Openreach!

[patp]

Hope this is the right place?

 

We have been battling with BT and Openreach to get a phone line installed. Is there a secret that no one is telling us? We had a huge saga where they completely cut us off thinking that we were moving out of our house and into the new one. Hospital appointments were messed up, family worried etc.

Yet another engineer is coming out tomorrow but I am a bit worried about the language being used in the emails as to whether he knows there is not supply to the new build at all. I explain it all in words of one syllable to BT but it always ends up with a confused engineer not being able to do the job. The latest one says the engineer will "connect our broadband" when he comes.

 

Is there a way to talk directly to Openreach instead of it getting lost in translation via BT? 

[Temp]

I recommend letting the engineer come to "connect your broadband"....

 

BT rang us every week to say "they" were working on our new line. This was clearly untrue because I was could see the pole from our house. When they stopped calling me I called them and was told the computer says its all finished and working. So while they are on the line I walk to the pole where I find the end of our wire still coiled up where we left it.

 

I wasn't able to convince the girl on the phone that it hadn't been done. She eventually said "Oh it must be faulty, we'll send an engineer out if you agree to a £75 bill in the event no fault is found". I was more than happy to agree to that.  Several days later this old boy turns up to find the "fault". He wouldn't listen to my explanation of the "fault" and insisted on plugging his test box into the master socket in my house. After some beeps and whistles and prodding of buttons he eventually ask me to show him the wire I'd mentioned earlier. So I do that and he asks why I'd reported it as a fault !

 

Anyway to cut a long story short he wasn't able to climb the pole and connect us (because Health and Safety say  they have to use a Cherry Picker) but he was able to call some magic phone number and get a team out to finish the job.

 

So I recommend letting them send as many engineers as they want. When they turn up apologise and say it wasn't you that reported it as a fault (even if it was). Offer a cup of tea and ask if they can call the office to get them to schedule the work to complete the installation.

 

Edited October 26, 2021 by Temp

[ProDave]

Have you actually asked BT for a new landline?

[Ralph]

I had an absolute nightmare along the same lines. The only way I got it done was to make a complaint and go through the customer service person. 

I also ended up with £300 in compensation. 

[JohnMo]

Go 4G, £35 a month all the data and calls you want, you can even connect a landline with right hub, although you get a mobile number.

 

Doing all via mail order, took a couple of days, and about 30mins walking about the house to find the best signal.

[patp]

14 hours ago, ProDave said:

Have you actually asked BT for a new landline?

Only about seven times

[patp]

No mobile signal  This is why the day they cut us off became such a nightmare. Chris had, a day or so earlier, been diagnosed with bowel cancer and was waiting for urgent referral. I spent hours, and I am not exaggerating here, waving the mobile around at the end of the garden trying to get someone to do something. No one could ring us and we could not unless dressed in waterproofs and wellies call anyone else.

Several of the engineers have promised to "sort it" when they come but nothing ever happens! 

 

I think that part of the problem is that we have been given a number and exist in the little green box. Once an engineer finds that out he just thinks it is a "fault" or that we want broadband connected.

 

We did raise a complaint over the time they cut us off and that did galvanise them to get us back on in the house but not to connect the new bungalow.

 

Yet another engineer is coming today.

[dpmiller]

@patp where is the little green box you refer to?

[patp]

Up in the centre of the village. You often see the engineers working on them.

 

Our engineer has just been. He cannot do the job  He is, however, from Openreach which is progress at least. He says he is going to put an order in for the cable and ducting that we need. Once that is delivered we can, at least lay the cable underground. We should then, he tells us, be able to organise for a surveyor to come out and do a survey that should lead to an order for connection. Not holding my breath. I can, at least, speak their language and ask for a surveyor when I ring them. Once you start saying words like "connection" their brain goes towards a house move. 

 

If anyone knows the technical words for installing a new line to a new build then I would be most grateful.

[Andrew]

I haven’t got the energy to write out my experiences so far getting connected with openreach (still not connected after 6 months) but it has been a kafkaesque nightmare.

[Ralph]

I had an "engineer" come out once who from a third party contractor about 2 hours away. He was at that point the third one to come out and be surprised that the cable needed to be run up the pole and connected. He was quite angry but off he went. 

 

20 minutes later I got call from his manager asking me to confirm that I had refused the engineer access to the propertly. He hinted that the reason was that I did not want an asian person in the house and should be paying for a 1/2 day of their time. 

 

I was not a happy man.

[Temp]

8 hours ago, patp said:

We should then, he tells us, be able to organise for a surveyor to come out and do a survey that should lead to an order for connection.

 

If they haven't even sent a surveyor yet you have some way to go. I would chase BT Retail quoting your order number and complain Openreach haven't even sent a surveyor yet.

 

Google suggest the process should be...

 

Get your address into the Royal Mail Postcode Database first (yes really).

Hope it makes it into the Openreach version of the same database.

Order a new line from BT Retail (or whichever retail company you prefer). They will place order with Openreach.

Openreach should send surveyor who will report the back to BT.

Keep chasing BT Retail who should chase Openreach for you.

 

BT say you can track the order here..

 

 https://my.bt.com/s/apps/appsorder/customer/index.html#/index?order_ref=&s_cid=con_FURL_myorder&s_cid=con_FURL_ordertracking

[Johnnyt]

I had issue getting a new line into our build. The BT manhole is 12 inches from our boundary and carries fibre aswell

The local openreach gadgee said unless we were in occupancy, we wern't priority but we needed broadband for cctv of the site.

He was very helpful and said if we sign up for a phone and broadband deal with a 3rd party provider, they lean on openreach to get the connection sorted.

This we did with excellent results with plusnet but they could only promise a low broadband speed on an unknown new line.

The connection was sorted post haste and we cooled off with plusnet and went for a more competitive and greater speed deal elsewhere, not openreach

[PeterW]

13 minutes ago, Johnnyt said:

The connection was sorted post haste and we cooled off with plusnet

How did that work ..? Is it 14 days from order or 14 days from installation ..?

[Johnnyt]

It was 14 days from when we went live not the date of the order as no service had been provided upto that date

 

[patp]

Openreach came out yesterday. That is a significant bonus as it has always been BT that came out before. Nice guy who said he was just a customer service engineer and so could not do the job! He did, however, promise to email the office to try to get things moving. He also said he would order 80m of ducting and cable to be delivered. His advice was that we need to get a surveyor from Openreach (he could not help with this  ) who would put an order in for the job to be done. He also spray painted where the ducting needs to go from the pole into a trench on our land. At least we can get on with digging the trench out. I saw him later, up the village, where he was sorting the fibre to get it to us

 

In answer to the suggestion above about our address - it is in the post office database. Whenever I ring them they can find the address. It is just making the call centre handlers at BT understand that it is a new build. I think I achieved this, latest, progress by calling myself a developer and not mentioning our existing house. If they get the slightest whiff of a house move they go off on the wrong track.

 

Why is it that these engineers cannot come and do the whole job? We always laugh at road works in the village. Someone comes with a notice about road closure. Someone else comes and closes the road. Along comes the guy with the traffic lights for partial closures. Next will be the guy that digs up the road. Later will be the guy who does the job followed by someone to fill in the trench then someone to tarmac it. Days later the barriers will be removed but not before someone else has collected the traffic lights!

[Bramco]

We started about 2 months ago and I'd forgotten they'd said they would put us on the urgent list after my 2nd call.  And we'd about given up and had decided to use a 4G/5G router instead.  So it was a surprise last week when I was given a date for a surveyor to visit.  Well before the date, on a wet morning he called, he lives locally and could pop round.  After a bit of discussion he agreed that if we would put the duct in, they would connect from the bottom of the pole outside the property. It's a private lane with a grass verge where the pole is.  

 

He asked me to pace out how long the duct would be and to let him know how many corners there would be and he'd get the ducting etc. delivered.  They would call before delivery.

 

Of course they didn't, but all the gubbins arrived yesterday.  Think I'll ebay it if we go the 4G/5G router although it can't be worth anything given they hand it out willy nilly.

 

Simon

 

[patp]

Yeah, I have heard that they are very free with ducting and cabling.

 

I imagine that if we get all the ducting and cabling laid then it will not be too difficult, even if the "wrong" engineer comes, to get it connected?

 

Did I say that they gave us, after yesterday's visit, a refund of £65.42 for being unable to connect us? I did tell the poor chap our tale of woes at being cut off just when OH was diagnosed with cancer when we have no mobile signal to speak of.

[DragsterDriver]

Christ.

 

I’m having a nightmare with bt and openreach. Everytime they promise it’s sorted I get sent a router to plug in. They can’t seem to understand there is no cable 🤷🏽‍♂️ No matter how many nice ladies I speak to who promise it’s all sorted. It’s not possible to get a human out on site visit. 

[PeterW]

Book an engineer install of your broadband - don’t go with self install… then they will realise very quickly !!

[Pocster]

From the date openreach confirmed install you are entitled to I think £5.20 a day for each day late . I ended up with nearly £1600 😁

[DragsterDriver]

36 minutes ago, PeterW said:

Book an engineer install of your broadband - don’t go with self install… then they will realise very quickly !!

Because we had a temporary in the static it reports that there is a line and a ‘takeover’- they don’t seem to be able to override this so we just keep having to cancel and send back bloody routers. It’s blowing my mind! I’ve been and bought the duct myself and installed it-

i just need a human with some cable and a green Fivre optic connector!

[DragsterDriver]

34 minutes ago, pocster said:

From the date openreach confirmed install you are entitled to I think £5.20 a day for each day late . I ended up with nearly £1600 😁

😮

 

I can’t get past bt to get to openreach!

[markc]

I had a very bad line, couldn’t get past the new router bit so I called from my mobile and told them a neighbour had cut the line while digging his garden. Engineer straight out (day after) saw it was an overhead line, asked what the problem was and quickly put a new cable in.

[ProDave]

1 hour ago, DragsterDriver said:

Christ.

 

I’m having a nightmare with bt and openreach. Everytime they promise it’s sorted I get sent a router to plug in. They can’t seem to understand there is no cable 🤷🏽‍♂️ No matter how many nice ladies I speak to who promise it’s all sorted. It’s not possible to get a human out on site visit. 

Report a "no dialing tone" fault.  They will check from the exchange and find there is a "connection problem" and send someone to fix it.