@robquick It seems you do not accept my take on your situation, that's your choice but I think that you will find it is correct.
I realise you did not refuse the overhead feed yourself but your neighbour has objected to that option as the trees would need to be cut back. As they are on the neighbour's land that is a reasonable action. Now Openreach have to provide an underground ducted route which is not the proposed delivery method so substantial excess construction charges are applied.
You did mention that the neighbour had ducting put in the drive, roughly what length was that? You didn't say you would need a 60 metre length! Digging and ducting that sort of length is costly. Have look a this extract from an OR document, there is a link to pricing but it takes a bit of digging ( no pun intended) to find the correct section.
The final paragraph covers your situation.
5.4 GEA-FTTP L2C Excess Construction Charges (ECC)
These charges are raised where additional infrastructure is required to provide new or extended service
at an end customer’s site, or at another requested location where we would otherwise not choose to
extend our network based on normal commercial criteria.
When it is identified that an installation would require additional work and will need ECCs, then
Openreach will inform the CP and request confirmation of acceptance of the ECCs (and this allows the
CP to discuss / agree with the end customer if required) before the KCI2 order confirmation and before
any installation work proceeds.
The scope of chargeable work includes both external and internal work leading to the ONT and is set
out in the Openreach Price List at:
https://www.openreach.co.uk/orpg/home/products/pricing/loadPricing.do
If no previous GEA installation exemption has been applied to an end customer premises, then the first
£1000 of cost is exempt only for this first service installed. Subsequent service installation requiring
additional fibre cable and / or civils work to provide a clear path would be subject to full ECCs.
If the end customer refuses a proposed delivery method designed to reduce or remove the need for
ECCs and insists on a more expensive method of delivery, then the exemption would not apply (e.g.
customer refuses overhead delivery, ‘road tape’ or other solution and requests a fully ducted
underground delivery).
The email you received from Plusnet is appalling, loads of apologies and waffle about how their special teams are looking after the problem. Then customer service said they had never seen anything like it and it's a scam... unbelievable.🙄
It could have been a one liner.... "Hard luck you need to pay £5K+ to get FTTP"
