BT /Open reach

[BRBX]

Be very careful when dealing with bt and bt open reach , separate entities.
We had 5 pair line off road to a junction where 1 split leaving 4 for the farm , when we needed extra one for farm I enquired and would cost 7k to bring 10 pair line to junction , I said don't bother we'll go mobile broadband. Guy at BT said don't worry we will give open reach the go ahead and argue about it later!
12 months later with lots of hassle it did happen , bt said sorry about hassle here's £300 goodwill , case closed .
12 months later by chance i checked bt bill going out on dd , £7000+ !!!!
Cancelled dd and another long dialogue until I said I will get ombudsmen involved and they went back through all phone calls and admitted being wrong and backed down .
Apparently it showed up on year end audit and someone put it to our account !!!!

 

[Boomerang]

Well month back crew came out to the pole that idiots just replaced to connect fibre. They took all day to decide they hadn't a permit or qualification to dig trench through some trees direct line of sight to casement.
They then decided yo take different longer route but that stopped when they realised they had to dig through old road. No permit for that either, they left ,not been back .
The pole was condemned by plant protection dept ,but when it was taken out it was 3m deep snd perfectly solid not rotten at all.
The management are inept , clowns, no doubt on massive salaries. And we can't get through all the AI rubbish to directly complain to those responsible.

 

[PSQ]

Openreach put in ducting for FTTP cable 7 months ago, but theres been no sign of them since.
You'd think for a 'Communications Company' would know how to communicate with their customers, but I got fed up waiting for a replacement for their slow, glitchy and vastly overpriced service, and replaced BT with Starlink.
It's like night and day, wish I'd done it sooner.

 

[Bobthebuilder]

As soon as we got the chance of FTTP from local broadband company I ditched all ties with BT/openreach, broadband speed used to be 1.5mb if I was lucky and phone line very scratchy all the time for £35/month now get a constant gigabit speed for £30/month and ditched the landline phone as never really used it anyway

 

[Paddington]

Passed a telegraph post lying by the side of the road a few hundred yards from our house on the way to work one morning. Tried ringing home from work but the line was dead. Rang BT and reported the fault. At home that evening, the phone rang a wrong number but showed the phone was working. Later we tried to ring a neighbour but another neighbour answered our call..
Took us a couple of days to work out where the lines were actually connected, we felt like an old fashioned telephone exchange, you wanted Sue but you rang here, try Helen's number.
The worst was next door's alarm line to the police, when someone forgot to put the code into their keypad, our phone rang.

 

[slackjawedyokel]

As soon as we got the chance of FTTP from local broadband company I ditched all ties with BT/openreach, broadband speed used to be 1.5mb if I was lucky and phone line very scratchy all the time for £35/month now get a constant gigabit speed for £30/month and ditched the landline phone as never really used it anyway

Alncom?

 

[Derrick Hughes]

The good old days are long gone when a man turned up with a few hours with a ladder
Same with water companies
Also
Council had a small patch of tarmac to replace at the end of our drive ,no more than ten ft .
30 men with vans tarmac layers the lot turned up at 8am closed the road both ways , sat there until 3 to wait for a smallload of tarmac to arrive , last lorry left at dark
The only bonus was they gave me 2 tons of left over tarmac to repair my drive
The Country truly had gone down the spout

 

[Northern territory]

Terrible experience with them over faulty line. Left hand doesn’t know what right hand doing. Booked an engineer who never turned up then when I spoke to somebody they had no information of it ever being booked. Booked again the next day and I thought I better ring up to check he was coming, again they said nothing showing on account, 10 minutes later an engineer turned up. Same as all these big companies, customer service shocking and you spend hours chasing around on the phone.

 

[steveR]

We have 4G on the mobile most of the time but living under wriggly tin and two sheets of aluminium foil messes up the signal, particularly upstairs. So we have a preferred spot in our porch where calls can be held without interference.
SS

Perfect Faraday cage!!

We have found similiar with the Celotex lined walls, signal magically improves by the window. I try and use wifi calling, but it is unreliable, as the phone tries and connects with 1/2 bar of service and then drops out with neither connected..

 

[essex man]

Their(openreach )labour invoiced to me £6600 for two men one day.
They permitted me to open one pit and push conduit in, took around two mins, saved £600 charge for that

 

[Bobthebuilder]

Alncom?

Yes, spot on company to deal with

 

[Campbell]

Up the poles and down the holes.
BT is being rebranded as EE. I'm reassured that the Bosses are now fully 'hands on' concentrating on their pension pots and share options.....

 

[suffolksmallholder]

I see there’s yet another CEO, Allison Kirkby, comes with a long list of qualifications and lauded for her business acumen.
I would imagine she’ll be in the job for a couple of years and after trying to unwind the impossible muddle, will take a nice bonus and move on. Repeat ad infinitum….
SS

 

[Derrick Hughes]

At least they let us through so we could get on with some work

 

[som farmer]

Turned up here last year to replace pole as apparently it wasnt high enough, they replaced pole and left, few hours later we realised we had no phone or broadband, phoned our provider who said it would take up to two weeks to get them out to fix it. Got a mate whos not afraid of hights ( I am ) to climb the pole and drop the wires to find they hadn't connected the wires in the junction box correctly. Totally incompetent and to make it worse they couldn't care less.

telephone wire and electric, both on the same pole to home here, SSE came and inspected poles, and replaced 1, on the 'check', that 1 pole was 1 foot to short, so replaced it with a longer one.

and left the old/new pole for us, it was classed as 'used' so couldn't use it again

our dirty water system has its own meter, noticed pump stopped, SSE connection burnt out, so 4.30 on a wet cold nov night, rung, said not urgent, oh, had to attend.

so, p1ssing down with rain, 8.00 2 men turned up, sorted connection out, new box, then said, someone else would be out sometime, to re-connect the main supply to the 'box'

we have another meter, with a huge bill, which is obviously incorrect, spent hours trying to sort it out, think you have succeeded, next bill, back to previous amount, bailiffs been out twice, engineer to disconnect, taken us to court, thankfully retracted that, as they hadn't followed procedure. What the feck more do you do, to try and solve the issue ?

no wonder electric is so expensive.

 

[2wheels]

Up the poles and down the holes.
BT is being rebranded as EE. I'm reassured that the Bosses are now fully 'hands on' concentrating on their pension pcan't gett eots and share options.....

don't get me started on bloody ee/ tnt sports. can't get tnt sport on the laptop without another subsciption , watch the bikes on catchup on the telly and get cut off before the races finish. ee getting the chop when my contract runs out. a complete shower of sh1!s.

 

[slackjawedyokel]

Yes, spot on company to deal with

Yes they are.
Unfortunately we’re too rural to get FTTP (we looked into it several years ago when BT grudgingly conceded that they would allow us to run fibre from the village across our own fields, at our own expense and future liability, and they’d charge us only a piffling 60K for their trouble.

We’re on a line of sight connection which (I assume) is much less stable than FTTP. Got to hand it to Alncom though-their customer service is first rate.
Fortunately it has been quite a bit more stable in recent weeks.

 

[Paddington]

During a covid lockdown, I looked into the cost of getting an FTTP connection. There was a grant of £3400 at the time, BT said I might have to pay extra, I said send me a quote. Openreach came back with a minimum of £50K, but I could share this amongst my neighbours. Neighbours on either side of us had quotes of £100K and £150K.

 

[Bobthebuilder]

We got it on the government grant scheme, didn’t cost a penny as long as we took out a monthly subscription with Alncom, which turned out cheaper that BT for a far better service, we also provide a line of sight connection to next small village, Alncom we’re gonna carry on the fibre line from us to them via BT poles (about 2mile) but decided it was better to bounce the signal via dish as most of the BT poles were past their best

 

[som farmer]

we have the chance of cable faster internet, cable coming across our fields to 1 house, then onto our 2

l/lords ( family ) refused to allow us to come across our/their fields.

then they said it could go to the one house, we had to agree, as occupiers, but not to ours. Had a word with the house owner, he agreed with us, don't give permission.

then internet firm, said we cannot stop them, and would have to take us to court, as they would be fined for not completing the area.

so, they offered £400 for 'legal' expenses, and £1 per metre of cable, about £1,000.

the l/lords, by being pig headed, have basically given us £1,000, and have faster broadband, if we want it, we don't, we can get it through sky, apparently, for half the price of 'their' cable.

it really tastes sweet, but think we ought to refrain from telling l/lords, because that would stir the shite !!!!!