Openreach fault handling

400ixl

There are yearly customer satisfaction survey results released. Unsurprisingly the likes of Vodafone, TalkTalk, Shell etc who price at the bottom are also at the bottom of those.

The smaller ones who charge more (and don't have mid contract prices changes) are nearer the top and those prices somewhere in the middle like BT, EE, Plusnet, Virgin, Sky are all in the middle whith the BT brands in the upper half of those middle group.

The information is all out there.

Unfortunately you are not going to see OpenReach disclose their SLA bandings, or the ISP's choice of which they have paid for. That is commercially sensitive information, but does play out through actions that customers get to see, as you have. 

iniltous

JSmithy45AD said:

littleboo said:

I know that this is what you were told, but I don't believe its correct as it would be very inefficient. As far as I know, Openreach engineers don't even know who the end provider is when they are allocated a fault. What is true, is that providers can buy different service levels from Openreach so it is the case that the speed of response can depend on your providers chosen SLA with OR.

Spot on. I do however doubt that BT domestic customers get 2 hour service, that sounds like it may be a business account for their neighbour.

2 working days is BT’s ( consumer ) SLA purchase from Openreach ( not 2 hours ) , 

Eldi_Dos

And if fault reappears within a set timescale it pretty rapidly gets noticed by managers and investigated.

With more and more people working from home and reliant on good comms for their living it surprises me they do not take more account of this area of their service.

mjb2

Yes I admit, I chose an ISP contract on price/line speed and I'm regretting it now.
I looked at the MSE deals page but I didn't search for customer satisfaction surveys.
I suspect that most people assume that its done by Openreach so its all the same.
I don't want to read full SLAs, even if I could, but do do want some easy to compare quantitative information about what I am buying.
Basically, if we want broadband, we have to take out a 1 or 2yr contract without knowing what we are getting for our money.
If the regulator is trying to promote a fair and open market then I would say they have failed.
Perhaps, dare I say it, MSE should take some small amount of the blame for listing deals on price/line speed without giving equal prominence to reliability.
Peoples needs are different, a lot of people don't use the internet or landlines for anything crucial and a cheap ISP is good enough but a lot of peoples life is built around the internet (my Ring doorbell won't even work without it) and not everyone has a reliable mobile signal. So if the broadband/landline goes down for couple of weeks then everything is on hold for two weeks.

JSmithy45AD

mjb2 said:

Yes I admit, I chose an ISP contract on price/line speed and I'm regretting it now.
I looked at the MSE deals page but I didn't search for customer satisfaction surveys.
I suspect that most people assume that its done by Openreach so its all the same.
I don't want to read full SLAs, even if I could, but do do want some easy to compare quantitative information about what I am buying.
Basically, if we want broadband, we have to take out a 1 or 2yr contract without knowing what we are getting for our money.
If the regulator is trying to promote a fair and open market then I would say they have failed.
Perhaps, dare I say it, MSE should take some small amount of the blame for listing deals on price/line speed without giving equal prominence to reliability.
Peoples needs are different, a lot of people don't use the internet or landlines for anything crucial and a cheap ISP is good enough but a lot of peoples life is built around the internet (my Ring doorbell won't even work without it) and not everyone has a reliable mobile signal. So if the broadband/landline goes down for couple of weeks then everything is on hold for two weeks.

MSE do include their own customer service satisfaction scores as long as there are at least 75 replies to their 6 monthly surveys (for what they're worth). Any other research has to be done by the purchaser.