Sky and Openreach not communicating

[Cooners]

I'm feeling like my gigafast is never going to get fitted at this rate. 

After over a month with all the Need Access when I was told they wouldn't, ducts collapsed, Civils red tape, finally getting the cable sorted (which as I suspected even I could have done on 5 mins with am SDS drill), I FINALLY had my install date booked for today....guess what I engineer pulled a no show!!! 

6 times I phoned sky today asking for an update on the engineer,  6 times they just said "we won't know for 72 hours" which is ridiculous.  Got hold of Openreach via Facebook (because they go above and beyond to make themselves uncontactable and they tell me sky can indeed talk to them...ring sky with this information,  girl agrees, says she'll call me back...no call, ring again at 6, bloke says he's going to check the info, puts me on hold and after 15mins I end up with another lady who had no idea I was already talking to someone. Get told the last caller WILL indeed ring me back. 7:45, no call back, now I'm fuming. Phone up again just to have the woman finally confirm the engineer isn't coming, despite being promised I would 100% be on today, wouldn't get me an engineer for tomorrow either and "I'd have to wait!!!" Not exactly how you treat a customer who's been left in the lurch for months. All she could say is it's 8pm, I can't do anything now, when all day when I was calling and being assured callbacks I was telling them I didn't want to be getting told that if they dragged it out that long. Asked to speak to a supervisor....apparently there's nobody available, said to her surely there's somebody in the office, nope because (and I hate this line) "I'm working from home".

You really need to sort your relationship with Openreach out as your customers are being left in the dark and you've managed to agreed to a system that leaves you unable to assist the your customers and leave your staff dealing with annoyed customers that they can't do anything about.

In the end it was well past 8, we were going around in circles, I've spent 7 hours chasing BT and Openreach and getting nowhere. I'm excited frustrated and now have no idea when my connection will be sorted (mysky app STILL says an engineer will be coming today by 1pm 🤦‍♂️).

SORT IT OUT SKY THIS ISNT GOOD ENOUGH 

[TimmyBGood]

@Cooners 

Not that it's any consolidation, but it's worth noting that Openreach as national monopoly network maintainer* is required to treat all its client ISPs equally (badly)

Unfortunately this does mean no individual ISP has any commercial power or influence over Openreach (it's not like they can withhold fees or threaten to take their business elsewhere) : all they can do is complain to the relevant monitoring unit within Ofcom.

* apart from Kingston upon Hull

[Cooners]

In that case sky are lying to me. My neibour overheard me and works in a BT call center. She actually laughed when I said they can't phone them and said "they just have to call the connections team". I put this to sky (multiple times) and all but one flat said they couldn't. 

So either they are lying or Openreach are giving BT favourable treatment when nobody is looking.

Why can't they have a phone number for suppliers to call at least. It's not fair Sky's call centers are taking the flak for Openreach being as much use as an ahstray on a motorcycle.  

I really don't know why sky don't sort there own team out and dump Openreach.  You think of all those skill Dish installers that can't have long left doing that job. They need to stop mucking about with BT, City Fibre etc and go in house. 

[TimmyBGood]

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@Cooners wrote:

So either they are lying or Openreach are giving BT favourable treatment when nobody is looking.

One reason the monitoring unit exists is to prevent BT as an ISP from unfairly benefiting from the continued ownership of Openreach Limited by BT Group.

I really don't know why sky don't sort there own team out and dump Openreach.  You think of all those skill Dish installers that can't have long left doing that job. They need to stop mucking about with BT, City Fibre etc and go in house. 

Sky can't: like I said, Openreach is the national monopoly network maintainer as a legacy of British Telecom privatisation in the 1980s.  They literally own the vast majority of the poles, ducts, cabinets and cables across the UK, and only their personnel can work on those.

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[Cooners]

Well there is City Fibre and Virgin, but Virgin have never had a connection down here in Cornwall and I asked if City Fibre could do it instead but the deals not complete with them.

I just don't understand why the competition commission shut down Google, MS and most businesses that try to get a monopoly but Openreach (and the water companies thinking about it) gets to run a monopoly. When I was a kid these things were public companies,  I'll never understand why they changed that.

I wouldn't be surprised if long term sky buys out City Fibre tbh.

[TimmyBGood]

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@Cooners wrote:

I just don't understand why the competition commission shut down Google, MS and most businesses that try to get a monopoly but Openreach (and the water companies thinking about it) gets to run a monopoly.

Short of allowing multiple companies to each re-lay a century of cabling (or water pipes, for that matter) across the entire country it's rather difficult to see any alternative...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly 

I wouldn't say the Competition Commission (since 2014 the Competition and Markets Authority) has been noticeably effective in restricting the particular companies you mentioned.

When I was a kid these things were public companies,  I'll never understand why they changed that.

Post-1979 political ideology, mostly.  The money helped too ; )

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[Cooners]

10:30 the next day. Sky still saying they will be here yesterday before 1pm (I guess the engineers drive deloreans now!!!

And still no call to sort a new appointment.  I've got today and tomorrow them I'm back to work. 

The communication between Sky and Openreach is shocking. I must be within my rights to cancel at this point and switch to a different provider like BT who have better communication lines with Openreach.  Or maybe sky could just send out one of there own engineers as Openreach have done the hard part.

[jamesn123]

@Cooners 

Before contract commencement you are well within your rights to cancel the order at anytime and look elsewhere. I would warn though that doing so COULD delay things further as the ISP you choose to go to will put you at the back of the queue for an install/engineer.

[Cooners]

I totally confused as to what's happened now.

First off the arranged callback at 12 didn't happen (I gave them an hour to be fair bit nothing.....again).

Called them up and the guy I spoke too sent through an escalated message to Openreach (why couldn't they just do that in the first place).

Within an hour I got (apparently completely independently of that) a text from Openreach (yes they actually communicated) replying to a message they sent last week saying as I hadn't chosen to move my appointment forward from the 23rd they could no longer offer me an earlier appointment (I had ignored the message when it came through as it offered me from the 2nd onward and I was already booked in for the 1st).

So I just randomly replied to it....got a call from BT at 2pm (now they're involved too 🤦‍♂️) offering me an appointment for the 8th, which is OK as somebody is home so great (as long as they show up this time).

Within an hour I get a message from sky saying that engineer has been book and will arrive on the 2nd between 8am-1pm....this was at 2:30ish....on the 2nd 🤦‍♂️🤣.

So I ring sky again (at this point I'm mimicking there call automatic phone system as I know it in my head now). I get through to a chap called Darren, who was helpful last week when I called too. 

I explain all this to him. He goes back through everything with a fine tooth comb and finds they have three systems all showing different dates!!! 🤦‍♂️🤣🤣🤣

How nobody spotted this before I do t know. So that explains the radio silence at last, they simply didn't think I was booked in until the 23rd as the systems were all showing different dates.

As of now mysky is still showing the 2nd but I have a text from Openreach saying the 8th and Darren has assured me the two systems that matter are lined up at last.

So 🤞this will all be sorted on Tuesday and then I owe Darren a drink or something because he actually took the time to look back and resolve the issue. If anyone from sky does see this, give the man a promotion as about 9 others failed to spot this and he's a really nice chap to deal with too 👍