Openreach not turning up

Hello guys,

I was suppose to get my SKY FTTC installed on Friday and had a phone call from SKY on last Wednesday checking if I was ok with the installation date etc so all good to go.

Made sure either myself or the missus was in the house all day on Friday as we were right in the middle of a house move the scheduled installation time was 1pm-6pm at about 5:30 I noticed i had recieved an email as Vodafone having issues where I live signal is very patchy..from SKY saying the installation been moved to the 16th of March.

I phoned Sky up and the guy said he needed to check what the reason for this was so he called me back about 10min later and he said the reason was there was no engineer to do the job, now surely if everything been planned and arranged and they don't turn up I shouldn't have to wait over 2 weeks to get my phone and broadband installed!?

The sky guy basically washed his hands and said its nothing they can do as its openreach and said I could complain to ofcom but that was the only thing that we could do as they couldn't even change the date of the new installation.

So thought I would check here as there are a lot of people that work in the business and have experience if this is just one of the suck it up and take it situation....I had to go and get a EE 4G mywifi device to get some kind of connection so not the happiest bunny in the world right now.

If you had paid for a higher priority install then a lot that could be done, but standard install work is done on a system whereby emergency type work takes priority.

You should be able to chase Sky who can chase for some compensation perhaps, and as your contract is with Sky they are the ones to pursue for the extra costs of the 4G device etc. The fact it is a supplier at fault is irrelevant as your contract is with Sky.

Complaining to Ofcom may provide a way to vent, but that should be the job Sky is doing on your behalf.

It can and does happen. Staff calling in sick, priority customers needing a fault repair - they pay extra for NBD, 4 hour or faster response, a major network fault or stolen cables ... BT does build a little slack into the system and will very occasionally get caught out and potentially a residential install is "down the list". Sky should be able to get more details - obviously they were unwilling to try.

I would suggest the times to avoid are Friday PM and then Friday AM and Monday AM.

I can understand if someone phones in sick etc I'm sure everyone been sick and not gone to work. But I jsut feels me getting pushed forward more than 2 weeks is beyond a joke, I'm sure I could have got a brand new installation slot quicker.

think i will phone the sky switch squad number that is showing on mysky page see if they can do anything about it...

any way thanks for your answers, really wish Virgin could have dug a cable on my street as well and I would have stayed with them,

Trouble is their engineers are likely booked 2 weeks in advance. So, if an appointment gets missed the choice is put it back of the queue or bump someone else's appointment - then that person complains so theirs gets bought forwards but bumps another - etc.

It isn't good from your perspective as the customer that has a missed appointment but logistically it is the simplest thing for them to do.

The system that Openreach offers is an "Equivalence of Inputs" - meaning that the same service is available to all of the retail ISPs who are their customers (this is important, as it means no advantage to BT Retail). There is a queue for everyone on the same service level (and retail consumers are the biggest group on the lowest service level paying the lowest cost).

As someone else says, to get faster response times, you need to be on a higher service level - which costs more per month, and is usually only targetted at businesses. Mass market consumer ISPs don't bother to offer any of these extensions.

Unfortunately, the system of handling appointment failures is a bog-standard simple one: every appointment failure goes to the back of the appointment queue again. The laziest, cheapest of ISPs stop at that, and offer no more.

However, there are further steps available to ISPs if they choose to employ them - but doing so requires extra steps from the ISP support staff, which ultimately is a cost to the ISP. The laziest, cheapest ISPs don't want to bother with these steps; slightly better ones will follow these steps, but only when demanded. The best will just offer them.

First, an order can be escalated within Openreach. While a failed appointment means you may well qualify, this might not help, as there is a set procedure to follow that can take a few days ... which might not speed up the end result anyway.

BTW Escalations
Here are some escalation criteria
And some other guides

The second involves an expedite. This is where an ISP chooses to spend money on your behalf, in order for the order to be accelerated nearer to the front of the queue.

For example, Openreach offer these prices.

BT Wholesale offer the ability to fast track orders, with some done free of charge should BT have delayed the order.

I can't find criteria that can be used to determine whether you'd qualify for a free-of-charge expedite.

Neither process seems to raise the priority of the order - so if they are short of engineers on the day of the new appointment, you might still repeat the problem.

Edit: Should have added: If you want to go down either path, you need to convince the support staff of your ISP. They might pay attention, but they might consider that a single missed appointment isn't yet worth the additional work they will face.

Edited by deleted (Wed 04-Mar-15 18:05:44)

Given that many people have to make a special effort in order to be present, is it not about time the likes of Ofcom are forced to pay some compensation for missed appointments?

Also troublesome installs cause problems for engineers. When my neighbour had fibre installed the engineer turned up at 8:30 in the morning and was still there at 3 in the afternoon. I wonder how many appointments were missed on that day.

I'm not sure about using Ofcom as a compensation vehicle, but I think it is about time that Ofcom gave due regard to the fact that taking a day's holiday for an Openreach appointment is using up a significant resource for an individual - and possibly a whole family. It isn't like the number of days holiday you get is infinite and fully flexible.

Perhaps Ofcom should stop measuring Openreach primarily on how long it takes to get a line fixed, and start making a measure of "fixed on first appointment" much more important.

Telecommunications Adjudicator tracks stats like that already