£50 if fault is within the boundaries of your property

Hi guys, I wonder if anyone can help with this.

My mother has recently been charged £50 by John Lewis Broadband after an Openreach engineer replaced her master socket. John Lewis provide her line rental and broadband.

My understanding was that everything up to and including the master socket was the responsibility of Openreach, with any extensions and internal wiring after that the responsibility of the consumer.

Prior to the engineer visit they sent a message saying that:

"As agreed with you, If the engineer finds the fault to be within the boundaries of your property, the engineer will demonstrate to you where the problem exists and we will add a one off fee of £50 to your bill. The same fee will apply if you miss the appointment or you cancel the appointment within 48 hours of the engineer visit time. This charge will appear within 90 days of the engineer visiting your property.

We are very stringent on accepting and passing on these charges and protecting both you and us from paying a charge. "

The engineer who visited said the socket had been shorted, probably by a storm, which there had recently been.

Is this charging now common with all ISPs? It seems extremely unfair to be passing on these fees if this equipment is Openreach's responsibility.

Ollie

Openreach will charge if a fault is on customers own wiring or is due to damage to Openreach network, I. E. Damp that damaged the socket or lightening damage

Edited by deleted (Sun 15-Nov-15 15:25:29)

£50 is better than £130 which is what their brethren BT Retail charge

Yes damp would seem fair enough given that is something the customer can remedy but lightning? The only way to stop that would be surge protection within the socket itself wouldn't it?

It has surge protection, but once its worked once it will never work again, i.e. it creates an air gap but will not stop a direct strike. Most consumer surge protectors are similar for lightning protection, or worse they do nothing and its just an insurance policy that is very difficult to paid out on.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

It has surge protection, but once its worked once it will never work again, i.e. it creates an air gap but will not stop a direct strike. Most consumer surge protectors are similar for lightning protection, or worse they do nothing and its just an insurance policy that is very difficult to paid out on.

Agreed, a lightning storm took ours out a year or two ago, and its called a spark gap, a small version of a car spark plug LOL.

I ended up replacing the spark gap with a new one and has been working fine since.

Paul

If it is an Openreach mastersocket which has been damaged during a lightening storm causing the phone to be out of order then in mine and others' experiences in the rural area we all stay in there has never been a charge passed onto us all by our ISPs.

The ISPs in question are Plusnet and BT and the OR engineer has told me on two occasions that there would not be a charge passed on to the end user, perhaps those particular OR master sockets in question had a known fail rate in certain bad weather conditions.

Yes it's an Openreach master socket and storm damage seems most likely. The house is rural, on high ground.

John Lewis are adamant they will not remove the charge though. Is there anything else I can try to convince them or am I wasting my time?

Or in the case of Merula internet.. £180 .. I dunno where they make up these [censored] prices.

A couple of years ago when pruning a climbing plant I cut through a telephone/broadband wire which had come loose from its fastening on the wall. The engineer fixed it without quibble saying it was their fault it had come loose.

It just seems bizarre that if the BT group own everything up to and including the master socket in your property that they or people reselling their services can charge you when their own equipment goes wrong, They can't have it both ways.

Sounds like a load of rubbish, unless they can prove its your fault, they can't pass on any charges IMO...

What's the reason they give for the charge, they can't just say "the fault was your own"

I suspect that the 'tack' that would be taken is along the lines of ... Yes it's our property, but whilst in your curtilage you have failed to take due care of our property.

Difficult to know how as a consumer you could prevent lightning damage other than via modification of their equipment which would presumably not be allowed.

If the 'engineer' said the fault was caused by a lightning strike and John Lewis insist your mother pays, you could ask JL for a deadlock letter and then follow the dispute procedure below:

http://consumers.ofcom.org.uk/complain/phone-and-bro...

The OP wouldn't get very far with that, as Ofcom don't have John Lewis listed as an ISP. The relevant ADS is:-

CISAS provides a free, independent service for John Lewis Broadband customers who are not satisfied with the final outcome of their complaint.

CISAS cannot deal with complaints about commercial policy (e.g. our prices or broadband availability), nor can it deal with complaints from business users with more than 10 employees.

CISAS' contact details are:

CISAS
70 Fleet Street
London
EC4Y 1EU
�Email: [email protected]
�Website: www.cisas.org.uk
�Telephone: 0207 520 3827

From the John Lewis website.

I don't follow your point.

Using my link you should end up at the CISAS web site where JL are listed.

In reply to a post by Michael_Chare:

If the 'engineer' said the fault was caused by a lightning strike and John Lewis insist your mother pays, you could ask JL for a deadlock letter and then follow the dispute procedure below:

http://consumers.ofcom.org.uk/complain/phone-and-bro...

Oh stop that "engineer" rubbish. It's just what they're called in this country, always have been. Get over it.

Not that I could see in the drop down list on the site when you click the ADR button.

Edit - did you post the wrong link? You gave Ofcom complaints page.

Edited by RobertoS (Sat 21-Nov-15 08:45:47)

People are not charged for lightning damage to OR equipment or lines.

At Last someone has gived the right answer ! Right as in the TRC website states that you do not charge for lightning damage but some managers do tell there staff to charge ! The OPs SP needs to man up and do there job.

Click on the 2nd link in this part of the Ofcom web page:

"If eight weeks have passed since you first formally complained you can contact the ADR directly.

There are two ADR schemes -
, and the . All service providers must belong to one of the schemes."

In reply to a post by Icaras:

In reply to a post by Michael_Chare:

If the 'engineer' said the fault was caused by a lightning strike and John Lewis insist your mother pays, you could ask JL for a deadlock letter and then follow the dispute procedure below:

http://consumers.ofcom.org.uk/complain/phone-and-bro...

Oh stop that "engineer" rubbish. It's just what they're called in this country, always have been. Get over it.

Sadly the issue has remained.

I remember a notice in the lift of the halls of residence I was in some time ago signed 'lift engineer'> It was appropriately corrected. (Not by me.)

Ahhh! I see what you mean now .

However, if you look to the right of those two links, you see "ADR checker", which give you a dropdown list of ISPs, for the user to find theirs with a link to it. That is where I was going, and JL/John Lewis does not appear.

That means using your link an enquirer has to take pot luck which of the three links link to try first. The ADR check seemed the obvious one to me.

I simply gave the information for John Lewis, taken from their website.

Either way gets there in the end. That's the most important thing.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

However, if you look to the right of those two links, you see "ADR checker", which give you a dropdown list of ISPs, for the user to find theirs with a link to it. That is where I was going, and JL/John Lewis does not appear.

Probably because people on John Lewis Broadband are actually contracted with Plusnet, so the listing for Plusnet applies.

We know that. I'm fairly sure 95%+ of John Lewis customers don't at the time they sign up. Probably including the OP.

I expect Ofcom apply the same test as thinkbroadband, though I haven't checked. That is, that to be an Ofcom-listed ISP it needs a RIPE IP address allocation.

Which doesn't alter the fact that as end-user retailers they need to be registered with an ADR.

Plus, [cough], the customers are not contracted with Plusnet. They are contracted with John Lewis, who subcontract the service supply to Plusnet. John Lewis could at any time move to a different subcontractor, taking their customers with them. Similar having happened many times. Most recently the Post Office and Tesco.

Edited by RobertoS (Sat 21-Nov-15 22:46:19)

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Plus, [cough], the customers are not contracted with Plusnet. They are contracted with John Lewis, who subcontract the service supply to Plusnet.

They really are contracted directly with Plusnet.

In reference to www.johnlewisbroadband.com/terms/:

Plusnet plc is the service provider under these Terms and Conditions and by agreeing to these terms and conditions you (the customer) will be contracting with us (Plusnet plc) for the provision of the John Lewis Broadband.

Bah! Edited!

Well I went through the John Lewis internal complaints procedure and to their credit, they have agreed that an act of god is not my mother's fault and have removed the £50 charge. My faith in humanity is restored, somewhat at least, though given this was explained to them over the phone ad nauseam it does seem a shame you have to go though all this caper before common sense prevails.

Well done for succeeding.