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.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

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.

And how much do you pay for that?

Add in if they don't have the part and have to order it..... Yep, will be as long as any other fix

I used to have BG contract for maintenance / fix on my central heating. It was more a month than I pay for my broadband and they aren't providing a constant service just a break/fix (and annual service). I dropped it when they wrote to me to tell me they could no longer support my boiler as it was too old.

Paying an insurance policy to allow something to be fixed is very different to paying for a constant service. Pay BT an insurance premium every month to cover broadband failure on top of the service charges and they might be quicker to fix.

What is Openreach line rental, WLR3, other than an insurance policy? They don't provide a service over it in the case of ADSLx, and in the case of VDSL2 they charge separately for that.

So if they turned off voice support no-one would complain? SOGEA is on the way for those that see line rental as a waste.

Gas and electric are very different in that unlimited supply options are not a consumer option

Also, try getting that level of response to central heating issues in the height of winter (assuming no guaranteed response contract).

I would say its poor value.

For £15 on EE as an example you can get a couple of gig of data, unlimited calls to 01/02/03 and mobile numbers, voice mail, call redirect, caller display.

On top of that, for chargeable calls there is no call connection fee and the phone can be used anywhere in the UK vs just at home.

For the £18 I pay sky I get no inclusive calls, no call redirect, call connection charges, no internet (is an additional product). Sky is unusual in that they provide caller display inclusive, most landline providers in the UK do not.

Edited by Chrysalis (Mon 17-Jul-17 13:30:34)

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

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.

For many years we lived in a small village where it was common for residents using BT as their ISP to get service to repair a fault within 2 working days. Equally common for residents with other ISPs to find it took 3 or 4 days for the ISP to get the message to Openreach that repair was needed after which 2 working days produced a fix.

Not unknown for a BT ISP report to fix several customers problems before other ISPs had even passed fault report to Openreach

when I was on freeserve adsl back in 2000 before ofcom created the mess we have now, I rang freeserve on a sunday afternoon about no sync on my frog modem (remember those? ) and by tea time it was working again, same day fix on a sunday.

But back then ofcom were not strangling BT.

You pay £18 to Sky, but the people delivering the copper phone line get how much?

https://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/7720-full-llu-li...

Prices have just dropped and more cuts on the way.

Current price works out at £7.03 (ex VAT), vat adds £1.41

As I said earlier openreach are been squeezed, but the only thing relevant to the consumer is what they pay their CP, and that is poor value. The average consumer doesnt care how much goes to openreach, just the value they get.

Edited by Chrysalis (Mon 17-Jul-17 18:07:32)

Not on Topic, sorry !!!,Telephone call from British Gas. Said This is British Gas,press any key.
What is that all about, Puzzled.
Potential Scam?.
helpoort

I complained to Plusent that my phone/boardband was not working on a Sunday morning. I was offered an engineer visit the next morning. The fault was found and corrected.

It took me 48 hours to find out why my oil fired boiler would not keep working and that was because I just happend to view a youtube video where someone mentioned that the solenoid which controls the flow from the oil pump can become open circuit when it gets warm, but the circuit closes again when it cools down, which makes fault find by measuring the resistance difficult!

British Gas and oil-fired boilers?

I took it as a comparison between broadband and central heating problems. A central heating pump faillure has nothing to do with gas. Arguably a broadband service is more akin to a gas supply, and a central heating system which you would own is more akin to a router and any other home network components, granted the latter are more easy to replace quickly!