BT / Openreach issues for months - I finally want to cry about it

[RJ2023]

Not sure why I am posting but I finally feel like crying from months of dealing with BT and Openreach and want to write it down to make me feel better and in case anyone else has or will ever experience the same thing.

I've been a customer since 2007 and they (genuinely) charge me £90 a month for a connection that rarely even hits 40mbs (in a modern housing estate, not a field somewhere).

Since April they are trying to upgrade me to full fibre now, but there is a blocked underground duct affecting at least three houses that needs repairing.

All Openreach do (since April) is send three letters for a wayleave (to the wrong person) and then close the order. BT don't communicate this closed order until you phone them to ask for an update and they just say you have to start the process again with their sales team.

I've now done everything I possibly can.

I have paid for all of the land registry documents that prove who owns where they need to dig and spoken with the person who owns the house. He would sign a wayleave immediately. But Openreach have never written to him or care about this information.

I have the original covenants documents from when the estate was built in circa 1999 that make clear about the requirements for allowing infrastructure repairs - again, Openreach don't care.

The copper broadband will get turned off soon and then I am screwed (on a modern housing estate in Ipswich).

As I say - I don't know why I am posting - I just really want a hug due to the pain and time this has caused me.

Do you have a complaint registered with them? if not do that now. Then escalate to the Ombudsman.
keep all evidence and correspondence and timelines and share them with both

I don't have a formal complaint registered. I was going to formally complain but I don't want to do anything that leads to them cutting off my existing (poor) broadband connection and then having nothing.

I'm currently speaking with Virgin Media to see if they can get a connection through the blockage and (if they can and it works) I'll cancel BT.

I think VM might use different underground ducts to Openreach and my neighbours are connected so I am praying they can do it!

We left BT as they were very expensive and fibre only to the nearest box! We are with Vodaphone: Much cheaper and full fibre to house. Plus much neater set up.

We were paying £86 a month for a connection that rarely hit 2mbs download speed on a good day. 40mbs sounds absolutely fine to me!

But it became clear they weren't ever going to provide us with a fibre connection (too rural) and rather than battling on for years post digital switchover we cut out losses and sold our soul to Elon Musk and got Starlink which has been amazing.

We now pay £40 a month

Why on earth are you paying £90 a month for your internet? 😳

Thanks so much.

The challenge I face is that pretty much every Broadband company (apart from Virgin Media) uses the Openreach underground ducts. That duct is blocked and Openreach won't fix it.

All I can hope is that one of the other broadband companies that use those ducts will take a more relaxed approach to permissions, dig up the road and then all of us might benefit.

You’re paying £90 a month for your internet?? You’re being robbed! You can get Starlink for cheaper!

Another one here who bit back the bile and got starlink. You don't have to dig anything up OP,.it's all satellites,.it really is amazing

I would probably try VM or Starlink. I suspect you will have the same problems with others that use OpenReach connections

I originally signed up years ago for Halo 3 (copper) with BT and then went out of contract and just let it roll over.

There is now nobody that will give you an alternative deal on copper that I can find.

I can't get full fibre installed at the house due to the blocked duct so I have the choice between keep paying BT a massive amount for being out of contract or having no internet.

That is the reality I face.

@Orangesarenottheonlyfruit does the starlink just do internet or is it phone calls as well??
My elderly dad lives rurally and really struggling to get a decent internet/phone signal.
Thank you!!

£90 is daylight robbery.

Funnily enough I saw someone else talking about how awful Openreach were on another forum.

We’ve had loads of cable companies digging up the roads round here recently. If your neighbour has virgin you should be able to get it.

I feel your pain. I'm a network engineer by trade and I've had way too many dealings with BT/OpenReach over the years. They are spectacularly useless. Absolutely, stunningly, fantastically, explosively inept. Gob-smackingly awful. A bigger bunch of uniformly pointless, lazy, lying fuckwits I have luckily never had the occasion to encounter.

I've had OpenReach engineers on-site to do a simple move, fuck it up, and then start sulking when I object to them leaving site without fixing it. I've seen OpenReach engineers turn up on CCTV, sit in their van for half an hour, and then fuck off without doing anything then try to claim that there was no-one on-site to receive them. I've had OpenReach engineers tell me that there's no point trying to organise a managed move to shift a cable around a construction site but that it's better to wait for someone to put a spade through the cable and then call it out as an emergency. I've paid OpenReach a lot of money to have two links take diverse routes between two sites to make sure that they don't get taken out by the same fault, only to find that they couldn't be arsed to do it and just lied.

They're wankers. Every single one.

Thank you! You're making me feel a bit happier about it!

All I can say is that it's nothing personal. They're atrociously useless with everyone, not just you.

They tried to run my neighbour’s cable under my driveway. When I objected to them digging up my driveway and leaving ugly repair joins they acted like I was the one being unreasonable.

Our broadband is delivered by phone line. We no longer have a landline so perhaps you could research which companies do this. Ours is Toob- they are only small and I believe only in small pockets.

Why can't you use Starlink? It's available everywhere in the UK and doesn't use wires.

All broadband companies are idiots. Lol.
I had a sort of opposite problem in that our estate clubbed together to pay Openreach to install full fibre as we were not eligible for upgrade and then I switched to Virgin who decided to use completely different ducts and made an absolute mess of the thing including damaged a load of brickwork on my house.
Defintely try a different company who dont use Openreach eg Virgin, Hyperoptic and there are others. They may be more creative.
And then when you have a minute do a formal complaint to BT. They should be managing the Openreach issues so really they have been appalling. What a nightmare

Just get starlink like a lot of us have suggested. No need to get stressed about something you can change.

We got Starlink and moved the phone line over to Phonely. It's internet based (but everything will be soon) - Phonely sent us an adapter to plug our existing phone into the starlink router and we kept our old BT land line number etc. Costs about £12 a month I think but we paid a year upfront which was slightly cheaper.

Register a complaint. I did this (in writing) and they wrote back to me with a number I could call of a special complaints department. I cannot tell you how helpful that team was. An issue that was 6 months in the making took 2 phone calls to resolve.

@ scrowy thank you very much

Get Starlink. We got it as we're rural (farm, 2 miles from nearest fibre, Openreach have no plans to extend). We have the max plan (wfh, gaming kid etc). It's not cheap, but there are cheaper plans and it's been fab.

Some of whom will be your ex colleagues. We left BT when I did, for that reason, and was more than aware of the antics of Works Manager.

Jeez, I shudder just remembering. That goodness we had an alternative.