No broadband for 8 days

TOP_CAT

I have just got my broadband/phoneline back working after 8 days .
It was stated that Open Reach needed council permission to dig the road/footpath up so all this was taking extra time Although no general broadband outage was ever present .......so it sounded like a story ?

I doubted they ever needed council permission for one customers fault.
 The friendly open reach guy finally came round and got it fixed in 30min because he had to walk 250 meters to the green cabinet and back .

My case was a isolated case and open reach had told a 8 day delay story not that it matters much ..

Potentially the previous open reach guy who worked in the green cabinet had pulled my line out and not replaced it ...thats all it was ...a very simple fix .

Plusnet my provider say they pay out £9.33 per day for loss of line ....less the first two days ....possibly 3 days .....as a bill credit .
I didnt have to buy any extra mobile data by delaying everything at months end which has been a very time consuming headache ..

Has anyone else been through this sort of thing and asked for compensation

MorningcoffeeIV

Yes. They'll apply it as a credit to your account, as they've said. 

littleboo

It's an automatic compensation scheme, you get the daily amount for each day after the first 2 business days

TOP_CAT

They will also pay out if you needed to buy extra mobile phone data or possibly if you used all yours up im not sure on that though.
Has anyone claimed anything else ?
I lost a telephone tech service appointment so will ask .

littleboo

I don't think they will. You have
£9.33 per day minus the broadband cost per day (£1.33/day?) so ~ £8/day to cover any excess data costs

Neil_Jones

TOP_CAT said:

I have just got my broadband/phoneline back working after 8 days .
It was stated that Open Reach needed council permission to dig the road/footpath up so all this was taking extra time Although no general broadband outage was ever present .......so it sounded like a story ?

I doubted they ever needed council permission for one customers fault.
 The friendly open reach guy finally came round and got it fixed in 30min because he had to walk 250 meters to the green cabinet and back .

My case was a isolated case and open reach had told a 8 day delay story not that it matters much ..

Depends exactly where the fault lies (or they think it lies).  There is a requirement to get a licence/permission from the council for digging up the road/street before you do it - exception being an emergency, which you can notify about after you've dug the hole.  You having no internet for 8 days isn't exactly an emergency..

If the fault was (for example) under your driveway and you own the land, that's different.

Phone line faults are different to gas/electricity and water pipe faults because for those its usually obvious where the problem is (especially for water) - gas you can usually smell and electricity will often have multiple properties offline.  Phone line faults don't smell, push liquid out or knock out multiple properties so the fault can be anywhere between the house, the green cable/telegraph pole and further out into the network.  They'll probably be able to narrow it down, but not by waving a divining rod around and homing in on it.

iniltous

TBH , you really don’t know what Openreach said or didn’t say as you only have contact with Plusnet , if you were out of service for 8 days , and then when the repair was done it was a simply reconnection in the cabinet and nothing to do with a supposed ‘council notice’ , then it’s pointless speculation, have PN told you any old nonsense, or did OR misdiagnose your ‘fault’ , the fact is it doesn’t really make any difference to the compensation you will receive.
Providing some sort of mechanism to get on line during faults isn’t always done , unless you have an ‘unbreakable’ type deal ( as BT offer ) , if an ISP offer to cover ‘data’ on mobiles during landline broadband outages , that would be nothing more than a gesture of goodwill 

TOP_CAT

Plusnet knows exactly when and what Open Reach has updated them on over the last 9 days and relayed that info to myself .
None of which has been fact even the plusnet advisers now realise something is not quiet right in this case .
Two advisers didnt even know the line was fixed both yesterday and late today when they called me .

It seems either open reach  have my fault mixed up with someone else  or its a catalog of stories to delay.... the latter is really very unlikely as that delay is in no ones interest !
In london anything can and will happen though ... thats a certainty .

Getting council permission to dig up the main northwest road or footpath in a london high st was always rubbish .

The street is very high density ,extremely busy  and lined with buisnesses and flats where  no outage has been reported at all to warrant such indepth work ......for one flat with no broadband line

I have spoken to plusnet most days sometimes twice a day recently .
Yesterday plusnet didnt know the line was fixed late thursday afternoon and again today friday they still didnt know the line was fixed as they have not received any further open reach updates  .
Plusnet phoned me both times and I told them whats happening .

The £9.33 isnt payable over the first two full days I believe so tue 25th, wed and part of/or all of thurs 27th  so  likely payable for ,fri sat sun mon tue and maybe  wed  so by my calc a estimated 5 or 6 days 

Plusnet may also decide if a goodwill payment is due as its been a extended delay and complete comms mess for some unknown reason .
.
Saying all that it was fixed in 30min once the Open reach guy turned up with no notice givern  and plusnet have done the best they could with the limited and strange info from open reach .