Openreach business call out charges

[Cazpanda]

Not really sure where to post this! I've been trying to find out the call out charges for an Openreach engineer. We are with XLN Business who are terrible money grabbers but thats another story! They now want us to pay an insurance to cover any call outs by Openreach. I know there is a charge & when we were with Talk Talk they advised a charge but I'm sure it was under£100, However XLN have sent us this:

Moving forward, should you have a fault requiring an engineer to attend your premises,
all charges will be passed on to you. This expense will apply even if no fault is found,
or if any of your equipment has been damaged by accident.
The BT Openreach engineer call-out charge is £192 inc. VAT, and £144 inc. VAT per hour
thereafter, and on weekends these increase to £318 inc. VAT and £180 inc. VAT thereafter.
You will also have to agree to these charges in advance of any on-site investigation
when reporting a fault.

Can anyone confirm if these are the correct charges or are they trying to scare me into taking up this policy!?

[imjolly · Accepted solution]

this is a forum for BT Retain customers and there is no contact from here to openreach

try  https://www.openreach.com/help-and-support/when-to-get-in-touch-with-openreach

or  https://business.forums.bt.com/

[iniltous]

Nothing to do with BT , but as a general rule , if the problem is on what Openreach are responsible for there is no charge for repairs, obviously a report on something OR are not responsible for could be chargeable , if OR attend to discover no fault or the fault is on someone else’s equipment, or it is the customer that has caused the problem, but the costs OR charge the CP are irrelevant to you the end user , as they ( your provider ) could charge you less , more , or the the same amount, or not charge at all, those charges should be in the contract between you and your provider.

Where OR do raise charges to the provider, those costs , to be paid by the communication provider to OR are irrelevant to you , you never pay Openreach anything , but if you want to check so you know if your CP is adding an unreasonable margin onto the charge they make to you if they re on OR have charged them , by you reporting a problem unjustifiably (  them justifying it by saying they need to pay OR and then get reimbursed by you ) , they can be checked here , but it’s not intended for anyone other than CP’s and consequently not particularly easy to read.

https://www.openreach.co.uk/orpg/home/products/pricing/loadProductPriceDetails.do?data=hcaYjIWegP2u2...

[Cazpanda]

Thanks, that's what I'm trying to find out & what I meant to say, who the charge actually comes from, yes I guess if from XLN they're going to add their bit on. I wasn't sure if the bill to me came direct from BT and couldn't find that info anywhere. 

So my provider finding more ways to make money. I still don't understand if it's OR charge why they would inflate the charge. I'll take a read of that thanks. 

[iniltous]

Why would they inflate the charge ?, simply because they can , not actual figures , but any CP could , for arguments sake , when presented with a ‘bill’ for £100 from Openreach , because one of their customers said they had a problem and insisted on a engineer visit , and the CP ( communication provider ) called Openreach out to investigate, and it proved to be the issue was that someone had unplugged something, and the CP was at pains to confirm with the end user ( before they called out OR ) that it wasn’t something simple and had they checked those things

…the CP could argue that they had administrative work ,  first to pay OR the £100 and then chase the consumer for reimbursement, so they may charge the consumer £125 to cover the extra work they had to do in reporting a non fault, paying OR , and then recovering the money .

BT have absolutely nothing to do with your issue , they are not your provider , XLN are , no consumers receive a bill from Openreach, although XLN may receive a bill if they make a  report that was nothing to do with OR , and obviously as you are not a BT customer you would never get a bill from BT .

As can be seen from the OR site , they charge CP’s like XLN much less for an hour ‘visit’ than the CP will charge you , and that’s not illegal and the regulator doesn’t have a problem with this .

[Cazpanda]

Thanks for the info. I understand now👍