Removal of Openreach equipment

[Jeremy Harris]

I had a hell of a lot of trouble in trying to contact OpenReach.  They aren't set up to talk to end users at all, so they have no easy to access means of communicating with the right people (really great for a communications company).  In the end I found the email address for the nearest new connections team to us, and after months of being ignored I was eventually given the phone number for a local engineer.  The local chap was great, he organised the free issue of duct, boxes, underground cable etc and we just installed it as per the usual rules for depth and separation from other services (telecoms cable ducts have to be separated from power cable ducts or cables).

 

Your challenge will be finding the right person at OpenReach.  Don't be surprised if you get ignored a fair bit, as OpenReach have a policy of ignoring end users, and they don't seem to deal with enough self-builders to be able to cope with the fact that an end user can also be a builder.

 

Of all the utilities I dealt with, OpenReach were far and away the most difficult, and that's saying something, as the others aren't exactly easy to deal with.

[jack]

1 minute ago, JSHarris said:

Don't be surprised if you get ignored a fair bit, as OpenReach have a policy of ignoring end users, and they don't seem to deal with enough self-builders to be able to cope with the fact that a builder can also be an end user.

 

I think the point is that they aren't meant to be a consumer-accessible organisation. You're supposed to go through a phone line supplier like BT (others are available), who communicate with Openreach on your behalf.

It's very annoying that it's like this. When we had our line reconnected, I wanted to talk to someone about how it would all be done, because we wanted to go underground from the pole on our land. Literally couldn't get anyone who knew anything to actually talk to me. BT assured me that they'd pass on the notes of my conversation, but of course the first engineer who turned up hadn't heard anything and (allegedly) didn't have the tools necessary to do the job.

 

It got done in the end but would have been far simpler for everyone - and certainly less effort for Openreach - if I'd been able to have a sensible conversation with an engineer before they came onsite.

[Jeremy Harris]

The problem I found was that the 'phone suppliers wouldn't engage with me until we had an address for the new line installation, and I wanted to put the ducting in whilst we were doing the ground works, so it ran under the slab and up into the house.  None of the 'phone suppliers could deal with this, and referred me back to OpenReach, who gave me a stiff ignoring for months, as they viewed me as an end user.

[Jenni]

That's good info, thank you.

I'll start the process off this week, and that should give me time to find the right people to talk to, nag a few times, etc!