That was my fear too,

Was hoping that this might be the last step, and I do now have that most coveted of prizes, an actual contact phone number for an individual at Openreach - it's not even a generic number but a direct line to an actual person in their complaints team, hopefully if I keep on him it'll get sorted.

That's actually why I was wondering if there was an average time this should now take, I don't want to be on him every day (at the moment he seems genuinely keen to resolve this but that might change if I just call him all the time) so figured I'd just call if I'd heard nothing after the 'normal' period of time.

In reply to a post by Stranger83:

I've had an order waiting from my ISP since October, but they haven't been able to place the order since the Sales team at Openreach hadn't been given the information from the New Homes team at Openreach (and apparently they cannot ask for it).

Given my own experience with Openreach (my FTTP order having been placed last July but there's still no end on sight) it appears that the problems within the company are administrative, not as the experts tend to justify..."oh, FTTP is difficult and will take an awful long time" and "oh, the retail provider is at fault for not chasing up Openreach", and "oh, it's the regulator's fault for making Openreach like this". It's no-one's fault but Openreach's!

Everything possible is done to keep the internal processes from leaking out, but when you start getting details of what's actually happening then it's a wonder the company is operational at all. It's a complete shambles internally, with cases being passed from dept to dept and sitting on someone's desk for weeks at at time, all sorts of chitties having to be raised and passed from person to person and stamped and approved, different sections not talking to each other, surveys not being done properly and wrong teams being sent out into the field. This applies not just to new installs but to fault repairs too.

We have some retail providers with dubious customer services in the market but also some very decent and highly-respected providers who also cannot get Openreach to shift.

Edited by deleted (Thu 14-Jan-16 13:37:04)

Yep, Openreach are a shambles, apparently BT today won the award for worst customer service in the UK � hardly surprising.

I�ve got my MP on board and we are going to lean very heavily on the regulator to ensure that they are broken up, removing their monopoly on the infrastructure of communications in the UK, I recently found out that OfCom are apparently �reviewing options� with regards to this anyway so hopefully I can make the whole process easier for others in future anyway � I certainly couldn�t make it any worse!

monopoly on the infrastructure of communications in the UK,

Major player certainly but not a monopoly and certainly not for new builds. There are other suppliers ranging from the small such as Gigaclear and Hyperoptic through SeeTheLight who often supply FTTP to new builds to Virgin Media.

But like VM, aren't you then stuck with them?

Leaving aside the rather limited number of ISPs who sell FTTP, although there are a few in addition to BT Retail & Business, then no, connecting via BT allows the end user to chose between many, many ISPs both big and small unlike VM where it is, AFAIK, VM or nothing.

I still see it as slightly odd, after all these years that what you describe has continued unchallenged.

'We are all created equal, though some are more equal than others.'

In reply to a post by MCM:

There are other suppliers ranging from the small such as Gigaclear and Hyperoptic through SeeTheLight who often supply FTTP to new builds to Virgin Media.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

But like VM, aren't you then stuck with them?

I can't imagine how you could think that I would have said that about BT.

I'm a bit confused by "who often supply FTTP to new builds to Virgin Media" however. That seems to be saying VM can supply FTTP via such companies, which would be news to me.

I'm a bit confused by "who often supply FTTP to new builds to Virgin Media" however. That seems to be saying VM can supply FTTP via such companies, which would be news to me

Perhaps you would understand better if I were to have written from a, through b who supply FTTP to new builds, to z. Nowhere do I suggest VM supply FTTP to new builds nor that any one else supplies VM. IOW put a comma following "builds". SeeTheLight certainly DO supply FTTP to new builds but not, as you agree, VM who are indeed however an alternative to BT.

Thanks everyone, the contact I have at Openreach has said I should be able to order the service on Wednesday so we shall see what happens.

I didn't know that other companies (other than Virgin Media) had authority to lay down the infrastructure for internet connections, I know that there are many ISPs (indeed I'm not going with BT as they are the worse customer service company in the UK) but had no idea that there were options other than Openreach for the actual cabling.

Either way they clearly abuse their dominant position, and as already said my MP is keen to see a break up of Openreach, and I know Ofcom are considering it too. I'm just mad enough at Openreach to keep on top of them both and see this through