Fighting Openreach

schoon

We needed two OR junction boxes moved from one wall to an adjacent wall less than a metre away.. They charged us around £700 to ‘survey’ the site and draw a plan. They estimated the job would cost around £5K which we had to pay up front. Their plan was to dig a trench and it was quite a difficult job, they said.

Then they came out to have a look and an engineer said actually it was an easy job, no trench needed. We later find out this less than 30 minute visit was billed at 3.5 hours work (we were given no indication that it would be chargeable).

At no time did anyone ever use the original £700 plan.

Eventually the work goes ahead. There were four engineers. Two worked while the other two stood around. Then the first two left and the other two took over. We estimated, being generous, 12 man hours of work were done. They billed us for 36. One of their justifications was that they charge for travel time and tea breaks. We asked for the terms and conditions that the job was done under but there were none.

We followed their complaints procedure which consisted of them talking to the people we complained about. Unsurprisingly they said what they charged was fair.

We discovered that they moved the boxes onto another part of the building work so that what they have done is useless!

We also found that they had no wayleave, and thus no right to have the boxes on our property in the first place.

It seems there is no ADR that they answer to.

Is court our only option now? Anyone been in a similar situation?

littleboo

Are you a business or a consumer?

schoon

I am a consumer.

iniltous

Perhaps you could provide much more detail,

If these OR ‘junction boxes’  were ‘inside’ a regular consumers property obviously you have the choice not to use OR based providers and so the costs to move them were such , you would simply not use Openreach, and just remove them , so presumably this isn’t your  situation and what you wanted moving was more a part of the Openreach ‘main’ cable network , situated in a publicly accessible area , potential affecting many customers connections, rather than the supply to one individual property ( or inside one individual property )

Openreach ‘junction boxes’ what do you mean  this , an underground jointing chambers typically found in footpaths , or wall mounted connection blocks typically found on ( for example ) terraced buildings ( residential and business) where a block on one side of the terrace has surface wiring from it to every individual ‘unit’ on that terrace, so obviously the unit with the block attached has wires that run to other other people’s service.

What  were  the circumstances that required you to request these ‘boxes’  to be moved ( typically in a underground jointing chamber relocation, it’s something like a drop kerb being installed to allow vehicle access across a footpath to a proposed parking area , and OR have a footway chamber over where vehicles would now  pass , so the footway box needs to be reinforced or relocated, in this situation the person altering the status quo pays , after all if they didn’t build the parking area , OR wouldn’t have to do anything to the box and the network cables and joints contained within it, but presumably this isn’t your situation as you mention wayleaves ( or the lack of ) , but these fall under the NRSWA and don’t need wayleaves.

JSmithy45AD

schoon said:

We needed two OR junction boxes moved from one wall to an adjacent wall less than a metre away.. They charged us around £700 to ‘survey’ the site and draw a plan. They estimated the job would cost around £5K which we had to pay up front. Their plan was to dig a trench and it was quite a difficult job, they said.

Then they came out to have a look and an engineer said actually it was an easy job, no trench needed. We later find out this less than 30 minute visit was billed at 3.5 hours work (we were given no indication that it would be chargeable).

At no time did anyone ever use the original £700 plan.

Eventually the work goes ahead. There were four engineers. Two worked while the other two stood around. Then the first two left and the other two took over. We estimated, being generous, 12 man hours of work were done. They billed us for 36. One of their justifications was that they charge for travel time and tea breaks. We asked for the terms and conditions that the job was done under but there were none.

We followed their complaints procedure which consisted of them talking to the people we complained about. Unsurprisingly they said what they charged was fair.

We discovered that they moved the boxes onto another part of the building work so that what they have done is useless!

We also found that they had no wayleave, and thus no right to have the boxes on our property in the first place.

It seems there is no ADR that they answer to.

Is court our only option now? Anyone been in a similar situation?

If it is the street cabinets you're talking about then the cost to move them is the cost to move them. You don't get to decide how much that it is and you can stand there with a stopwatch and your clipboard all day long looking like Victor Meldrew and still have zero effect. What a weird thread.

QrizB

Is court our only option now? Anyone been in a similar situation?

If you have a contract with Open reach for them to carry out work, and that work has not been carried out (or has been carried out incorrectly) you have the same options for remedy as you would with any other contractor.

1. What does the contract say about dispute resolution?

2. Have you sent a Letter Before Action?

3. If neither 1 nor 2 have got results, yes court action could be your next step.

schoon

Thanks for your comments.

1. They are wall mounted connection blocks that need to be moved because we are turning a shop friont into a bay window.
2. The cost to move it is the cost to move it? The cost is based on their claimed hours. They claim 36 yet we observed them working 12. How is that weird? I asked one of them what he thought it would cost. He said: 'Dunno. It's £250 standard charge isn't it?'.
3. There is no contract. They sent a doc prior to starting which had almost no information of any kind, other than it might cost more than they quoted! I asked them for T and Cs but they said there weren't any.
4. Letter Before Action? I don't think so, I will look into this, thanks.

iniltous

So these wall blocks apparently are ‘external DP’s ‘ (distribution points ) and are common in the situation you describe , a common wiring point on terraced housing or businesses, from which many customers service is fed , obviously if there is a need for these blocks to be moved , or the cabling to or from the blocks to be rerouted or replaced then it’s chargeable work , and the person / business requiring this change , is liable to pay for this diversionary work .

So far , straightforward, but some things seem ‘off’ , a survey is needed in these situations, and is a standard charge of around £300 + vat , (irrespective of how long the survey takes ) the survey fee is deducted from the scheme costs if the scheme proceeds , so £700 seems the wrong amount , plus if the work were done , the survey fee is removed from the final costs anyway , so an example, survey £300  paid in advance , estimate for works £2000, minus the £300 , so final invoice £1700 excluding vat .

If the scheme was originally going to need ground work ( civils ) because not only did the blocks themselves need relocating ( as well as the wiring into the blocks from the underground network and the distribution cables to the individual shops and possible flats above them ) but a new ducted feed to the building wall , this should be shown separately,  if it were never actually done , obviously it’s shouldn’t be charged for , but if there were civils needed , they are completed in advance of any OR cablers/jointers visiting site.

What exactly have you actually paid for  , ( in ££’s ) if there was never any need for any civils because the blocks were going to remain on the same wall they were originally on , just in a different position on the wall , then presumably you would have discussed this at the time with the Openreach surveyor and when the ‘estimate’ was provided it should have been obvious if civils were on the estimate, it’s doubtful they would lan for civils but never point this out to you.

As far as the hours charged for , there will be some chargeable work you don’t see , it’s not just the engineers on site , the planners time to put the information together to create a work order / schedule and the changes to records ( if that were necessary ) is also chargeable, it’s not just the people on site , the invoice should also have ‘materials’ as presumably this scheme required new cabling to the blocks from the underground network and from the blocks ( in their new location ) to the individual units.

Perhaps you can detail the meeting or meetings etc you had with the surveyor 

schoon

Thank you. The surveyor came out poked around and drew a line on a map. His plan was over complicated. 
he revisited with an engineer who said nah easy job. To be honest it's really obvious it is an easy job.

Something amusing: they put the moved boxes in the wrong place (still on the building work on internal plaster). I pointed this out and the genius original surveyor said we'd have to pay to have them moved again.

There's no complaints procedure so I suppose court it is.
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