Onestream cautionary tale/advice request!

barbarossa470

I've been with onestream for almost 2 years and the service is good if you are static, but dreadful if you are moving.

Recently I moved house and had to shift my internet over. Despite not being able to provide the same contract/services at the new address (no fibre), onestream insisted that I either had to accept a more expensive contract or pay £99 exit fee alongside the 2 months left on my contract. After a lot of back and forth with complaints I got the new contract down to a reasonable price for just one year.

They then proceeded to move our services over 3 weeks early, the team member responsible for the change doesn't reply to my emails, and by the time we get through to anyone we're left with no internet at the old place until we moved over.

We finally move in to the new place on April 30th, and the DSL light of my modem doesn't turn on at the wall. Repeatedly contact support from then to now, process takes forever. After trying the test socket still nothing. It takes them all the way to today to come up with the suggestion of an engineer visit. This visit will cost £200 if -

The engineer does not find a fault
The fault is determined to be caused by internal wiring
The master socket or faceplate is replaced
Equipment beyond the master socket is faulty
The cause of the fault is deemed to be due to accidental or intentional damage

Any advice on how to proceed? Now that I'm on a new one year contract and the cooling off period applies from the time of arrangement and not start of services I'm out of the 14 day window. Is it worth risking the engineer visit, and is there anything I can do to fight the awful service I've received and get out the contract?

iniltous

TBH , what option do you have but to arrange an engineer visit and hope the problem is outside of the property and therefore the network providers responsibility , if you do nothing then you are paying for a service you can’t use . looking at the many posts on here about your ISP , frankly I’d have no confidence that if you get an engineer visit that fixes the problem and confirms it was away from your property, that they wouldn’t still charge you anyway.

JSmithy45AD

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81994482#Comment_81994482

Yep, the OP should have bit the bullet when they moved. Not a company i'd trust given all of the issues with leaving.

barbarossa470

Update: after extensive back and forth with complaints I managed to get them to waive the possible fee for the engineer visit and it got fixed this morning!

Ultimately I think biting the bullet to pay out when moving was the correct call but at least I haven't had to fork out £200.

barbarossa470

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81998154#Comment_81998154

I phoned stating I wanted to cancel the contract with no/reduced exit fees due to all the poor service up until this point and stated I was willing to get a deadlock notice and go to CISAS if this wasn't met, after being put on hold a few times they offered to waive the fee for the engineer visit.

I accepted, though am curious what would have happened if I'd declined and kept pushing for reduced exit fees.

iniltous

What was the issue ?, TBH , it just reflects on the company you unfortunately used, it’s not that unusual for someone to move into a property where there maybe was service in the past , but it may have been sometime ago , and simply ‘starting’ the service again (that’s what your ISP asked Openreach to do ) doesn’t work …..most reputable ISP would respond to a customer saying ‘it’s not working’ by asking Openreach to visit , it’s almost certainly something that needs them to resolve, about the only situation where this isn’t fixed for free is if someone had deliberately removed the socket from inside the house and even then it’s still unlikely Openreach would charge the ISP ( Openreach can’t charge anyone other than the ISP ) , your ISP simply sees this as a way to potentially get more cash out of you , by saying Openreach charged them even if they didn’t .