Sky Fibre installation gone totally wrong

Two weeks ago I ordered Sky Fibre. For the past week I've been getting a text message a day reminding me to "be here" for the installation of my phone line and broadband.

Today, the engineer came by, said he "couldn't find my line" and left with a "sorry".

My initial understanding was that he "doesn't have authorisation to go in the ducts", because, for whatever reason the line was not active. He said "somebody may show up later today to check it out". Which was so vague and infuriating. I didn't know what else to tell him to make him stay and figure it out. No element of persuasion worked. All I got was "I have other jobs to attend to, people are waiting". Well, I was and am waiting. He couldn't even leave the modem with me, so what, now I have to wait two weeks for another one of these lazy imbeciles to come along and do something?

Well, why couldn't he just sort this out here and now and avoid me being tortured? I have to wait for nobody knows what!

Having spoken to Sky Fibre support team, they said that a fault is reported on the line and some engineer will have to come by today or tomorrow, but not to my premises and that I don't have to be present. I'm staying just in case on the off-chance they show up.

I'm confused and angry. I've got to cancel my VM contract because it's still within the cooling off period, but I can't get Sky either because of BT Openreach screw ups? Absurd!

It's 2pm, one hour after the installation time frame and no phone or internet was installed or activated.

Edit: I have submitted a complaint for unhelpful engineer behaviour on the Openreach website.

Edited by Saltank (Wed 28-Nov-12 20:05:25)

Same happened to me
When moved here was a line installed but inactive and so could not find where was connected
Same day of installation i end up to a distributional point with in 7 meters away and direct to exchange even a cabinet was about 60 meters away
So talk to your provider don't end up like me...becarefull not that the adsl is not good but will not get fttc

Edited by babis3g (Wed 28-Nov-12 15:13:18)

Why would he be loking in the cabinet for it.If the line was just inactive it just needs to be activated at the exchange in fact it is pointless an engneer coming out to your home untill the line is active and has dial tone on it

I just got an email:

We're sorry that the Openreach engineer who was due to install your Sky Talk couldn't make the agreed appointment on Wednesday, 28 November 2012 between 8am and 1pm. We'll now need to arrange another visit for you.

We'd like to pull out all the stops to get everything up and running, so please give us a call on 08442 410104 and we can arrange a new date.

Not sure what to make of this. If it's another two week wait, then they have wasted all my time and I can't live without Internet for two weeks - because the imbecile engineer was supposed to do this today, and because I have to cancel Virgin Media on friday!

Of course, "our lines are extremely busy right now" and expected wait time is over 20 minutes.
When I called them this morning it was answered almost immediately.

UPDATE:

After a 30 minute wait, I spoke to a nice lady, again, and she said that they "can't do anything" and that an update from Openreach reads a line fault and a ducting engineer (paraphrasing here) has to visit and they may have to "dig up the street".

Sounds so extreme to me. This line used to work, it just sounds like they need to flip the [censored] switch...

Edited by Saltank (Wed 28-Nov-12 17:20:18)

Sounds possible if the line hasn't been used for some time, I quite often see BT roadworks scheduled to dig up the road to repair a damaged cable. Some areas don't have any ducting, apparently in the 70's BT thought it would save money by not using ducting and just burying the cables.......

That sounds like it's not something that can be sorted out within a few days. I'll update here when something new happens.

13:00: BT Openreach engineer just showed up out of the blue. Lucky I was in. No warning or anything.
14:00: The engineer has made some progress and said the line will be working in an hour or so.
He also said that he has a modem in his van, but he needs someone from Sky to push the button so he can install it for me. I call Sky, and they tell me that they can't do that and the engineer has to call his control unit. They're telling me exact opposite things.

I would really like to get this working today, as it now seems like it's a possibility (finally). It would be really unfair if it can't get up and running just because of this bureaucratic nonsense.

16:00 The engineer has installed the phone line. He tried calling his higher ups, and, despite much persuasion he couldn't "get the job" to install the fibre, even though he is right here and was able to do it.
The engineer was a really good man set on getting the job done, and I think it a great shame that I will have to wait god knows how long for the next engineer ( or contractor) to do this installation, which could have been done if the Sky/BTO back office was running properly!

Edited by Saltank (Thu 29-Nov-12 16:08:20)

I've come to the conclusion that the lack of transparency during the ordering process which results in erroneous booking of the appointments and during the installation process itself is artificially created by BT Openreach.

Maybe everyone knows this by now, maybe not, but I've made this discovery for myself during this entire ordeal, and it makes total sense.

If life were easy, one engineer would visit the premises to install/set-up the land line and then the FTTC connection. These engineers are all qualified, with the exception of maybe some newly hired staff which are not fully certified and have been recently recruited, so they are only doing 'basic' installs. The result would be that if the appointment is met and everything is done in one visit, even if it takes a few hours, costs remain relatively fixed and predictable.
The issue that I've had would have been easily rectifiable if the engineer that visited first would have done his job, but instead considerable resources were wasted on petrol and labour for sending him from Canary Wharf to NW London, not to mention the subsequent money I've spent on phone calls and admin work they've had to do on their end and, let's not forget the people that are also waiting for that very same engineer at THEIR place, who knows or cares what happens to them?

But they did not do what they're supposed to. No, they send an incompetent person to muck around so BT Openreach gets their money. Then, they proceed to send someone who knows what they're doing, but only does half the job. Why? Because BT Openreach will get some money again for this visit. The final visit may in fact, be the very same lazy engineer that came around the first time, and this time he'll plug in the modem and switch a few wires - a bit more work for him because he "couldn't" do it the first time around.

It all makes sense now. Even if I am wrong, it all makes perfect sense. This is how they "create jobs" in a weak economy, by slapping the poor customer on the face with lame excuses of 'not being able to do this on their computer' and hope they can get away with this charade long enough to earn some money from an inefficient and clearly, fraudulent and transparency-lacking scheme.

Edited by Saltank (Thu 29-Nov-12 18:43:50)

There's probably a lot of truth in there, except for two basic mistakes.

Openreach make a fixed charge for doing an installation. So the multiple visits and extra work are costing them money.

If an engineer stays past the expected timeslot on a job, as you would desire if your were the first in the day, that's fine for you. But what if you were the poor sod who was last for the day and several earlier installations ran over time?

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

There's probably a lot of truth in there, except for two basic mistakes.

Openreach make a fixed charge for doing an installation. So the multiple visits and extra work are costing them money.

If an engineer stays past the expected timeslot on a job, as you would desire if your were the first in the day, that's fine for you. But what if you were the poor sod who was last for the day and several earlier installations ran over time?

If Openreach receive funding other than from call out fees, for example EU/Government, it can be argued that it's very poorly spent!
I've had the short end of the stick for engineer visits many, many times over the years. They all complain, but those that complain the most are the best workers. The ones that don't do anything, don't say anything...