Open Thanks to Openreach

[webgeek]

I've recently had an experience with Openreach which I believe deserves mention here.

All too often I find myself sharing horror stories rather than successes, and so, in this instance, when Openreach exceeded expectations, I thought it worthy of a special mention.

TLDR:
My copper was via BT and fibre to the cabinet from Eclipse. As we know Openreach handles the copper infrastructure, so, when I had recurring broadband disconnects (brief but annoying), BT would open a ticket to Openreach, who would come out, identify an issue needed resolving, but because it was underground - it was a pain to sort. BT closed the tickets, before the problem was ever resolved, and the loop continued, for months.

Finally fed up with calling BT and getting nothing done, they gave me the phone number for Openreach, which I could never actually reach anyone.

So, with a bit of searching on LinkedIn, I found a few managers who were likely familiar or responsible for service in the area, emailed them and LinkedIn messaged them. A couple didn't reply. One wondered how I got his email address (hint: it's [email protected]) and two others immediately offered to help.

With incredible speed and thoroughness, my issue was explained in detail, the plan was shared, the fix was actioned, the manager followed up to confirm test results on the line, asked me how it was performing and left me feeling like they've got some service oriented managers, which is awesome.

I know I'm supposed to go through BT directly - but they couldn't figure out how to escalate a fault. Heck, they could barely figure out how to speak the same language. I have no idea where I was calling, if it was inside or outside the UK, but there is a definite language barrier and an incredible shortage of skills at BT. I can only guess it was Pune (haven't worked many year ago).

The Openreach team members who weren't able to help initially, did cite rules and regs with Ofcom, which ties their hands so as to promote a competitive climate between service providers. I get that.

The Openreach managers who were able to help in the end, did so with incredible skill, precision and great service.


Conclusion:
I want to thank the good folks at Openreach who renewed my faith in Openreach and consumer telecoms in general. Cheers for taking great care of me

 

[karmacomputing]

Totally agree, the Openreach engineers aren't thanked enough. Without them most of the telcoms industry would be on its knees. Would also like to mention Geoff Grove here who runs a network of ex-bt engineers (google). He's helped us a few times diagnose connection issues / master socket problems.

 

[Tin]

A refreshingly good comment to read about Open Reach, most of the time they seem to pick up all the crap that they're not actually responsible for. I think a lot of us blame Open Reach (I did recently) but found out after a few months that it was actually BT's poor communication that was creating the problem.

Good post

 

[webgeek]

LOL @Tin - having worked for BT in a previous life (installation management), I know for a fact that they can't figure out how to pour pee out of a boot with the directions printed on the heel.

The OpenReach guys have definitely been on the ball - but they're totally isolated from the public.

I think it's criminal to have a utility provider that is allowed to not have any customer service facing the buying public. They always have to defer to the company that's placing orders with them, regardless of who the end user is...

Having a company vested with this critical infrastructure, without being able to be reached, EVER, should not be allowed - by law. Politicians broke up BT/OpenReach and politicians should require them to be accessible. It would end the slacking and fingerpointing by providers who screw things up.

Note: After 4 months of BT trying to migrate my fibre from Eclipse, based on data in the OpenReach database, they sent instructions which caused our service to be terminated (and unable to be restored due to insufficient capacity in the exchange), leaving us without any internet for a couple of weeks, then stuck on regular ADSL for a month+, before finally allowing us to order from the upgraded exchange, our original fibre package. BT wouldn't honour the original pricing they quoted us when they started the 4 month saga - which saw them fail order attempts about every 10 days during the entire period, and generally provided more incorrect information and instruction than is statistically possible. BT screwed the pooch and have no one to blame but themselves for not knowing what was happening or how to fix it.

Yeah I'm now a fully bitter BT customer who wouldn't pee on them if I saw them in flames.