Help ! Just cut thru phoneline, will I have to pay?

Purdy_1

My husband was doing some gardening and he has cut thru the cable that supplies the phoneline and internet. Its a double cable and only the phoneline seems to be effected. The cable was only lay 1.5in from the surface and straight thru the middle of the garden. We had no clue it was there. Will we have to pau for it to be fixed or will Telewest foot the bill as its their fault for laying it so close to the surface? HELP !

bbb_uk

A similar thing happend to us when we had Telewest. They buried the cable so close to the surface and even went into next doors garden so when next door decided to do some gardening they accidently cut into our telephone cable. I rung up telewest and explained what had happened and I was angry that they were allowed to go into next doors garden without their permission and the fact they did not bury deep enough or even put it some kind of protected sleeving of somekind. Anyhow, when they came out they buried it under our garden only and buried deeper and put in some bright coloured protective sleeving so next time it would be more obvious. They didn't charge us for this as I argued that they were in the wrong with the initial installation of putting in next doors garden and not protecting it and/or buring it deep enough.

I think you should be ok if they've only buried it 1.5 inches down as that in my opinion is just stupid but if they do start talking about charging then provided your outside your 12month minimum term then just threaten to cancel and move to BT.

Purdy_1

Thanks for the reply. My husband has spoken to telewest on his mobile and they have said we wont be charged. They cant come out until Monday after 12pm but we will be re-imbursed for the loss of phone service. My concern now is... will they take up the whole length of cable that stretches down the middle of my front lawn?

We have taken photos - just incase .

bbb_uk

Purdy_1 wrote:

...My concern now is... will they take up the whole length of cable that stretches down the middle of my front lawn?

If possible they maybe able to just join where it was cut and see if that is ok. If its not possible then they may have to bring up the whole cable and replace it all. It's very likely they'll just join the cable (if possible). The problem is you could easily cut into it again that is why I made Telewest dig it all up and bury it deeper and put in a bright coloured tubing (that was their idea) which would make it highly visible and protect it a bit. That and the fact that the original route went into next doors garden. It doesn't now though.

pinkonion

Telewest did the same when laying our line - only a couple of inches under the surface. The plastic "tunnel" is actually exposed at one part depending how the flower bed is raked.

The only time we were cut off was when our next door neighbour got cable installed and the "engineer" disconnected ours at the same time.

bbb_uk

pinkonion wrote:

Telewest did the same when laying our line - only a couple of inches under the surface. The plastic "tunnel" is actually exposed at one part depending how the flower bed is raked...

To me it seems stupid to only bury a couple of inches. I wonder if there is a reason or them just being lazy?

youreds

bbb_uk wrote:

To me it seems stupid to only bury a couple of inches. I wonder if there is a reason or them just being lazy?

I suspect when Telewest (or whoever it was then) had cabled your area, they were on a major sales push & were doing several installations a day & corners were cut. I had a similair thing with NTL (Diamond Cable then) who practically signed up the whole street, thanks to free Cable-Cable calls. They were using numerous sub contractors to do the installations who were always in a hurry. The guy came to do ours & proudly said they'd bury plastic conduit under the lawn to house the cable. He then changed his mind & jackhammered up the tarmac at the edge of the house to a depth of about an inch, stuffed the cable in the new trench & stuck some tarmac out of a bag on top. The route to the house was to stick it 1" under some course gravel between the paving slabs that was the driveway, lift a slab & drop it under that where it was terminated in the "brown box".
A few years later the phone packed up, the engineer saw the shoddy work & deemed that a "re-pull" was necessary. We had a whole new cable pulled from the green box & correctly buried in conduit this time.
Sorry to ramble on, but this is what Telewest should do for the OP, as I suspect their dodgy contractors cut corners at the installation stage.

Youreds!