10/06/2022, 173 days.

 

The reason BT have given for the reduced compensation is that Openreach apparently tried contacting the landowner of the footway outside the flat for the first time on 24/11, so any delay past that was outside their control and they won't pay compensation for it. There are a couple of issue with this:

  1. From every account I have had before this point, Openreach did NOT contact the landowner on that date. Openreach themselves called me directly on 4th May to ask me if the land ownership of the footway had been transferred to me. When I explained to them I would not be getting land ownership of the footpath and I had no idea where that got that from, they said they were "very close to finding out who the landowner was".
  2. It doesn't matter anyway according to Ofcom. Whether the delay is with BT, Openreach, or the landowner, I'm due compensation from the first service installation date I received in writing to the service cancellation date. I have had to chase for 7 months and haven't been able to seek out an alternative service, because throughout the order period I have been told "soon".

 

BT's automatic compensation page is a bit sparse, but makes absolutely no mention of withholding compensation for these reasons. The relevant parts are:

  • If we don’t activate landline or broadband on the day we promised, you’ll receive £5.25 compensation automatically
  • Plus you’ll receive another £5.25 for every extra day you have to wait, not including the day your service is activated
  • You are eligible for compensation if your service isn’t activated by one minute to midnight on the activation date we sent by email or post.
  • Reasons you wouldn’t get compensation:
    • If you cancelled your engineer appointment or weren't at home (never happened)
    • If you turned down an earlier appointment (never happened)
  • If an order is cancelled before it's activated, automatic compensation will stop on the cancellation date

That's all that's mentioned, so the full 173 days is due.

 

Ofcom is a bit more specific in their Automatic Compensation Code of Practice (pdf) (still shows the 2021 costs but the rest is still up to date). The relevant parts are:

  • 10a. £5 for the missed initial activation date; plus
  • 10b. £5 for each full calendar day that expires after the initial activation date until the first available date that is offered as an alternative activation date or, if earlier, the date the customer or Communications Provider terminates or cancels the affected service or services (the service(s) the Communications Provider agreed to activate on a given date).
  • 40a-g. [These are reasons in which BT would be exempt from making the compensation payment, none of which apply to this case]
  • 41. Subject to the exceptions in paragraph 40 above, the Communications Provider does not avoid payment of automatic compensation if the issue was caused by an event outside of the customer’s or its own control.

I think that last sentence is very final.

 

The total amount of compensation due is £1039.45:

£131.20 for missed appointments (5 days @ £26.24)

£908.25 for delay of service (173 days @ £5.25)

 

I'm currently waiting for a letter from the executive team which was sent on Thursday, I have absolutely no idea what the contents of that letter are. I'll wait a couple more days then follow up if it hasn't arrived.

If I can't get this sorted through the executive team, does anybody know the correct escalation procedure?

Many thanks!

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Message 24 of 29

Re: 9 months waiting for FTTP

If your complaint is in the hands of the Executive Team you are at the top of the procedure. You would need to ask for a deadlock letter then contacted the Ombudsman to see if they will look at your complaint.

Our complaints code of practice (bt.com)

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Message 25 of 29

Re: 9 months waiting for FTTP

I I’m not sure you have much of a moral case, you have £456 compensation, which is a result of an error in you not being told at the outset that your installation was provisional on gaining permission to dig in a footpath that you or the council don’t own ( if the correct procedure was used you would be entitled to nothing ) …I suppose it’s compensation culture that we live in , that you want closer to £1000 that you are claim to be ‘entitled’  to.

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Message 26 of 29

Re: 9 months waiting for FTTP

That's great, thanks very much for the info @gg30340.

@iniltous I don't think there's a moral aspect to it; if you publish terms and conditions or are signatory to an agreement, you're bound by them. It sucks for everybody in this case. And 'if the correct procedure was used you would be entitled to nothing' is true... apart from the five days I had to wait home for missed appointments that it's now clear could never have possibly happened.

Unfortunately for everyone, the correct procedure was not used. If it had, I would have had the opportunity to seek another supplier over six months ago and wouldn't have had to spend 9 months and god knows how many calls chasing something that should never have been agreed, to only find out after 9 months and god knows how many calls that it should never have been agreed.

I guess the best outcome is that this will be learning situation for all involved, I'm sure BT will be keen on making sure this situation doesn't happen to other customers so they can improve the level of service they offer.

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Message 27 of 29

Re: 9 months waiting for FTTP

I wouldn’t bank on them learning anything from it!  Look at my previous posts and the compensation I received and another person is in the same boat!

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Message 28 of 29

Re: 9 months waiting for FTTP


@heavywater wrote:

 

Unfortunately for everyone, the correct procedure was not used. If it had, I would have had the opportunity to seek another supplier over six months ago.

 


You would no doubt have found that all the other ISPs, if they even offered FTTP,  would have been using the Openreach infrastructure so you would still have had the same problem and most likely the same out come as regards the time it took to complete the order.

The exception would have been if you have Virgin, who use their own infrastructure, where you live.

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Message 29 of 29

Re: 9 months waiting for FTTP

Yeah, I know the delay was mostly out of BT's hands; I've mentioned it before in an old thread but all the CS reps I spoke to were really good, there just seemed to be a huge amount of confusion about what was going on on the Openreach side. I had 9 different reasons provided for the delay in installation on the Openreach side between September and May.

Virgin are available here, BT just offer a much more competitive price for what I need... At the time though I would have taken anything. I was hybrid working a lot of days and my current ISP had shocking work hours performance, no doubt way over capacity from the number of people "working from home" with "netflix for background noise". That's settled a lot in the last few months though thankfully.

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