Oh Dear. BT Fail Again

[nickmorc]

Elderly mothers contracts ends in January. Phone to renegotiate on her behalf. Unable to keep existing package and upgrade to fibre. New contract negotiated. Date set for install.

Date comes and goes, no one turns up. After repeated calls and assurances from BT an Openreach engineer visits to do survey. Needs road digging  up to install cable. Openreach confirm they will do this the following week.

As expected more phone calls. Assurances that the road has been dug up and cable ready to go. Mother argues this as no one has dug up the road. Repeated calls and customer services say she is mistaken and its been done.

No confirmation when the the service will be fitted. More phone calls a few weeks ago and BT confirm that it will be fitted today. Engineer arrives, cant fit as the road hasn't been dug up with cable to house not fitted.

So after the initial order in January and repeated calls to BT , she is still without the service agreed.

A very disappointing way to treat an elderly customer. Over a quarter of a year from first contact and BT have failed at every point.

Even one of the engineers admitted that BT are in a right mess at the moment.

A sad story of how BT can get it all wrong.

To say she is angry this morning is an understatement.

[imjolly]

will the digging up of the road to lay the cables require traffic management and if so will require council permit which often can take a few months?

[chrisjp]

"will the digging up of the road to lay the cables require traffic management and if so will require council permit which often can take a few months?"

Certainly true but why did BT claim the road had been dug up (even saying the lady in question was mistaken when she had not seen any work being done), and then an Openreach engineer arrived to install the fibre optic cable, when the road patently HADN'T been dug up?
Between them, BT and Openreach seem to have far too many of these total failures of communication. The waste of time and money (which we all pay for) with aborted visits by Openreach engineers must be huge.

[iniltous]

Although obviously not acceptable , it’s important to know  the way the industry is setup, with Openreach supplying services to CP’s ( communication providers ) like BT , and only being allowed to speak to the CP , and not the end user , and similarly the end use cannot speak to anyone but their provider, mixed up messages are a consequence, Openreach are not allowed to speak to end users, obviously it would be better if the consumers could deal with OR directly when work like this is required, Ofcom do not allow it .

I dare say that the issue here is upgrading to FTTP in an area where the existing copper cables are not ducted ( so housing built in the 1960’s through to the vey late 1980’s early 1990’s ) , when OR now upgrade these areas , the FTTP infrastructure is built to be nearby , but no longer right upto  the end users curtilage, if a CP takes an order , OR are then required to bridge the gap between where the FTTP equipment is ( in a jointbox in the footpath ) to the consumers house wall with duct , this coukd be upto 100 metres …..obviously the CP shouldn’t make false statements ( like the excavation is done when it clearly hasn’t ) but the unknown is , have OR incorrectly  advised BT it’s done ( so an OR error but passed on to you by BT  ) or the BT have simply assumed this and made nonsensical statements.
It’s not true to state ‘we all pay’ for these mistakes, there are dozens of alternatives not just to BT ( a Sky customer would have the same lack of duct ) but to the Openreach network, the advantage they all have is they don’t have Ofcom telling them what is and isn’t allowed .

This isn’t an excuse, but it’s good to have some context, this right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing situation is by design of Ofcom

[nickmorc]

@iniltous Many Thanks, hopefully one of the mods will pick it up. Tried to convince Mother to move supplier. But she is old school and worried about change and still thinks BT are the cream of the crop LOL 

[JohnC2 · Accepted solution]

Hi @nickmorc, sorry that your Mother is having these problems with her order. We can't guarantee we can get her connected any sooner but we'll be happy to look into the order further and see if we can help move things along for her. I've sent you a Private Message so you can get in touch with us.

Cheers

John

[nickmorc]

@JohnC2 Many Thanks PM sent.

[nickmorc]

@NeilO Many thanks for all your help in resolving this matter. Excellent service.

Many Thanks.