Cable damage and urgent repairs

[kingcutt]

Hi all,

So i've just had a call from my elderly parents to tell me that, unfortunately, the builders who are working nextdoor have managed to bring down the telephone cable to my parents' house. Consequently, they've been left without use of their landline and, with it, the internet.

Apparently, my parents have phoned OpenReach to report the issue and been told that it will not be fixed until the 30th December because it normally takes 3-5 days for repairs but, everyone is off on their jollies tomorrow for Christmas. They were also told that they could contact their mobile phone provider in the meantime and boost their data packages and/or minutes if they needed to use the internet or make calls over the Christmas period. However, both are in their late 70s, living off of pensions, and use pay-as-you-go mobile phones. My siblings live over 300 miles away and are not headed home for Christmas and, unfortunately, I'm abroad for work over Christmas.

My question is: is this normal? Is their anything that can be done/anyone that can be contacted to speed up this process and avoid my elderly parents spending Christmas without their landline/internet?

[imjolly]

are your parents BT Retail customers or with a different ISP?

If BT are your parents signed up to the repair scheme

https://www.bt.com/content/dam/bt/help/including-you/BT_Free_Priority_Fault_Repair_Scheme.pdf

I have asked forum mods to see if anything they can do assuming they are BT Retail customers   there is no connection from this forum to openreach

[kingcutt · Accepted solution]

Hi imjolly.

Thanks for such a quick and informative reply. I've just spoken to my parents and they've told me that they have their internet with Sky...they've also been told to contact Sky, which they have done, and got more or less the same response. Apparently, some liaising between Sky and OpenReach is required and this adds to the delay.

Therefore, I will head over to the Sky forums and see if I can find out anything there.

Many thanks again for your help and a happy holiday period to you and your family.