Small claims for £££ from a developer for delayed broadband?
Discussion
Bought a new build last day of oct on a small development (100 houses) - only about 10 done so far so lots more building to go.
Was told during October that the house would have broadband from virgin and openreach - VERY important for me as I work from home and use a LOT of data for uploading/downloading clinet files, etc to cloud based storage, etc, etc
Turns out - due to mess ups that are shared (buck passed) between everyone from developer to BT to virgin to the council.....we still have no internet and will not see it before the new year - virgin by april!!!!
As such, I'm doing about £400 a month in 4g!!!!!!
Developer has gone very quiet over my (and other residents) angry emails - is a threat of small claims empty and pointless??? I'm thinking I was told (verbally) by sales staff during negotiantions that intenet would be in the house ....... its not, and I'm out of pocket! If they had said, house is good but no internet during the rest of 2016 I'd have never bought the house due to the impact working on a poor 4G network has on my business - I'm probably getting 10% of my work done while waiting for stuff to load/crash/not work.
If not small claims - then who? Developers just say "not our fault"!!!
On here now as just given up watching a film off Amazon via the Ps4 hotspotted to my phone as its sucking about a 1gb every 15 mins!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Was told during October that the house would have broadband from virgin and openreach - VERY important for me as I work from home and use a LOT of data for uploading/downloading clinet files, etc to cloud based storage, etc, etc
Turns out - due to mess ups that are shared (buck passed) between everyone from developer to BT to virgin to the council.....we still have no internet and will not see it before the new year - virgin by april!!!!
As such, I'm doing about £400 a month in 4g!!!!!!
Developer has gone very quiet over my (and other residents) angry emails - is a threat of small claims empty and pointless??? I'm thinking I was told (verbally) by sales staff during negotiantions that intenet would be in the house ....... its not, and I'm out of pocket! If they had said, house is good but no internet during the rest of 2016 I'd have never bought the house due to the impact working on a poor 4G network has on my business - I'm probably getting 10% of my work done while waiting for stuff to load/crash/not work.
If not small claims - then who? Developers just say "not our fault"!!!
On here now as just given up watching a film off Amazon via the Ps4 hotspotted to my phone as its sucking about a 1gb every 15 mins!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Tiggsy said:
If not small claims - then who? Developers just say "not our fault"!!!
On here now as just given up watching a film off Amazon via the Ps4 hotspotted to my phone as its sucking about a 1gb every 15 mins!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It doesn't strike me as wise to watch films streamed over the internet when your only connection is super expensive? Don't you have regular TV? Or DVD? Or VHS?On here now as just given up watching a film off Amazon via the Ps4 hotspotted to my phone as its sucking about a 1gb every 15 mins!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I struggle how to see you could claim anything, esp as the availability of internet was not in the contract of sale. I moved into a new build a few years ago and had to wait 13 weeks for a pole to go up. I guess that's life, esp on an early build.
Best suggestion I have is to get a 4G home broadband service from, say, EE and be sensible about what you use it for.
You said that you were told during October that there would be broadband via OpenReach and Virgin, but you also moved in during October.
Therefore were you not already committed to moving in by the time you were told about OR and Virgin?
The reason I ask is that if the broadband connection was being discussed at that point, I would assume it wasn't mentioned in any contract with the developer and therefore it would be unlikely that you have much recourse against them, unfortunately.
I had issues myself when moving house earlier this year. This wasn't a new build and there was already a connection to the property. Still took over a month longer than I was promised to get 'switched on', though. Proper pain the arse as I also work from home and need to upload/downloaded client data. Not on the scale you must be doing at £400/month though, I have to say.
The delay on mine was purely due to BT screwing up moving my contract between properties and not being able to marry that up with getting OpenReach to do the 'switching on' bit. I was still under contract with BT so possibly in a stronger position than you and I was still only able to get them to pay £30 towards my 4g costs (they paid for the initial dongle purchase) as being a domestic customer there isn't a lot of protection.
Will be interesting to see how they deal with your issue but I'm not sure you're going to get a huge amount out of anyone involved, OP. Despite BB being critical to many people for work these days, there seems to be little to protect us from the hassle of losing it.
Therefore were you not already committed to moving in by the time you were told about OR and Virgin?
The reason I ask is that if the broadband connection was being discussed at that point, I would assume it wasn't mentioned in any contract with the developer and therefore it would be unlikely that you have much recourse against them, unfortunately.
I had issues myself when moving house earlier this year. This wasn't a new build and there was already a connection to the property. Still took over a month longer than I was promised to get 'switched on', though. Proper pain the arse as I also work from home and need to upload/downloaded client data. Not on the scale you must be doing at £400/month though, I have to say.
The delay on mine was purely due to BT screwing up moving my contract between properties and not being able to marry that up with getting OpenReach to do the 'switching on' bit. I was still under contract with BT so possibly in a stronger position than you and I was still only able to get them to pay £30 towards my 4g costs (they paid for the initial dongle purchase) as being a domestic customer there isn't a lot of protection.
Will be interesting to see how they deal with your issue but I'm not sure you're going to get a huge amount out of anyone involved, OP. Despite BB being critical to many people for work these days, there seems to be little to protect us from the hassle of losing it.
Edited by PorkInsider on Sunday 18th December 06:31
PorkInsider said:
I had issues myself when moving house earlier this year. This wasn't a new build and there was already a connection to the property. Still took over a month longer than I was promised to get 'switched on', though.
BT are notorious for this. There is a total disconnect between the customer facing subsidiaries and Openreach.The engineers at the latter are OK, it's the desk-bound knobjockeys at the former who are the problem.
Carol Beer is in the bush leagues by comparison.
I'm a developer and we do not provide the broadband it is down to virgin and BT. We often put ducting in for BT (at a loss) to help speed the process up this can though still take BT months to get round to putting there cables in. It is the first order form a customer which starts there process about 3 moths later they put the cables in and you start getting broadband. Subsequent customers are much quicker as the cables are now in.
Yes the system is crap, I can't as a developer get involved. We are trying a new site with FTP which I will be involved in getting into the houses where customers will ave 300mb when they move in. We'll see how smoothly that goes!!
The developer will not be approachable for the delays it will be down to BT/Virgin. The developer will be obligated to put ducting in...
Yes the system is crap, I can't as a developer get involved. We are trying a new site with FTP which I will be involved in getting into the houses where customers will ave 300mb when they move in. We'll see how smoothly that goes!!
The developer will not be approachable for the delays it will be down to BT/Virgin. The developer will be obligated to put ducting in...
If this was a written agreement then I would say you would win any claim. As it was verbal, they would only need say they never made a guarantee and they would win.
However if you had 10 others all saying the same thing them I would say stick a small claim against the developer as they sold you the house and you might get an award in your favour.
However if you had 10 others all saying the same thing them I would say stick a small claim against the developer as they sold you the house and you might get an award in your favour.
Tiggsy said:
Bought a new build last day of oct on a small development (100 houses) - only about 10 done so far so lots more building to go.
Was told during October that the house would have broadband from virgin and openreach
Turns out - due to mess ups that are shared (buck passed) between everyone from developer to BT to virgin to the council... we still have no internet and will not see it before the new year
Did they promise - before exchange of contracts - that the internet would be live by any given date? Or just that it will be coming?Was told during October that the house would have broadband from virgin and openreach
Turns out - due to mess ups that are shared (buck passed) between everyone from developer to BT to virgin to the council... we still have no internet and will not see it before the new year
It will be coming - you've said as much. So this is only about timescales. You've moved into a new development at the very early stages of construction - it's no surprise that some of the eventual site facilities are delayed, is it? It certainly shouldn't be...
How much attempt have you made to mitigate your losses?
I can't help with the claim I'm afraid, it sounds a bit flimsy to be honest.
As a business we use wireless cube routers from EE on remote sites. We get 50gb per month for about £40, and have never had any trouble with them. Very good solution that no other network could get near. Like you, we were spending about £800 per month on data on one site, now pay £40, much better!
As a business we use wireless cube routers from EE on remote sites. We get 50gb per month for about £40, and have never had any trouble with them. Very good solution that no other network could get near. Like you, we were spending about £800 per month on data on one site, now pay £40, much better!
Red Devil said:
BT are notorious for this. There is a total disconnect between the customer facing subsidiaries and Openreach.
The engineers at the latter are OK, it's the desk-bound knobjockeys at the former who are the problem.
Carol Beer is in the bush leagues by comparison.
You can blame ofcom for that , equivalance means bt have to be treated the same as any other service providers so there are no shortcuts to processes .The engineers at the latter are OK, it's the desk-bound knobjockeys at the former who are the problem.
Carol Beer is in the bush leagues by comparison.
bimsb6 said:
Red Devil said:
BT are notorious for this. There is a total disconnect between the customer facing subsidiaries and Openreach.
The engineers at the latter are OK, it's the desk-bound knobjockeys at the former who are the problem.
Carol Beer is in the bush leagues by comparison.
You can blame ofcom for that , equivalance means bt have to be treated the same as any other service providers so there are no shortcuts to processes .The engineers at the latter are OK, it's the desk-bound knobjockeys at the former who are the problem.
Carol Beer is in the bush leagues by comparison.
Where does the money come from at the moment for infrastructure investment? That would be BT.
Where's it going to come from once OpenReach is fully autonomous?
Perhaps there'll be more support from Sky? TalkTalk? Given that OR's longer term strategy is to move the entire network to FTTP, there's going to need to be some serious investment.
It wouldn't be surprising if BT come out of the whole thing on top, given that they already don't receive preferential service from OR and they won't now be bankrolling them either.
Will be interesting to see how it pans out.
PorkInsider said:
And I think it's going to get worse.
Where does the money come from at the moment for infrastructure investment? That would be BT.
Where's it going to come from once OpenReach is fully autonomous?
Perhaps there'll be more support from Sky? TalkTalk? Given that OR's longer term strategy is to move the entire network to FTTP, there's going to need to be some serious investment.
It wouldn't be surprising if BT come out of the whole thing on top, given that they already don't receive preferential service from OR and they won't now be bankrolling them either.
Will be interesting to see how it pans out.
Openreach make the money not bt , or will not be fully seperate from bt as bt will still own them .long term stategy is not fttp but a mix of fttp/ fttc . Both options mean getting rid of the copper cable from exchange to cabinets .
Where does the money come from at the moment for infrastructure investment? That would be BT.
Where's it going to come from once OpenReach is fully autonomous?
Perhaps there'll be more support from Sky? TalkTalk? Given that OR's longer term strategy is to move the entire network to FTTP, there's going to need to be some serious investment.
It wouldn't be surprising if BT come out of the whole thing on top, given that they already don't receive preferential service from OR and they won't now be bankrolling them either.
Will be interesting to see how it pans out.
Openreach make the money not bt , or will not be fully seperate from bt as bt will still own them .long term stategy is not fttp but a mix of fttp/ fttc . Both options mean getting rid of the copper cable from exchange to cabinets .
bimsb6 said:
PorkInsider said:
And I think it's going to get worse.
Where does the money come from at the moment for infrastructure investment? That would be BT.
Where's it going to come from once OpenReach is fully autonomous?
Perhaps there'll be more support from Sky? TalkTalk? Given that OR's longer term strategy is to move the entire network to FTTP, there's going to need to be some serious investment.
It wouldn't be surprising if BT come out of the whole thing on top, given that they already don't receive preferential service from OR and they won't now be bankrolling them either.
Will be interesting to see how it pans out.
Openreach make the money not bt , or will not be fully seperate from bt as bt will still own them .long term stategy is not fttp but a mix of fttp/ fttc . Both options mean getting rid of the copper cable from exchange to cabinets .Where does the money come from at the moment for infrastructure investment? That would be BT.
Where's it going to come from once OpenReach is fully autonomous?
Perhaps there'll be more support from Sky? TalkTalk? Given that OR's longer term strategy is to move the entire network to FTTP, there's going to need to be some serious investment.
It wouldn't be surprising if BT come out of the whole thing on top, given that they already don't receive preferential service from OR and they won't now be bankrolling them either.
Will be interesting to see how it pans out.
TooMany2cvs said:
Is it...?
We moved to FTTP (yes, P. No C anywhere near here) in the summer... and our phone is still over copper.
So are you on fttp for internet and copper for voice? If so you can have the voice service migrated to the fibre , there is a phone connection point on the ont .We moved to FTTP (yes, P. No C anywhere near here) in the summer... and our phone is still over copper.
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