If your surveyor was telling the truth then cases like yours are the reasons why they ditched fixed band pricing and I wouldn't expect your quote to drop in the slightest.

400m of DIG (Direct in Ground) buried cable down a main carriageway will not be a cheap job.
OpenReach currently charge £112.05 per meter to install ducting down a carriageway.
That makes your £20,600 quote look cheap!!

You may be lucky and it might only be the very final stretch that has no ducting. If it's the whole way to the Agg Node you may as well forget about FTTPod.

In reply to a post by Retron:

I'll update the post if the final amount changes but for now I'm hopeful that I've scored a bargain!

After a few more emails back and forth it seems that if the cable run from the street is straightforward (as it is in my case, coming in from some telegraph poles) then the surveyor doesn't need to enter the building.

So, as my actual cost will be under a quarter of the initial estimate, it looks like the initial desk surveys can be well wide of the mark. Hopefully others will find out that it's a "worst case" pricing rather than anything else!

In reply to a post by Anth:

I was quoted a Band B £1,800 ex vat on the old system in January.

Remember that the old system came with a three year contract with buried extra charges over the whole term. On Cerberus' pricing, the extra cost compared to today would be (36x165 - 12x100 - 24x62.50) = £3,240. So if your final quote comes out at £5,040 or less, you'll be better off than under the old system.

If you are trading from that property, meaning you're eligible for the £3K government gigabit voucher, then at £8,040 or less you are still better off (or £7,540 if you can't claim back the VAT)

Finally just had the quote from Cerebrus. And it says

"The estimated build charge was £20,600 + VAT. The confirmed build charge is £14,650 + VAT. This includes the reduction for the survey and the £700.00 deduction per FTTPoD order."

So with VAT that works out at £17,580 final cost after the full survey for what was a Band B property less than 400m from the AgNode in a housing estate.

Way out of my available price range. And this it seems is it for me in terms of FTTP on demand.

Oh, that's a real shame. You can take some comfort that with such a difficult install you might still have been subject to ECCs under the old system - although in that case you could have dropped out without losing £250+VAT.

I think it's interesting that your final quote was still significantly lower than the desktop one. It seems the desktop quote system may be a simple model with some pessimistic assumptions, perhaps based on the more problematic FTTPoD installs that OR have had to deal with.

I can see the logic in OR working this way. If someone puts in an order expecting to pay (say) £10K which they could afford, pays for a survey and then finds the price has gone up to £20K which they can't afford, they will be understandably aggrieved at having wasted £250. But if the price drops, they will be happy.

Good on OpenReach for doing this - and especially for not holding people to the higher initial estimates.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

You can take some comfort that with such a difficult install you might still have been subject to ECCs under the old system

ECCs were unheard of under the old pricing structure, so Anth would almost certainly have got the service installed for £1800 (Band B) & monthly costs of £150+ on a 3 year term.

In reply to a post by baby_frogmella:

In reply to a post by candlerb:

You can take some comfort that with such a difficult install you might still have been subject to ECCs under the old system

ECCs were unheard of under the old pricing structure, so Anth would almost certainly have got the service installed for £1800 (Band B) & monthly costs of £150+ on a 3 year term.

Agreed the whole reason they changed the pricing structure was because OR was taking all the risk on ECC's before and were probably losing lots of money on average as a result. My install involved 18 blocked ducts, a new pole to be erected and 9 months of work by OR. They never charged me a cent for ECC's because they couldn't.

> because they couldn't.

FluidOne told me they could, but rarely did - the guy could think of one case of ECCs being raised on an order, I think it was band G.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

> because they couldn't.

FluidOne told me they could, but rarely did - the guy could think of one case of ECCs being raised on an order, I think it was band G.

You are right I think after their initial physical survey they could add ECC's and give you the optiion to cancel the order but after that they couldn't.

So OR did their initial survey for me thought things were going to be easy and only discovered there were lots of issues when they started doing the work. OR couldn't pass on ECC's to me as they had accepted the order under the fixed price. I would guess under the new system their initial physical survey is more detailed and would involve rodding the ducts etc.

Here's mine:

- Initial desktop survey quote: £9,500.00 + VAT.
- Final post-survey quote: £4,050.00 + VAT.

Going ahead.