Openreach fix times v British Gas

Central heating not working, reported at 20:30 Friday evening. Engineer arrives 13:40 today (Saturday). Pump failure. Replaced. Leaves at 14:00, job complete.

Broadband fails, how long before it gets as far as Openreach? Then how long before it gets fixed?

Your Broadband down again Bob?

Nope. As you know, that was a problem internal to AAISP network, affecting a large number of their customers.

Glad to see BG did the biz. My experience of BG repairing white goods not as good when repairing my fridge freezer. Couldn't fix it so got a call out charge refund.

That was all 'in house' for BG, which makes things easier, and with the best will in the world, I'd say their job was easier ......

They've already driven to the location straight off

What needs fixing either works or doesn't.

The bod not reliant on other departments.

How much do you pay to maintain your gas and equipment, does that entire fee go straight to BG ?

Not fair to compare them in my book Bob.

You've got some good points there, but I have always maintained the Openreach engineers do an excellent job. I have only once in my life found one who was not spot on, and that was not his fault. It was the lack proper training on something.

It's the management that's the problem. Note I did point out the user has to get past the ISP first, which is far from easy, but once it does get to Openreach it's the time from the report to an engineer being assigned and sent that is what I was commenting on.

I agree the OR engineer has a far more complex job, but they can't start on it until they are given it is the point.

Yep, good points there too Bob.

A fair few issues are caused, in my opinion by CP's 'chancing their arm' and requesting the cheapest option in terms of a faulting visit from Openreach ...........

I also wonder how quickly they issue the faults to OR, you often hear punters complain that they have waited a week when you know full well that there's no back log of work at OR's end.

this is down to the system forced upon BT by ofcom in my opinion.

Openreach revenue is squeezed tight so openreach have had to find alternative ways of revenue growth, one such way is providing a poor base service for faults, but charging extra on top for things like faster response times.

My voice and vdsl went down on sunday morning last week, voice came back wednesday, sync Thursday, however sync keeps going offline, sky rang me on thursday to say openreach need 3 more days to fix the cabinet, so job still isnt closed (fixed).

I am actually genuinely surprised its moving as fast as it is tho, could have been far worse given other stories we have seen, I didnt need an engineer visit or to provide to sky it isnt my CPE so in that respect I got lucky.

My phone was off for 6 weeks with a fault. I ended up contacting BT CEO and it still took 2 weeks to get fixed as it was an E-side cable fault. There were a few in the village off but did get some compensation.

It isn't something I've thought through, but as you say and I have often thought - perhaps Ofcom's brief, or its interpretation of it, is not ideal from the point of creating a good though cheapish service.

They seem concentrated on cheap.