OpenReach Issues

[gorzilla]

I'm trying to move from Virgin to Sky and have once again been reminded how appalling OpenReach are and how inffectual the reseller/OpenReach relationship is from a customer service pov.

I had an original connection date of the 7th of August. This then got changed to the 15th August because unbeknown to me OpenReach sat on this order for 10 days before confirming a date.

They then realised they needed to send someone to survey the property as we don't have OR FTTP. They then sent a work order to lay casings on July 24th which I signed and sent back the same day.

Then no communication or updates from Sky for two weeks  following that so I called them on Friday to find out what was happening.

I then get told OR had responded to them on 8th saying they received the work order but a 'system error' has prevented them from moving my order to the next stage. Great 👍🏽

I was the told they'd set up a callback for me on 12th August. Callback came with zero additional information and I was told we need to give OR longer to update the order. So now I'm waiting for another callback on 14th for another update - a day before my connection date.

I tried to move to OpenReach in 2020 but after 3 months of
inactivity I cancelled the order. I feel like this order is heading in the same direction.

Why annoys me the most is that Sky cannot hold OpenReach to account at any point in this process so far.

No accountability for delaying my original connection date, or for not communicating system issues for two weeks and having absolutely no further information on my order 3 days before my connection date.

Toothless inffectual resellers that are at the mercy of OpenReach. From a customer service standpoint that is complete joke.

Meanwhile I'm paying out of contract fees - which are double - to my existing provider and it's looking like I'm going to have to extend my disconnection date again.

All round an utter shambles.

[TimmyBGood]

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@gorzilla wrote:

Toothless inffectual resellers that are at the mercy of OpenReach. From a customer service standpoint that is complete joke.

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Created during British Telecom privatisation in the 1980s, the relationship between Openreach as monopoly network maintainer and its client ISPs is regulated by Ofcom and subject to Parliamentary scrutiny: it's certainly been criticized before.

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/phones-and-broadband/telecoms-infrastructure/the-openreach-monitoring-unit/ 

I would note that the current national rollout of FTTP is on a completely unprecedented scale, with a target of 85,000 new individual household activations per week in order to meet the December 2026 target.  That does mean even a small percentage of complications or errors creates many unhappy customers.

[gorzilla]

Ha are you really citing Offcom as being effectual?

[TimmyBGood]

@gorzilla 

No: I'm suggesting the setup was essentially a political bodge to enable a share offering for ideological as well as financial reasons, which has perpetuated through the decades from a time before the World Wide Web was a thing.

BritishTelecomm was the test case for the challenge of privatising a state monopoly with a critical fixed national infrastructure, and mistakes were undoubtedly made: the process was subsequently conducted rather better for other utilities but those aren't now trying to install an entirely new network on top of the existing one.

[gorzilla]

So here we are with the owner of the infrastrure and a raft of resellers that provide questionalbe customer service because they have no influence or control over how they operate.

Brilliant. 

[TimmyBGood]

@gorzilla 

Essentially, yes, although to be fair when the post-privatisation structure was devised no-one knew the internet was going to be more than the domain of the military, universities and a very small number of home enthusiasts.

The current setup is undoubtedly under huge strain through the pressure of hitting the FTTP deployment target: as I mentioned, while undoubtedly critical for the affected householder, in any particular week an individual activation is something like 0.001% of the total Openreach workload on the project as a whole.

[gorzilla]

But as a consumer none of this is my concern. You shouldn't have all of these resellers constantly selling if the people looking after the infrastructure don't have enough resource to deal with it.

[TimmyBGood]

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@gorzilla wrote:

You shouldn't have all of these resellers constantly selling if the people looking after the infrastructure don't have enough resource to deal with it.

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National FTTP deployment is a mammoth push to the end of 2026, after which it hopefully never needs to be done again.  Sometimes that's what happens with a step-change in technology, and in this case it's an incredibly short timeframe to complete a network transformation involving the provision of a new physical connection to twenty-five million individual properties.

[gorzilla]

Activation date of the 15th been and gone. Spoke to another customer service rep who told me work would start on Aug 29th and opened up a complaint about the process to date. 

Had another callback set for a few days later for an update. Get told by this customer service rep there's no date for work to commence and that my order is still showing as unable to move to the next stage due to 'system issue'. No complaint set up by previous CS rep either. 👍

Now have to wait another 3 days for this issue to be escaled with OpenReach.

Complete shambolic joke of a situation and appalling customer service all round.

[TimmyBGood]

@gorzilla 

In your original post you said " I tried to move to OpenReach in 2020 but after 3 months of
inactivity I cancelled the order. I feel like this order is heading in the same direction. "

That and your current experience does tend to suggest there's a bureaucratic problem somewhere, possibly with a record in a database.  For example our FTTP order failed to progress because the address had two entries on BT Wholesale systems (one with the house name and one with just a number) and fibre availability was marked against the entry which wasn't read by the sales system.

[gorzilla]

But why has this issue not been pursured and resolved by OpenReach?

They flagged a sysyem error on the 8th August and have done absolutely nothing to resolve it since.

[TimmyBGood]

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@gorzilla wrote:

But why has this issue not been pursured and resolved by OpenReach?

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Cynically, my guess would be it's because in any given week an individual order is 1/80,000 of their workload and they'd rather deal with the easy ones.

[gorzilla]

Man you are some serious apologists for what is stacking up as terrible customers service from Sky and consistent failures by OpenReach.

[gorzilla]

Still no further forward with my order. Turns out no progress has been made since I approved the work order on the 24th of July because they require approval from a 3rd party who hasn't responded. 

They can't tell me who the 3rd party is because of 'data protection'. 🙄

They also informed me that after three requests to the 3rd party and no response my order will get cancelled.

Hahahahahahahahahahaha.

Shambolic 👌🏼 

[gorzilla]

So here were are two months after I signed the permissions to work and nearly three months since I made my order.

I took matters into my own hands a few weeks ago and sent a  complaint to the CEO of OpenReach and was passed to their executive complains team to get a resolution. They have now secured the permission to work from the 3rd party in under two weeks and the engineers are currently on site.

It's also looking likely I'll be connected over the weekend or Monday.

If I had left this to Sky to resolve I'd still be waiting for them to be getting updates from the OpenReach portal and the OpenReach team would still be sending letters to the same address trying to get the permission to work from the 3rd party to no avail.

This just illustrates to the total farcial relationship between resellers and OpenReach and the lack of initiative being used by the Sky teams and the OpenReach team who pretty much did nothing to secure the permission to work for nearly 8 weeks. If you speak to the right people things can get done.

I've wasted so much time and energy dealing with Sky since the start of July trying to get this resolved. They owe me considerable compensation for the way this whole situation has played out.