Zen and Openreach

Thinking of changing to Zen for Broadband as the sevice from BT/Openreach is so dire. If I do change to Zen do they deal with Openreach if there is a problem or do I still have to?

@corsa57

You shouldn't be dealing directly with Openreach now anyway, they are not customer facing in that respect. Openreach's customers are the Internet Service Providers, (ISPs), and it is the ISPs role to liase between their own customers and Openreach.

Openreach usually phone before attending and tell you what if anything they are doing about the fault. As all my problems are external to my property they sometimes never visit and just sms to say fault ongoing or possibly fixed. BT fault logging is terrible and trying to find out what they are going to do next is impossible and quite often they will simply close the fault despite no remedy being found.
I am aware that Openreach consider the ISP to be the customer but I still have to deal with the Opernreach engineer to find out the outcome of the visit and what if anything Openreach plan to do if the fault is ongoing.
I realize that even if I change to Zen it will still be Openreach doing the repairs but hopefully Zen will chase them for a solution to a problem as I have no desire to have anything to do with Openreach or BT for that matter.

Openreach don’t consider the ISP to be their customer, the ISP is their customer, you are not …..if you have to be contacted directly by Openreach , for things such as making sure access is available etc , then that will continue irrespective of you changing your Openreach based supplier….will Zen be better at keeping you informed than BT are , thats impossible to know , they may , or they may not , there was a recent post on here where Zen effectively misled their customer to the actual location of the fault ( indicating it was Openreach when it wasn’t ) , but basically it’s irrelevant anyway , you have no relationship with Openreach , only with your supplier, obviously there will be limited occasions when OR will contact you directly, but that’s purely a practical matter , there is no point OR contacting Zen or BT (depending on who you are with ) to confirm if you are at home when an appointment has been arranged, and it’s common courtesy should you ask the OR tech what’s ’going on’ they will respond, they are unlikely to say ‘ask your provider’ , if you have issues that don’t seem to be resolved and get no updates from Openreach , that’s perfectly normal, that’s what you pay your provider for , they contact OR on your behalf and it’s their responsibility to keep you informed, if you are disappointed that you are not kept informed as to the status of issues ( issues you apparently haven’t posted about on here ) , ultimately that’s your provider job .

Edited by Iniltous (Wed 13-Aug-25 16:23:39)

Worth checking if Zen can provide connection via CityFibre in your area. Cheaper and, in my experience, less hassle than OR. As mentioned above, you don't ever talk to CF or OR, just to Zen. Exception is for an initial BB installation, where the network provider will obviously coordinate with you.

Edited by cjn (Wed 13-Aug-25 17:06:31)

CityFibre not available but thanks for the info.

First line does not make sense and I have already stated that I know Openreach consider the ISP to be their customer and not me.

Using the word ‘consider’ as a verb in the context you did, ‘ I am aware that Openreach consider the ISP to be the customer , suggests Openreach have an element of choice , to treat the ISPs customer as a customer of their own, but there is no such choice, if you know that you have no contractual relationship with Openreach , only your ISP does , why include ‘consider’ in the sentence , at best it’s redundant at worse misleading,
‘I am aware that Openreach consider the ISP to be the customer’ is not the same as ‘I know the ISP is Openreach’s customer’ after all there is nothing to consider.

Edited by Iniltous (Wed 13-Aug-25 20:11:05)