Screwed over 90 year old relative

Elderly relative 10mb's adsl all that is available. Came to end of contract with John Lewis, no new contracts closing down. I asked openreach why the availability checker for address had a bunch of made up address's with different options. They said oh her village had been wired for fibre years ago, they just mixed up her address to she couldn't order it....

Then her options changed from adsl only to fttp only. No way to migrate adsl. I am not popular. But not all bad news, some benefit form fibre.

Signed her up to Zen, thought better service more able to hand the stress of migrating telephone number to new system and not all end in tears.

Zen after a few weeks of saying openreach was working on it now say ducting needs work and we must pay £1500 to continue?

We thought as retail product and only option installation was included.

So options, complain? Try again with BT retail, is it true that they are more likely to absorb installation costs? Beg openreach to reconsider and let her have adsl option again given age?

I am not popular. Just have to pray she lives for another few years and stress of my trying to be clever and making a mess doesn't...

Over £3K of install costs are absorbed by BT/OpenReach. Anything above that is charged to the customer. It is quite possible had they tried to order ADSL that it would have failed due to what is actually in the ground.

It may also be worth looking at 4G solutions if there is a mobile signal for one of the networks - unlimited 4G is not that expensive these days and may be a better option. Also, may be worth telling them that it is a vulnerable person and asking if there are any options to cover the excess charges.

In reply to a post by mnbvcxz:

we must pay £1500 to continue

Based on what Ian72 has said the overall costs must be around £4,500, if it was me I would be asking for more information about the works required as that sounds more than clearing/desilting a duct, possibly requires additional duct installing, is it currently DIG? what does the comments on the BTW checker say about the property?

There is a process for putting people back onto copper if FTTP has ECCs, your ISP needs to raise it to Openreach.

Sorry if I wasn't clear but she has working adsl at the moment, working with John Lewis. But expensivley out of contract and John Lewis say they are closing eventually. And she can't migrate to another providers adsl because they say she is eligible for fibre only... It's a mess.

Busy reading up on Openreach ECC charges. I would have more sympathy if it was sold as subject to engineering charges but the retail fttp products just say £15 setup fee and they will handle everything. No mention of covering the bill for their third party contractors, openreach. Perhaps it is in the terms and conditions for Zen somewhere.

Don't know about the ducting. Its hard to tell for sure as everything is though Zen. The copper goes up her driveway on poles but partly through a brick arch under a railway bridge and possibly they don't want to pin the fibre up with the copper but bury it instead?

As @jpm mentioned there is a process, see https://www.openreach.co.uk/cpportal/content/dam/cpp...

Although the WLR and FTTP priority exchange stop sells have been known about for some time many ISPs seem ill-prepared, especially in customer service training to handle exceptions.

You need to push Zen to expedite this. Presumably FTTC/SOGEA was not previously available - SOGEA+DV would be preferable to WLR+ADSL as SOTAP+DV doesn't appear to be ready.

Would they qualify for BT Home Essentials? https://www.bt.com/broadband/home-essentials

That's FTTP and significantly cheaper plus includes calls which is useful for old people.

That isn't the issue, AFAIK attempting to sign up for Home Essentials would not waive the ECCs for installing FTTP.

In reply to a post by mnbvcxz:

I would have more sympathy if it was sold as subject to engineering charges but the retail fttp products just say £15 setup fee and they will handle everything. No mention of covering the bill for their third party contractors, openreach. Perhaps it is in the terms and conditions for Zen somewhere.

The general Zen Ts&Cs are here. Paragraph 1.4 covers ECCs. I don't know at what point you would see those in the ordering process and found them by googling for "zen eccs".

In reply to a post by jpm:

There is a process for putting people back onto copper if FTTP has ECCs, your ISP needs to raise it to Openreach.

In reply to a post by tdw42:

As @jpm mentioned there is a process, see https://www.openreach.co.uk/cpportal/content/dam/cpp...

Although the WLR and FTTP priority exchange stop sells have been known about for some time many ISPs seem ill-prepared, especially in customer service training to handle exceptions.

You need to push Zen to expedite this. Presumably FTTC/SOGEA was not previously available - SOGEA+DV would be preferable to WLR+ADSL as SOTAP+DV doesn't appear to be ready.

Thanks to both of you for highlighting this.

I'd imagine this is not an oft used process; purely because the vast majority of people are covered by the pot of money that OR are prepared to use to establish a new FTTP service connection.

Does anyone have any direct or indirect experience of being through this process and how long it takes to action etc.?

It would be interesting to know more of the connection circumstances the OP aged relative that would incur such ECCs - for example is it an rural or ultra rural connection that has a very long connection point from the street or whoever the DP is located or something along these lines?