WFH & home internet breaks down

[37KAT]

A friend is WFH due to Covid. Today her home WIFI developed a fault and is scheduled to be repaired sometime on Wednesday.
She contacted her boss at work who told her she would need to book the next few days as annual or unpaid leave. It was also suggested she could work at her next door neighbours house

She offered to go to the office, they said no. She asked for a dongle, they said it would take 3 days to organise.
HR were copied in on the reply.

I told her IMO this sounds unreasonable. Because CV is so new & they've not WFH before it sounds like a manager winging it.

I am currently WFH too for the first time so it's got me interested.

Would she be unreasonable to expect them to be supportive & realise IT issues occur at home too and she should not be forced to take unpaid leave or use holiday?
She has suggested solutions!

@Couchbettato

Most internet providers will state that their services are for residential purposes only. Their terms haven't changed for covid, however that's to protect them against the urgency of repairs when faults occur during lockdown. It's within their rights to terminate a service if it's being used for business purposes but I don't know any providers that actually do.

They, for this reason, won't cover loss of earnings to the pp that suggested she ask her provider about this. They also can't guarantee a fault free service, which is also usually stated in the The and C's.

This is 100% an employer issue to sort out. They either let her work in the office or they sort out a dongle.

Employers are also within their right to dictate when holiday allocation is used though, so there's not really any thing illegal about insisting she uses annual leave, though it is a bit unfair.

You're partially right about work dictating holiday dates, but they have to give notice of the same length of holiday to be taken. So they would have had to tell the op Tuesday Wednesday last week that she was expected to take annual leave Monday to Wednesday this week.

@37KAT
I would ask for a copy of the current wfh policy that states WiFi issues equal use of annual leave.

Fwiw I wfh as my norm. I've never yet had WiFi issues, and my work mobile barely has any reception at home so wouldn't be of great benefit. A colleague has lots of issues and as long as she's available for work, she's deemed as working, as this is the consequence of the employer not providing WiFi, which they used to do.

I work from home full-time, have done for years. If the company equipment fails, I don’t have to make up the time or take leave. It’s just the same as sitting in the office and there being a computer outage, you wouldn’t be expected to take annual leave for the rest of the day. But if it’s the internet in the house then I have to take leave or make up the time, just the same as if I worked in the office but couldn’t come in because the boiler broke down at home and I’m waiting for a repair man. My employer states all this in my terms of employment. You can try and claim compensation from the Internet provider but their Ts and Cs are usually watertight to cover them for such things.