Nope -- it's 100% correct. And that compensation was for Residential customers. We got five months' free line rental when BT engineers failed repeatedly to turn up and effect a repair.

Naturally BT made no effort to explain we were entitled to compo. We claimed. They grizzled. At one point denying any appointments had been arranged. But then they would, wouldn't they?! Eventually they did cough up, reluctantly.

As I said, go find an old pre-2006 phone book. Check for yourself. You'll find BT compensation levels documented under terms and conditions of service for Residential customers.

BT gradually worsened those compensation terms, in what could be dubbed 'compo slippage'. Slowly increasing the duration of outage before a subscriber could claim free line rental. That was before it was abolished altogether.

The fact no one even remembers the compensation paid out is proof the 'memory hole' works very well indeed.

Reminds me of George Orwell's 1984, and the 'mutability of history'.
And the distinction between 'truth' (about an issue) and 'fact' (what people believe)!

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Edited by deleted (Fri 20-Nov-15 02:15:11)

A few examples of BT compensation. Saved from the 'memory hole' . Recovered from the usenet archives of the internet newsgroup uk.telecom. Compensation payouts that were standard for Residential customers. Business customers could claim much more.

Way back In 2002:

In reference to groups.google.com/d/msg/uk.telecom/sgkmllQWnM0/0DPJoRrV7JgJ:

Compensation is at the rate of a month's rental per day of total unusability but depends on day of reporting it faulty, and starts at least 24 hours after the report is made.

Watered down a bit by 2004: (even if BT was pretending otherwise)

In reference to groups.google.com/d/msg/uk.telecom/bgJTmv8SVHs/JFhdY7gjApMJ:

BT operate a fixed scheme for compensation starting the equivalent to 1 months line rental for outages of 1-3 days rising to 4 months line rental for 10 day outages or more.

From the BBC in 2004 (more compo slippage; even less generous):

In reference to groups.google.com/d/msg/uk.media.tv.misc/oIuWKv4BqdQ/P-DUsEM30K0J:

Residential customers will receive one month's line rental refund for up to three days loss of service and two months line rental for four to six days loss.

And by May 2006:

In reference to groups.google.com/d/msg/uk.telecom/1gF5xcg_yoQ/7_Q1OO4U-j0J:

If a residential line is out of service - you have two options.

1. A Daily Rate Rental Credit which is calculated as the ex-VAT line/package quarterly rental which is multiplied by 4 and divided by 365 to arrive at the figure... i.e. £28.07*4/365 = £0.301/day credit (ex VAT)

2. Alternatively, you can choose to have your calls diverted to another landline or mobile, in which case BT will give you £1/day (+VAT) compensation instead for any outgoing calls you make (i.e. via your mobile)

One comment from the time:

In reference to groups.google.com/d/msg/uk.telecom/1gF5xcg_yoQ/9fGIQdpjOBYJ:

So they've scrapped the one, two, three months (for 1-3, 4-6, 7+ days without service) of line rental as a compensation credit... It did seem pretty good, when I had several months (7+) credit applied

That dramatic 'slippage' in compensation is something the whooping BT stooges might like to contemplate.

Compensation was an effective financial penalty for poor performance. A driver for improvement. Forcing BT into pulling its finger out, and provide a decent repair service.

Look at the laughable mess at BT Openreach today. Imagine Openreach operating by those earlier Service Level Agreements -- for Residential customers -- paying that level of compensation today. The whole BT Group would be bankrupt by year end!

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Edited by deleted (Fri 20-Nov-15 02:39:35)

So more evidence to support the notion that the UK was better off before Openreach was created and support the hypothesis that a FTSE 100 Openreach might be even worse.

Of course an advantage of a poor and never delivering anything at all Openreach is that competitors with alternative infrastructure should be winning millions of customers a year, I mean look at the massive growth of Virgin Media and massive profits they are making so much so they are spending trillions on expanding their network footprint to make themselves the new national incumbent

Human nature is to complain when things go wrong, but we rarely speak up when things go as expected.

I have had a dozen BT OR engineer visits in the last 10 years and I have never had one not turn up.

Yesterday was a prime example, BT OR turned up on time, chatted about the work he had to do to fit a new line and asked my preference etc. Asked if had a Huwaei on the van rather than an ECI (already have one) couldn't have been more helpful.

Checked everything before he left to ensure I could make and receive calls, BT OR modem actually sync'd and so on.

So thumbs up from me for their service.

Same here, don't think I have ever had a missed appointment from BT.

A couple of times when a technician was here for 3 or 4 hours he made sure his control/management knew so that he was not allocated a new task.

I have even had a B T team turn up 3 hours earlier than they planned - "because it is easier to do this at 5 AM rather than 8AM".

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

So more evidence to support the notion that the UK was better off before Openreach was created and support the hypothesis that a FTSE 100 Openreach might be even worse.

No doubt BT's generous compensation was aimed to show how great it was for customers to have Openreach completely integrated within BT's line rental monopoly. This arrangement was very profitable for BT, and after all this generous compensation was paid for out of our subscriptions anyway.

An appalling record. Imagine the cost of all those pointless truck rolls, and all those days of lost pay. Many of us, if frank, can tell our own tales of Openreach woe.

There's an interesting contributor to the Which forums. A poster who's furious with his fellow Brits for being such a bunch of spineless dweebs. For allowing BT, a ruthless £40bn corporate beast, to trample all over us. After numerous engineer no shows, the angry chappie sued BT in the county court, and won £300 in settlement. Here's his tale:

In reference to conversation.which.co.uk/technology/ask-which-broadband-outage-comp...:

I SUCCESSFULLY SUED PLUSNET/BT IN MY LOCAL COUNTY COURT !

In February 2014 I contacted PLUSNET to install a phone line & supply a modem & broadband at the new house I was moving to, I paid them £72.98, I received confirmation of my order (a contract?) in the post the following day & 2 appointments were booked for a month later for the work to be done. I moved to my new house & waited, I took 11 hours off work unpaid to be at home for the BT Openreach engineers, but no one turned up, I tried to contact PLUSNET on my mobile several times only to be told I was in a queue & had to wait over 40 minutes, I also tried to contact them by using the local call box � again I was in a queue & would have to wait over 50 minutes. I wrote to PLUSNET to complain & demanded my £72.98 back plus my lost salary circa £400 including compensation for breach of contract & explicitly gave them 14 days to comply or I would take them to the small claims court, their response was to offer me a miserly £25 for my inconvenience & my money back if I formally asked for it, �HOW OUTRAGOUS!� So of course I made a claim through MYCOL the online small claims service, I offered mediation & waited for their response, NOTHING for approximately 12 months ! so a hearing date was set & surprise surprise I start to get phone calls & an offer in writing of £150 to settle this time from BT LEGAL. I now know that PLUSNET in their incompetence failed to book the 2 appointments with their parent company BT OPENREACH thus wasting my time & causing my financial loss. The case was heard on 03/07/2015, PLUSNET/BT didn�t even bother to attend simply sending a letter, I had a very thorough, & severe but legally professional examination of my claim & my evidence by the justice (I�m not going to mention his name) my award was just shy of £300 & they have until the 25th of July to pay. I shall keep you informed. I would urge anyone who has issues with utility companies be it water/gas/electricity or telecoms to do as I did & use the small claims court � that is what it is there for! At the time of writing this, BT have 5 CCJ�s against them dating back to 2011 (& now 6 with mine) this company & its subsidiaries simply don�t care if they break civil law � it�s time we ALL complain & use the courts to get justice.

An inspiration. That's how you deal with errant companies providing shoddy service or none at all. By hitting them where it hurts - in the balance sheet. If everyone sued the Beast for damages as soon as it wronged them, costing them money, its service levels would improve massively overnight.

We shouldn't be ashamed of being litigious towards BT; it's what it deserves. The Beast is forever dragging its own disputes into Court. Only yesterday throwing its toys out of its pram over the Sky Sports ruling. Threatening to launch another protracted (five year) lawsuit against Sky TV. If that's the way BT wants it, then that's the way the consumer should deal with it too. Perpetually threatening it with civil action for damages.

It's not as if its compensation scheme is worth using. Currently set today at just 59p a day - and compo only starting on the fourth or fifth working day of no service.

Paltry compensation with no punitive value. Meaning Openreach has little incentive to actually repair faults; especially complex ones. The sloppy BT mindset that a truck roll would have cost far more than 59p any way.

You guys must be blind; or else whooping BT stooges, or both. Countless Openreach disaster stories are documented on here.

Remember the fella a few weeks back who clocked up nine engineer visits (so far). And still his fault persists. Hardly the glowing reference for Openreach that the BT stooges here like to portray,

Even our beloved Batboy -- ever the BT stalwart -- gave up at the fourth engineer visit. At that point, crystal clear that Openreach had neither the competence nor commitment to fix his own intermittent fault. Yet he still bats for Beattie! None so blind as a bat(-boy) who will not see!

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This thread is about compensation though. And how BT has diluted compo to nothing. With the connivance of the toothless regulator. While increasing the cost of line rental by nearly twice the rate of inflation, every year since 2006. If you guys are happy with that; then maybe you're in the wrong business.

Are we the same spineless dweebs who let the supermarket cashier short-change us, without a murmur? The same peeps who blithely pay a plumber's bill; coughing up for non-existent repairs when he never even showed?! Or the type who sit at the train station tight-lipped and twiddling their thumbs for hours on end; waiting for a broken-down train that ain't never gonna arrive?! Those are the Brits the world of commerce just loves; the spineless dweebs of society.

*sigh!*

If nothing else, we do all agree that things were once much better? Not so many years ago, BT was indeed contracted to pay Residential customers reasonable compensation. As documented above, refunding many months of line rental for ongoing and unrepaired faults.

How did it all go so dreadfully wrong?

Edited by deleted (Fri 20-Nov-15 20:05:41)

And very forward thinking to be offering it almost ten years before Openreach was created.

Markets change and as we as a nation have adopted call bundles, and more calls are on mobiles call revenue that was the gold mine has decreased increasing pressure on all the nice bits that a Telco would happily do before.

In reply to a post by edwincluck:

Even our beloved Batboy -- ever the BT stalwart -- gave up at the fourth engineer visit. At that point, crystal clear that Openreach had neither the competence nor commitment to fix his own intermittent fault. Yet he still bats for Beattie! None so blind as a blind bat(-boy) who will not see!

No I didn't give up - the fault went away.

I'm confident I know what's causing it and when it returns next year, I'll be able to report it safe in the knowledge it will recur when the engineer attends.

At the moment and probably for the rest of the winter, there's nothing to report. My connection is perfect and so is my phone.

Oh and I should mention, it's Sky Fibre Pro

Edited by deleted (Fri 20-Nov-15 20:06:24)

In reply to a post by edwincluck:

Imagine Openreach operating by those earlier Service Level Agreements -- for Residential customers

From what I can make of it, Openreach are paying their customers Service Level Guarantee Payments of at least a month's line rental per day when they have missed their targets. Payments don't need to be claimed, they are credited automatically.

LLU providers such as Sky and TalkTalk also appear to have tighter Service Level Agreements than BT Retail who do not use LLU. So the payments kick in earlier for Sky and TalkTalk than BT Retail.

Lengthy delays in repairing circuits costs Openreach. A lengthy delay, for example needing streetworks and civils that result in delays could mean Openreach make no money at all throughout the life of the circuit just in SLG payments let alone the cost of the works.

Edited by deleted (Fri 20-Nov-15 21:44:33)