which landline providers have 24/7 fault reporting?

wayoutwest

Hi folks

I've been with Primus for a while, and unlike many others haven't previously had any complaint with their customer service. Until I just had a phone problem today and found that their fault reporting number is the basic customer service number and only work 8 to 6 or something on a weekend. Which frankly isn't good enough when things do go wrong.

SO I'm on the lookout for a new line provider, since I can get out. I can find that the PO have a 24/7 fault line, but comparison sites and company sites seem a bit shy of telling you this unless you already have an account or go through the signing up process. I'm hoping customers of other companies can easily tell me if their provider offers this, and whether they are actually good for it. Pretty please!

I'm a bit reluctant to go back to BT although I see they now do have a £10 a month option if you have the wherewithall to pay a year in advance. Which I do, but it seems a shabby deal for the default provider to be offering the cheapest price to most probably the people who need it least. Wish it was like leccy where there's just one number that deals with all line faults - since Openreach has to actually fix them all anyway.

Thanks for anything you can pass on.

Mark_In_Hampshire

You don't mention it but broadband might be important too.

As far as I know, if you have a business line, AND your provider has arranged it with Openreach, there's an SLA which applies to repairs to lines.

For residential lines, forget it. Even if you could report the fault, there's a good chance nobody will look at it until Monday anyway, so reporting it earlier is academic and there is no SLA anyway. It's no use reporting a fault on a Saturday if it then takes three weeks before it's fixed.

For broadband, there's something called "Enhanced Care.". Even with some higher end packages, if it breaks on Friday after c.o.b. it won't be looked at until Monday. So you'd want a broadband package with SLA and Enhanced Care.

So you could look at IDNET, Zen Internet for those, and at the same time ask questions of them about the line SLA if they appeared to be a good option for line rental. For business especially, it's beneficial to have both from the same provider, not mix and match.

wayoutwest

Hi Mark, thanks for the reply.

I should have said, we're a bit complex and odd. We have ANOTHER line that IS with BT to carry business and broadband, and our provider for that (demon) is determined by the slightly esoteric need for a fixed IP address. So this is home voice phone only.

I would agree with you about having both from the same provider for broadband, though, the fun and games we've had between demon and BT blaming each other when there WAS a fault on that line were enough to give you ulcers.

Actually around here Openreach are pretty sharpish at coming out to fix things even on weekends though the T&C say they don't normally do that. I think being in very rural Cornwall we have a bunch of older/infirm people classed as high priority when things go wrong. I know at least one housebound neighbour is on some list with electricity and other providers. I suppose I could always rely on them to report a fault, but the nature of phone faults makes it hard to know when that's happened!