Openreach Compensation for Missed Appointment

Geoff_W

Back in January I had an appointment, via Vodafone, for Openreach to install FTTP. On the day no-one turned up and I contacted Vodafone by Tobi to log the missed call and claim compensation. To cut a long story short, I have been battling with Vodafone ever since and have failed to achieve a satisfactory outcome. Essentially, Openreach are claiming their engineer turned up but could not gain access, i.e. we were not in. This is a complete lie, as both my wife and I were in the house all day. The appointment time was between 08.00 and 13.00 and during that period we were on constant lookout for the engineer. There was no communication at all from either Openreach or the engineer, despite Openreach's prior information saying there would be.

Interestingly, our next door neighbour saw a man pull up outside our house at 14.55 in a Highway Maintenance van. He knocked on our door, stepped back and took a photo of the property, went back to his van, drove down the road and stopped there for about 10 minutes. I suspect this was an Openreach sub-contractor. At that time in the afternoon we were almost certainly in the kitchen making a cup of tea and would not have heard a knock on the door. Why he didn't ring the (very obvious) doorbell, I don't know.

My problem with all this is that Openreach did not attend during the given time period and I should therefore be due compensation. They are doing their best to get out of their responsibilities by stalling and obvuscating the situation. They claim that just because the engineer logged the missed call at 14.55, it doesn't mean he didn't attend earlier. I have challenged, via Vodafone, for Openreach to produce the photo the engineer took so we can check the time in the metadata, but of course they have not responded to that suggestion.

When a proper Openreach engineer attended 2 weeks later, there was plenty of communication on the day and we had a very good installation. On telling him of the previous situation his first comment was that sub-contractors were notorious for turning up late and doing what he called "a rope knock" so that the occupants didn't hear it and he could claim they "weren't in".

So, a salutory tale. Don't trust Openreach or their sub-contractors - they lie.

iniltous

Openreach don’t owe you a red cent , your contract was with Vodafone never with  Openreach , if VF are a member of the Ofcom compensation scheme they compensate you not irrespective of Openreach , but if VF are refusing to pay you compensation because they believe OR did visit and they chose to believe OR rather than you , that’s between you and VF .

FWIW , if OR did supply a photo , it would be to Vodafone not you , they (Openreach) don’t deal with end users , if VF could be bothered , and were prepared to investigate and it was proven that  OR didn’t attend, VF compensating you effectively costs them nothing as they are compensated by OR , but if they can’t be bothered  investigating that’s hardly OR’s problem.

35har1old

Geoff_W said:

Back in January I had an appointment, via Vodafone, for Openreach to install FTTP. On the day no-one turned up and I contacted Vodafone by Tobi to log the missed call and claim compensation. To cut a long story short, I have been battling with Vodafone ever since and have failed to achieve a satisfactory outcome. Essentially, Openreach are claiming their engineer turned up but could not gain access, i.e. we were not in. This is a complete lie, as both my wife and I were in the house all day. The appointment time was between 08.00 and 13.00 and during that period we were on constant lookout for the engineer. There was no communication at all from either Openreach or the engineer, despite Openreach's prior information saying there would be.

Interestingly, our next door neighbour saw a man pull up outside our house at 14.55 in a Highway Maintenance van. He knocked on our door, stepped back and took a photo of the property, went back to his van, drove down the road and stopped there for about 10 minutes. I suspect this was an Openreach sub-contractor. At that time in the afternoon we were almost certainly in the kitchen making a cup of tea and would not have heard a knock on the door. Why he didn't ring the (very obvious) doorbell, I don't know.

My problem with all this is that Openreach did not attend during the given time period and I should therefore be due compensation. They are doing their best to get out of their responsibilities by stalling and obvuscating the situation. They claim that just because the engineer logged the missed call at 14.55, it doesn't mean he didn't attend earlier. I have challenged, via Vodafone, for Openreach to produce the photo the engineer took so we can check the time in the metadata, but of course they have not responded to that suggestion.

When a proper Openreach engineer attended 2 weeks later, there was plenty of communication on the day and we had a very good installation. On telling him of the previous situation his first comment was that sub-contractors were notorious for turning up late and doing what he called "a rope knock" so that the occupants didn't hear it and he could claim they "weren't in".

So, a salutory tale. Don't trust Openreach or their sub-contractors - they lie.

When Openreach attended did a subcontractor also attend

Geoff_W

@35har1old

The second, successful, installation was carried out by a genuine Openreach engineer in an Openreach-badged van. There was no-one else in attendance.