Openreach - utter shambles

[Millsey101]

I'm absolutely fizzing mad about this, new Sky customer and should have gone live on March 1st but due to Openreach getting things really badly wrong I am STILL without any services to the house.

I am staggered that after phoning Sky support multiple times this week that nothing has changed and nobody can tell me when my services will actually go live.

Apparently Openreach messed up the configuration of lines, poles and cabinets, ok human errors occur but this is beyond my tolerance for failure.

I work from home but that's been difficult trying to tether through a mobile, we're getting tv from an ancient freesat system that I happened to have but no home phone.

Sky say "oh well, you'll be getting compensated thanks to OfCom"... my response... stuff it, use the money to pay someone to sort this out.

I've only switched to Sky to save a few quid, so far it's turned out to be a bad decision.

[PandJ2020]

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@Millsey101 wrote:

I've only switched to Sky to save a few quid, so far it's turned out to be a bad decision.

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Any provider relying on the OpenReach network would be the same...

[Mark39]

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@Millsey101 wrote:

I'm absolutely fizzing mad about this, new Sky customer and should have gone live on March 1st but due to Openreach getting things really badly wrong I am STILL without any services to the house.

I am staggered that after phoning Sky support multiple times this week that nothing has changed and nobody can tell me when my services will actually go live.

Apparently Openreach messed up the configuration of lines, poles and cabinets, ok human errors occur but this is beyond my tolerance for failure.

I work from home but that's been difficult trying to tether through a mobile, we're getting tv from an ancient freesat system that I happened to have but no home phone.

Sky say "oh well, you'll be getting compensated thanks to OfCom"... my response... stuff it, use the money to pay someone to sort this out.

I've only switched to Sky to save a few quid, so far it's turned out to be a bad decision.

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Unfortunately that's not possible. Openreach own the network. Nobody works on it without 

 their say-so.

[Millsey101]

correct... I was with Virgin, and as much as I hated their customer service, their actual service was very good (most of the time)

[Millsey101]

Yes, but Sky are one of their customers and yet Sky don't appear to have any influence over Openreach - apparently there's no escalation route, nobody can do anything apart from wait for Openreach to resolve the problem.

[Mark39]

That's right, neither Sky nor any other provider has much sway over Openreach.

[TimmyBGood]

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@Millsey101 wrote:

 Sky don't appear to have any influence over Openreach 

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That's correct, and this is specifically enforced by Ofcom because Openreach is obliged to treat all its ISP customers equally in order to prevent BT Group (which still owns Openreach Ltd) from leveraging a competitive advantage.

[Millsey101]

Are there any options open to me now? How can I escalate this?

[Millsey101]

New update from Sky... openreach still don't know when they'll fix this, apparently I might get an update on Monday.

[Millsey101]

Still not resolved, next update on Friday apparantly, I hope this doesn't drag into a third week.

[Chrisee]

@Millsey101 My own install was delayed by roughly 6 weeks.  Installing new lines is a messy business which can and does go wrong in a minority of cases.  Getting firm dates from Openreach is often impossible as there are many potential causes for delay. You will be paid compensation once the line is in as explained here Customer Auto-Compensation | Sky Help | Sky.com

The fact you plan to use the service for business is irrelevant as you are buying a service classified as a domestic which has lower priority than lines sold for business but in this case probably makes no difference.

[JimM1]

@Millsey101 As Virgin Media and Sky are not able to control what happens external to each others operation. You would have been better to keep your Virgin system up until Sky's broadband was fully up and running.

[Millsey101]

I did but I thought a few days would be enough! And  since we've used the line to the house before I was told that reconnection wouldn't be a problem - in fact it's a configuration error in the automated open reach system according to Sky so that's doubly weird. 

[Millsey101]

6 weeks is madness. I may look to cancel completely and reinstate the Virgin service if this goes beyond the weekend.

[Chrisee]

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@Millsey101 wrote:

6 weeks is madness. I may look to cancel completely and reinstate the Virgin service if this goes beyond the weekend.

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@Millsey101 would agree but I made sure I had an alternative connection while waiting for the new line to be run. The compensation covered the first 6 months fibre service from Sky.