No internet means….

[Openreachisclosed]

I can’t control my heating easily, I can’t work well, I can’t relay medical info, can’t watch TV. Plus a myriad of other things some are small and annoying ( no Alexa music). Some are more serious- can’t work on my laptop.

I have changed broadband supplier. Open reach have badgered me for the last three days with calls, voice mails and texts confirming my slot today. Did the engineer turn up?? No!! Sky tell me that the next available slot is 3.5 weeks away.

My questions are these-

1. What can I do about this appalling customer service? I took half a day off to be around for the engineer and nothing. I phoned sky and the person I spoke to was totally unhelpful. Could not have cared less.

2. Any suggestions to remedy the situation from either sky or open reach.

3. Any ideas on how to make this work if I really have to wait this long? In this time it falls with half term, dd2 bday and exams for ds1. I work from home and don’t have an office to go to. We will have no TV as we have ordered the sky streaming service.

4. Money is tight( hence the change in providers) so we can’t have massive data bills to hot spot laptops.

I know this is a first world problem but some issues such as the heating, security and medical devices don’t work well without steady wifi.

Any suggestions. Thanks for getting through the message!

You’ll get much further if your email to the CEO is calm and polite, refers to the medical device and the requirement for stable WiFi as a result and asks for his help in resolving this urgently. The most likely scenario then is that the CEO (or potentially the EA) will send this to a senior person in the connections team and ask them to make it happen.

if you send an angry or rude one, it will get funnelled down the complaints route and that’s unlikely to speed things up for you. And your email address may get blocked from CEO which means you won’t be able to follow up.

But the text this morning sounds promising so none of this may be necessary!

You’re totally correct. If I need to, I’ll write a polite email this afternoon. The text from sky doesn’t give a date or time just that it’s changing- I’m assuming moving nearer. It says they’ll be in touch. I’m going to see if they give me something concrete by later on today. If not then I’ll draft the email. The lady I spoke to yesterday at sky was much more helpful. She said she would push it through.

Ok little update. Had a text from open reach yesterday saying the install would be today 8-1. So I cancelled an opticians appointment to be in.

Just had a text from open reach again- it’s now Monday 😡😡😡

Unbelievable! Well no, entirely believable actually

I’ve just emailed the CEO at open reach

We have wifi!!!