Jax my order was escalated to Gavins team on 4th August after trying Bt_Care on their forums and getting nowhere,despite having a ELC case worker chasing Openreach he cannot get an answer from them,it's always "waiting for update from planners,will update again next week"

My case worker is on holiday at the moment and I have been called since,with the above update,once on the 4th where the install date was expected to be advised by the 9th then on the 7th"waiting on planners will update by end of the week"and again on the 10th"Still waiting on planners-will update end of next week"

What does it take for someone to get an answer from OR?
It's time OR were answerable to a body of somesorts as even if I were to change supplier it's still down to them to arrange the work to be done and they would get paid no matter who the ISP were.

I threw 3 darts at a wallplanner and hit dates of
09/10,06/11 and 07/12 I wonder which will be nearest to actual completion date.

In reply to a post by boysteve:

"waiting for update from planners,will update again next week"

That phrase is remarkably familiar! Even after my ISP (not BT) escalated the ongoing problems twice that is all they could get if they were replied to at all. The last time they escalated (they should apparently expect an answer within 24 hours) they did not hear anything until they contacted Openreach again after a couple of days only to be told the order had been cancelled.

In reply to a post by boysteve:

I threw 3 darts at a wallplanner and hit dates of
09/10,06/11 and 07/12 I wonder which will be nearest to actual completion date.

The answer would seem glaringly obvious, the only real question is which year......

Good job I don't have to order FTTP (if it was available to me) otherwise I couldn't handle all this stressful phone calls (due to my deafness) will cause me boiling blood in my head and will cause me distressful. Thankful FTTC installation went smoothly without any problem last year from openreach engineer (he was kind, polite and show me everything the work he did plus show me the cabinet on his toolkit showing 200m away and sync at 113Meg down and 38Meg up but capped at 80/20. He even sign lauguage abit too. He did a very good job.

In reply to a post by adslmax:

Good job I don't have to order FTTP (if it was available to me) otherwise I couldn't handle all this stressful phone calls (due to my deafness) will cause me boiling blood in my head and will cause me distressful.

I am only rather hard of hearing but I can certainly go along with the rest of what you say! BP and stress levels are not good!

Somebody might be out tomorrow morning but they are not certain. Hope so though of course the trees still need dealing with.
Meanwhile literally as I type this my router has lost sync twice.

You probably won't getting FTTP for a long while! I think your wife probably right afterall, might not getting FTTP by xmas time!

My wife is always right!
Or so I have been told!

I think my email to Gavin Patterson and him flagging Openreach must have stirred something up. Had three engineers in two vans and a cherry picker turn up this morning to do the external for both myself and my next door neighbour together as the cable run through the trees is the same. They are a bit of a trouble shooting team it seems.
They were here all day but could not quite finish as they ran out of time but my cable runs from the house through the trees and is connected to the manifold at the post. They have promised to be back tomorrow to tack the cable down to the CSP then blow the fibre. They were not helped by the fact that the cherry picker broke down halfway through the day but fortunately one of them managed to fix what turned out to be an electrical fault.
My neighbour needs his cable taken across the last span to his gable end then down to the CSP .
So job nearly done for phase one. Just hope they don't get whose cable is whose mixed up though they are aware of that possibility.
The job is already booked for tomorrow for completion of the external installation then wait for an appointment for the internal one.

The same team of very friendly guys did indeed turn up again as promised. They quickly tacked the tube to the wall then started to blow the fibre from the splitter node to the manifold. The fibre got stuck in the manifold which was quickly sorted then on it went to about 240 metres then stuck again. They could not get it through so tried from my end but it stuck at 68 metres. This was somewhere near the pole nearest to my property so they loosened things off, tried gently moving the tube around then found a bit of tubing that was slightly pinched. With a combination of holding the tubing in a certain position and I think applying a little pressure "the other way" like you do with a hose pipe the fibre suddenly started moving again. Then stuck again at 168 metres which was back at the manifold. That was quickly sorted and the fibre continued right through. Relief all round, sounds simple but that was four hours gone! They then blew the fibre for my next door neighbour whose tubing had been finished being attached whilst the fibre was being attempted to be blown down my tube. That just left the splicing to be done at the splitter node (the heavens had opened by now, very heavy rain) and then everything was tested. All good and the fibre is live ready for the internal install hopefully very soon. Today's work alone for the two jobs was about seven hours for three engineers, they worked hard with great perseverance and no respite too. Great guys, I'm very grateful.

So, in the end, they carried on with the cabling work, even though the trees had only been half done?

It is certainly great news that *something* happened, but so frustrating that it takes an email to Gavin.