Broadband ISP BT Ponders Possible £50 Charge for Missed UK Appointments
Information allegedly leaked from inside broadband ISP BT (inc. EE and Plusnet) suggests that customers may in the future have to face a charge of £50 for a missed appointment, such as when the engineer turns up on time to find that the customer is not present. But the provider doesn’t currently plan to enforce this.
At present, the telecoms giant’s policy is that if an engineer (usually from Openreach) misses a customer’s scheduled appointment, or changes it with less than 24 hours’ notice, then customers will receive £31.19 for each missed appointment. This charge aligns with Ofcom’s system of Automatic Compensation. Openreach have, in recent years, also helped to reduce missed appointments by improving direct customer communications (here).
The problem is that this door swings both ways – sometimes engineers turn up to find nobody is home, which can be a costly waste of their time. According to the leak, some 10% of fibre broadband (FTTC/P/SOGEA) installs are allegedly missed on the day by customers, despite various reminders being sent.
Advertisement
The indication seems to be that BT are planning to get a bit tougher with this, but they won’t hit anybody with the charge itself.. yet: “The “possible” charge is being advised to encourage customers to re-book appointments if they cannot meet it. At this point we won’t be adding the charge while we work through the finer details and impact of the charges, but we do reserve the right to charge and may do so in the future,” said an allegedly internal BT email.
The policy would not actually be all that unusual for the industry. A number of internet providers already take a similar approach, and a few years back Virgin Media took plenty of flak from customers when they introduced a £25 charge for missed appointments (here). As we said back then, it’s easy to see why such a charge might be greeted negatively, particularly as some people can easily take longer than others getting to the door (e.g. disability, being on the toilet / in a shower or being at the wrong end of the garden etc.).
Part of the problem is that, after ringing the doorbell and knocking on the door, engineers are sometimes too quick to leave the premises and mark the event as a missed appointment. Sometimes a quick call to the customer’s phone and then mobile number, especially if done beforehand, is all that it would take to avoid this happening, but not always. In the past we’ve also seen other cases of engineers, working as contractors, not turning up but then marking cases as a missed appointment.
What’s BT’s position?
Naturally, ISPreview queried this with BT. The provider did not furnish us with a comment, but they did state that this is not a new charge and that they have always had a policy in place that if you agree to an engineer appointment slot and are not available for this, BT may raise a charge on your account. But the provider said it remained at their discretion whether to raise the charge or not.
Advertisement
The general home broadband T&C‘s do state that “if you need to change or cancel an appointment, you must tell us at least two working days beforehand“, although they don’t appear to explicitly state a “missed appointment fee” for customers in those general terms. No specific figure, like £50, is mentioned anywhere, but in some places there are suggestions of potentially charging a fee similar to the installation cost (note: their broadband packages currently have an upfront fee of £0).
BT told us that they are not threatening customers, but instead aim to make them aware of a potential charge if they are not available for their engineer appointment. BT added that it was in their interest to connect customers as soon as possible and avoid any delays.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
« Mobile Operator Giffgaff Expands UK eSIM Support to Website UPDATE
Advertisement
Leave a Reply
Privacy Notice: Please note that news comments are anonymous, which means that we do NOT require you to enter any real personal details to post a message and display names can be almost anything you like (provided they do not contain offensive language or impersonate a real person's legal name). By clicking to submit a post you agree to storing your entries for comment content, display name, IP and email in our database, for as long as the post remains live.
Only the submitted name and comment will be displayed in public, while the rest will be kept private (we will never share this outside of ISPreview, regardless of whether the data is real or fake). This comment system uses submitted IP, email and website address data to spot abuse and spammers. All data is transferred via an encrypted (https secure) session.
I agree, I used to fix domestic appliances, the times the customer was out, you’d give them a grace period like 10 minutes, no one in leave a card , then you’d get a call from the office, can you “nip” back, well that’s all well and good, but now that’s my time and me getting home later without extra pay.
It’s also unfair on other customers as they have to wait around because your nipping back to the customer who was out, rarely did I get thanked, unless it was a quick repair, I’d tell the customer I’d have to order spares , even if I had them in the van, just so I could get on with my day. For once I agree with BT.
In the same way you’ll be there between 8 and 12, consumers are also allowed to get vague (I’m not defending it)
The problem is, engineers don’t know how long they’ll be at previous calls because of the amount of moving parts and anomalies in every job.
I hear it all the time (not my job but mostly service providers) “we’re the customer, you wait for me I don’t wait for you” and it’s just the way of the world now, unfortunately.
I think incentives over fines would be better received, you can’t unscramble an egg, next steps will be very important
“Part of the problem is that, after ringing the doorbell and knocking on the door, engineers are sometimes too quick to leave the premises and mark the event as a missed appointment.”
A larger part of the problem is that roughly a quarter of engineers don’t actually show up and mark it as missed regardless. This has been investigated and evidence submitted to Operations teams without any action. The biggest example of this behaviour is easily searchable (Timothy Knibbs versus Openreach employment tribunal). However with Openreach reliance on contractors over direct staff due to budget cuts, those contractors are paid per job and it’s also been noted internally that 20-30% of those jobs are closed as complete or sent back as missed.
As a customer I’ve also had this myself. An engineer physically standing in my living room telling me he didn’t have the tools for the job then marking it as a customer-missed appointment. As part of the great Consumer machine, we’re screaming into the void reporting these things while customers and agents are the only ones suffering consequence.
Hehe I just covered this with a real scenario on forum lol.
It could be a good idea – especially wh we ‘re the customer does this frequently, but. But it is also needed where the supplier either doesn’t arrive in the allotted time span of even worse, before or late, especially when there is an agreed date for the work to be carried out.
As long as the Openreach staff can be trusted not to falsely mark down missed appointments. Unfortunately it appears that may not always be the case.
This isn’t workable when so many openreach engineers never show up and mark it as missed. I’ve had 3 engineer no shows out of 5 for my full fibre installation, and I’ve had to fight them listing it as “customer not available”.
Also crazy to do this when the timeslot is so large (5 hours). At the very minimum the engineer should call you when 30-60 mins away, and then again when at the property, before fining customers. I believe they are supposed to do this, but I’ve never seen that happen in practice.
Take it from somebody who knows – the vast vast majority of missed appointments are due to customers.
The pattern I’ve seen is the directly employed Openreach engineers actually show up, call ahead and know what they’re doing. It’s the contractors like MJ Quinn who very often no show or are not competent.
Even then, there are technological solutions to reducing customer no shows. Live updates on a webpage about where their engineer is for example.
Does that mean Openreach will actually turn up at the confirmed time & date?
I’ve had Openreach turn up 3 weeks early for an appointment & then not bother to turn up for a further appointment.
Do they have trackers on the vans OR maybe they need to have the customer sign an electronic document to prove they have turned up & done the appointment as arranged.
The way to do this is via a PIN that the customer has and must give to the technician for them to do the job. Do it when they arrive and that protects the employee too (they don’t start without the code to stop customers withholding if they’re not happy).
Amazon do this for high-value items to force the delivery person to actually knock on the door.
Theres both trackers on the van and a requirement to take a photo to prove they’ve been to the correct place. (May not be the same for contractors)
Always worth disputing if you think they havent as chances are the phot wont meet standards
£50 no show up and you will forced to pay the bill (hopefully the engineer are honest to mark down not the customer fault of missing appointment for no show up!) but it unlikely, it will be abused £50 win win for BT Group.
My answer BIG NO to £50!!!
The engineer didn’t show up twice before with no answer from phone call, no SMS. Plus proof from my CCTV as there is no Engineer show up but the engineer did marked down turn up and no one was answer at the door (Liar) and was end up to re-booking appointment.
Why don’t the engineer (Openreach) have a live tracking map to show the customer on the smartphone where are the engineer right now? Eg: you’re next as the engineer is two steps away from you and it will proof the enginner did attend at the right property post code with time and stamped so the ISP can check that live tracking updated.
Well after Openreach announced more redundancy this week they are going to need to fund the payouts for its engineers
Used to work for BT (horrible job) and the amount of people that weren’t in for appointments or rang up on day of appointment to try and change it as something came up on the day happened all the time. Most knew they wouldn’t be charged for it so they didn’t prioritise it. Wouldn’t happen half the time of they were charged for missing appointment
Is it not still the case that there was a charge if the fault was found to be in your home, beyond the master socket in other words or you are not in when the engineer calls? I know some of the higher end packages they did start to wave that fee.
I guess beyond the master socket now means beyond the ONT
At this moment there’s no fault that BT/EE will charge you for. Only excess build costs on installs.
Openreach charge BT/EE already for this it’s simply recovering the costs of missed appointments
This is a very small taste of a long saga.
My BT router was failing ever more frequently and severely. Then the internet became almost completely unusable. Clearly there was now also a fault on the broadband line. I was able to contact BT by webchat. At the time I did not realise that I was chatting with a FRAUDBOT – an Artificial Incompetence system made to appear human by deception, lies, fraud. The first one repeatedly lied that Openreach would fix everything. But the engineer who fixed the line fault said that BT routers are BT’s responsibility for them to fix or replace. I had to contact BT again.
More fraudbots wasted masses of my time by being incapable of grasping the fact that TWO things were faulty – the line AND the router. They TWICE called out Openreach to fix hallucinated line faults despite being told by me (and presumably also by Openreach) that the one and only line fault had already been fixed. Then their fraudbots e-mailed telling me that there was a fault and I needed to arrange an Openreach visit – while the third engineer was still sitting in his van outside my house.
BT continue to deny that they abuse customers with their fraudbots as well as by ignoring complaints, lie that their malfunctioning automated systems are only used to route communications to the right “person” to deal with it, and refuse to answer questions or explain how any human could or would have done what their fraudbots did (far more than mentioned here). They say that they fully intend to do this to any customer who contacts them.
BT’s despicable mass of gross misconduct appears to be in criminal violation of the Data Protection Act, GDPR, and possibly other legislation. They do not intend to fine themselves for repeatedly making fake appointments with their own Openreach engineers. If you’re having to wait for ages for Openreach to come and install or fix something then maybe it’s because BT fraudbots are sending them out to fix more hallucinated faults instead.~
Do you need a nice cup of tea and a sit down?
Ok, as long as they pay us £50 every time they miss an appointment, it’s only fair.
£31.19 at present for a missed appointment automatic compensation. But would be fair to equalise that amount.
Funny though, isn’t it, that when you’ve taken a day of annual leave and they don’t show up there’s “nothing we can do.” Better yet when it happens three times in a row…
If this is a rule they’re to implement, then they need to hold themselves to a higher standard.