BT Openreach and Sky's fibre optic broadband

Geoffers47

Just had an interesting experience. Unusually perhaps, this is not a complaint against Sky, but against their partner in all things broadband, BT Openreach. I booked to upgrade to the new Sky Fibre broadband on 11 July and got an installation date of 25 July, anytime between 1 and 6pm. I subsequently received either a text, letter or email almost every other day reminding me to be at home for the BT Openreach engineer between 1 and 6. But come the day – nothing! It turns out BT Openreach just didn’t have an engineer available. But did anyone notify me on the day? Absolutely not (despite everyone involved having my landline and mobile numbers as well as my email address). I did get an email from Sky at 9.30 the next day though. Having suffered that insult, you would expect BT Openreach to get in touch themselves re turning up the next day. Think again! BT Openreach don’t ring you; you can’t ring them (they only deal with businesses apparently); and when I rang Sky the first date they could offer me via the BT booking system was 13 August, though they did ask BT Openreach to try and do something sooner. Thankfully the date has just been changed to 30 July (but will anyone turn up I wonder?). What a sad reflection on what is allegedly a world class company, and what a dreadful example of the sad and sorry state of customer service in the UK. BT Openreach should be ashamed of themselves.

iniltous

You are not a customer of Openreach so why would they ever ring you ?, Openreach are positively discouraged from calling you, because you are a customer of Sky, Sky are OR's customer, and companies like Sky are paranoid that OR will cross sell BT Retails products, what Sky have told you may be correct, or you may be very naive and are accepting Sky's word without question, but what is indisputable is you ordered something from Sky that was not delivered on time, yet you are perfectly happy with their performance....

Geoffers47

Ouch, that sounds more like a defensive reply from someone who works for BT OR themselves. And so much for being nice to newbies (is it a coincidence that iniltous is an anagram of i o insult?). It is however the sort of response that you so often see today - an illogical reply that tries to justify an "it's not my fault, it's theirs" conclusion. But in this case you are wrong on all counts.

Re your comments re Sky: I’m one of the few people left who believe in praise where praise is due. People these days are far too quick to complain, but rarely do the opposite. As a long-time Sky subscriber I have been very critical of Sky's customer service myself, but on this occasion their broadband team were extremely helpful and did all they could to get their sub-contractor, BT OR, to do the job they were being paid to do asap. It is an inescapable fact that BT OR were contracted to do the job, and that although they knew they hadn't got the resources to deliver on the agreed date, they did absolutely nothing about it until it was far too late. It was their failure, and, contractual responsibility aside, both manners and common courtesy suggests they should have notified me direct. You would expect them to have mechanisms in place to contact customers and put the jobs they can’t do on the agreed day at the top of the list for the next convenient day. You can't help but think that letting their biggest competitor's (Sky's) customers down would be to their advantage.

As for being naïve, glasshouses and stones come to mind. The online info about OR says that “BT Openreach is a British Telecom owned company that maintains BT’s networks. Since deregulation BT has been required to open its network to other suppliers and BT Openreach is required to provide equivalence of service to those suppliers, so that if a customer develops a fault or requires an installation they receive the same level of service regardless of their supplier.” So with BT OR sub-contracted to install my fibre connection and not turning up, are you seriously saying that they’re not obliged to contact me. I’ll bet that if I was a BT customer waiting for them (as BT’s sub-contractor) to connect my new Infinity service, they would be in touch immediately. And I doubt very much they would ever just not turn up at all.

ktothema

Geoffers47 wrote: »

As for being naïve, glasshouses and stones come to mind. The online info about OR says that “BT Openreach is a British Telecom owned company that maintains BT’s networks. Since deregulation BT has been required to open its network to other suppliers and BT Openreach is required to provide equivalence of service to those suppliers, so that if a customer develops a fault or requires an installation they receive the same level of service regardless of their supplier.” So with BT OR sub-contracted to install my fibre connection and not turning up, are you seriously saying that they’re not obliged to contact me. I’ll bet that if I was a BT customer waiting for them (as BT’s sub-contractor) to connect my new Infinity service, they would be in touch immediately. And I doubt very much they would ever just not turn up at all.

I appreciate that this is an OR error, and in that way you do have a right to moan about them. However, I do agree with iniltous here. Your relationship is with Sky, Sky's relationship is with OR. OR would not ring a BT customer either. Either way, OR should be informing their clients if they aren't going to be available, and the client be it Sky or whoever needs to contact the customer. Whether you believe Sky were informed or not is down to you. After having dealt with their telephony side recently I wouldn't believe a word they were saying. Having said that, on past experience I wouldn't believe BT or Virgin either.

iniltous

Your reply to my post is a little confused, how are Openreach and Sky competitors ?, BT retail and Sky are, but Sky are a customer of OR,
In a way You seem to make my point, OR are required to treat all service providers in an equivilent way, if OR suggested that they could inform end users of problems in advance and make new appointments directly with them, CP's could complain that OR were going to do this for BT Retail customers and not be so keen to do the same for other CP's, so unless all CP's agree, then the process is clear, the end user speaks to their CP, and the CP speaks to OR that's the way Ofcom and the CP's , including Sky, want it...
In my post I accept that it's probably OR that failed, my point is that Sky or any CP would say that anyway wouldn't they ?,even if the fault was not OR's. The fact is Sky let you down, OR probably let Sky down and as service level agreements exist between them , if the failure is OR's, Sky will be compensated.
Say, for arguments sake, Sky didnt process your order correctly, say they gave you a date that had not been agreed with OR, you wait in and no one shows, you call your provider, who, surprise surprise, says the fault is with the sub contractor, OR, how can you be sure they are telling the truth ?, and to paraphrase yourself, wouldnt Sky have a vested interest in making their competitor , as you call them, look bad ?...the plain fact is your contract is with Sky , if they didn't deliver, and you are happy with 'it's not us but our sub contractor,' that's fine, is your displeasure aimed at the correct company, probably, but you cannot be sure,

Gordon_Hose

Wow. Don't hear what you want to, accuse the poster of working for said company!

eastie_2

I was having connection problems with Sky Broadband when they kept putting the activation date back 6 times and Sky were very quick to blame BT Openreach when in fact it was faulty Sky equiptment that was the problem.
Dont believe everything that Sky says at face value. They are very quick to pass the buck

ioscorpio

Don't talk to me about Openreach, it's just took them a month to replace the underground cable to my house, I've had them turn up without an appointment as I was about to go to work, I've had 2 engineers outside at the same time. Holes being dug in the pavement and filled in again, before the cable was laid properly. Having to deal with BT Indian call centre, who don't listen to what you are saying and can't answer a simple question.

[FONT=&quot] Fast Noise margin (dB) : 31.1 Attenuation (dB) : 38.5 Attainable download rate (kbps) : 5993 ADSL status : Connected [0] Downstream Upstream Rate (kbps) 239 444[/FONT]