topic Re: Claiming for BT no-shows in Plusnet Feedback

Claiming for BT no-shows

jelv — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 12:30:26 GMT

Just read http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/shopping/delivery-rights
Reading it I think it would apply to missed BT appointments.

Re: Claiming for BT no-shows

mapletree — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 12:44:22 GMT

I would agree. However, in all cases, it is not easy to enforce. I have had delivery no-shows and taken legal advice on the matter. I was told that I would have to prove that I had lost out financially (taking an extra day holiday does not count) and I cannot claim for wasted time at all. I cannot be sure that this advice is correct but it was supplied by a legal professional.

Re: Claiming for BT no-shows

AlaricAdair — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 06:43:38 GMT

It needs primary legislation to fix this. Write to your MP and programmes like Watchdog.
With modern GPS route planning/location systems, resource scheduling and mobile phones there is no reason why service engineers cannot predict their arrival time to within one hour. It is just corporate laziness which prevents it.

Re: Claiming for BT no-shows

x47c — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 10:30:09 GMT

Well I can think of several reasons.....
The BT engineer due to attend up to his neck in some other's person's disaster which is taking longer than expected to sort.
The other engineers locally also busy on similar disasters.
Of course this is why BT engineers are given fixed times to fix faults - and then they have to move on to the next one.
This is why customers complain that BT never want to fix the problem properely - they do to a quick bodge up and hope it lasts.
....'cos there is a schedule to meet isn't there......
It could be sorted easily.
Just have more BT engineers doing nothing for a lot of the time just waiting for the cascade of disasters to happen and they can swing into action.
but it's the same everywhere - no one wants to pay for it.
All we get is moans about how excessive are BT's charges.
Transco work an escalating level of disaster. Person 1 attends and has x time to fix it. If they fail it gets escalated to team 2 who have more equipment and more time and so it goes on up the scale. Management of course are unwilling to jump scales so the job has to go though scales 1,2,3,4, rather than 1 declaring a major mess and jumping direct to scale 4.
In corporate land consequential damages claims for such things as late delivery and failure to meet predicted technical performance are always excluded from contracts or limited to a very low level as a % of the contract value by liquidated damage clauses.
Anyway just think if we changed the law on this what fun it would be. You cause an accident in your car, block the carriageway for x hours and get sued for a few million by all of the other car drivers delayed etc. Can you imagine your car's insurance costs?
Maybe not such a good idea after all...........

Re: Claiming for BT no-shows

Strat — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 10:52:10 GMT

And if you doubt the wisdom of x47c's comments witness the proliferation of 'No Win, No Fee' companies pushing up insurance and related costs to all of us.

Re: Claiming for BT no-shows

jelv — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 11:05:27 GMT

I'd have no problem with an engineer ringing to say he was delayed. In the past overtime would have been worked and all the appointments kept, perhaps by reallocating the call to an engineer who had finished his days calls.
What is unacceptable is where someone has taken a day off work and BT fail to show up.
If BT call and can't get an answer they can charge you £50, put the boot on the other foot and there is no compensation. That smacks of unfair contract terms.

Re: Claiming for BT no-shows

mapletree — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 11:23:03 GMT

I agree with jelv here. Just because there are "ambulance chasers" trying to manipulate the system should not mean that people are denied their right to get compensation for breach of contract. I also don't accept the argument that improving the system would be execessively expensive.

Re: Claiming for BT no-shows

x47c — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 10:55:06 GMT

What I used to do when having to wait in was ensure that there were other things in the house that I could be doing
So the day was not "wasted"
If it came to pass that compensation was automatically payable for such things as excessive delay/non appearance I would expect that the providers of the service would start to extend the scheduling to allow for more time gaps to make up for lost time. Either this would have to be paid for by longer times before engineers attended or paid for by having more engineers: but it would have to be paid for from somewhere.
I don't know what is the solution really.
Anyway here is a funny story from corporate land on what happens when you over specify legal damages for missed techical performance.....
Requirement was for 'paramater A' to be minimum of 5.0, with a huge penalty for missing it.
Project consultants see this plus the damages clause, shudders, and specifies to main overall contractor that they should meet 5.5 as a minimum (to make sure it ain't their fault)
Main contractor sees this and states to the equipment manufacturer that they should meet 6.0 absolute minimum no matter what.
Equipment manufacturer (that was my employer) sees 6.0 and think, Yikes, we could be stuffed with a £100K damages bill, so we will design for 6.5 to ensure we are well within on test. Of course we ask do you really want this 'cos it becomes a real special and its going to be very expensive and inevetiably the reply comes back 'YES'
Skip forward 6 months , unit is built (this is bespoke oil/gas sector) and the performance of 'paramater A' is 6.6.
Everyone is happy you think.................errr far from it.
You see having 'paramater A' 32% higher than they needed it actually causes all sorts of other troubles and knock on side effects which was never in the project design.
I recall in the end some of the associated equipment had to be scrapped and re-designed/ rebuilt with consequence knock on time and cost implications on the project - all due to everyone down the line being terrified of the huge damages clause in the main contract which were progressively passed down the line.
I think we are actually asked to requote for a design/build of what was actually required - but it was cheaper to modify/redesign/rebuild other stuff instead, but hey what's a few £million here and there.......

Re: Claiming for BT no-shows

itsme — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 11:47:12 GMT

Don't think it will apply to Openreach as most of their appointments are in the form of 'We may require access to your property and if we can't gain access then we may charge you'

Re: Claiming for BT no-shows

w23 — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 12:41:30 GMT

Quote from: jelv
What is unacceptable is where someone has taken a day off work and BT fail to show up.
If BT call and can't get an answer they can charge you £50, put the boot on the other foot and there is no compensation. That smacks of unfair contract terms.

Absolutely: Sauce for the goose....

Re: Claiming for BT no-shows

David_W — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 01:03:09 GMT

I remember many years ago wanting ISDN installed by BT, the day for the engineer came and he was a no-show, couldn't show up. BT had a clause in their contract that if they failed to show up they would pay me 1 months line rental per day they were late to install my ISDN line. 4 days later my ISDN is installed, the line rental was something like £25/month and the install cost of ISDN was something like £99, so I pretty much got a free install of ISDN.
Of course in this case the contract is with PN to get the work done, so you'd have to chase down PN for compensation so the question would be if PN could then claim the compensation back from BT or not, if they couldn't then the end effect would be increased prices for everyone to cope with BT's missed appointments.