Part of the problem is that OR engineers who subsequently go on the repair don't report the contractor for shoddy workmanship. So there's no downside to the contractor, also for the company everything looks like it's going well.

The process to report these issues is not straightforward to use, and takes time, a commodity most engineers have precious little of.

The Openreach engineer who came yesterday said he was going to report him and that the Kelly's chap would have his fee taken back. Is £25 really all they get per visit? No expenses, eg fuel allowance? If that is all they get it seems grossly unfair and it is no wonder they won't do much more than fit an NT5E socket. I know he didn't do the job properly but am feeling quite sorry for him.

Edited by deleted (Thu 20-Aug-15 11:28:56)

How did Kelly's even get in to this position of doing fibre installs?

They seem like a very low budget business, some might even say 'cowboys', that have hit the jackpot. Easy cash if they just run through all the jobs.

When the guy came to my house, I could have done everything he did. All he did was unbox the HH5, plug it in to the ethernet cable that I had put in. He had his friend in the van supposedly go to the cabinet to check they had the right line. Within 5 minutes (the time it took the fibre connection to be made) he was off. Easy money.

So if he did say 9 jobs per hour (I'm allowing time for them to reach the destination house), thats 9 x £25 = £225 per hour! Lets say they work 6 hours a day, so thats £225 x 6 = £1350 per day off one "engineer"

The Kelly engineer's next appointment from us was 15 miles away and his appt before us was 35! None of his appointments seemed to be grouped in the same area so I doubt he could do as many as 9 in an hour. He took a bit less than 20 mins to do what work he did at our house. Marie.

Edited by deleted (Thu 20-Aug-15 13:06:59)

In reply to a post by whisper:

The Openreach engineer who came yesterday said he was going to report him and that the Kelly's chap would have his fee taken back. Is £25 really all they get per visit? No expenses, eg fuel allowance? If that is all they get it seems grossly unfair and it is no wonder they won't do much more than fit an NT5E socket. I know he didn't do the job properly but am feeling quite sorry for him.

It's some kind of tax fiddle too, and something the government should be cracking down on.

They are "self-employed" and they get £25. That's all they get, they've got to pay for their own fuel for the van. I'm not sure if they also then pay some kind of rental fee for the van to Kelly's. Then of course they need to pay all of their own tax and national insurance to HMRC.

Kelly's and others like them are precisely the firms who would be doing work for almost any provider rolling out infrastructure needing home installs.

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

Part of the problem is that OR engineers who subsequently go on the repair don't report the contractor for shoddy workmanship. So there's no downside to the contractor, also for the company everything looks like it's going well.

The process to report these issues is not straightforward to use, and takes time, a commodity most engineers have precious little of.

Naturally the people that designed the process knew that and deliberately made it difficult to complain to weed out the trivial stuff without thinking about the more serious problems that don't get flagged up because of it.

In reply to a post by bowdon:

How did Kelly's even get in to this position of doing fibre installs?

Kellys lost the Virgin contract to Fujitsu five years ago, pretty much all of Virgin work is out to contract and subbed out to 'self employed' engineers.

So they prolly offered Openreach a good deal which Openreach could use to leverage the union on conditions for new Openreach starters properly employed .

Funnily enough Fujitsu lost the Virgin contract this year too. It's a race to the bottom in this part of the Telecom world.

Edited by deleted (Thu 20-Aug-15 21:53:59)

In reply to a post by whisper:

I know he didn't do the job properly but am feeling quite sorry for him.

But did he feel sorry for you at the time? You can see now what he should have left you with.

The only thing in his favour is that Kelly's shouldn't have sent an untrained guy on a broadband job. It sounds as though he's had at most half a day showing him how to do a basic install and test, and sent on his way. That is disgusting by Kelly's management.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

In reply to a post by whisper:

I know he didn't do the job properly but am feeling quite sorry for him.

But did he feel sorry for you at the time? You can see now what he should have left you with.

The only thing in his favour is that Kelly's shouldn't have sent an untrained guy on a broadband job. It sounds as though he's had at most half a day showing him how to do a basic install and test, and sent on his way. That is disgusting by Kelly's management.

No, I dare say he didn't feel sorry for me. I still can't get my head round the fact the 'engineer' only gets £25 per install! Has anyone had a proper fibre installation from Kelly's?