Home broadband chargeable engineering visits

In some scenarios charges are due for engineering visits.

You will not have to pay for any engineering visits where there is a fault with the service caused by factors inside our control or that of our network provider.

Our charges vary depending on the particular variant of broadband service you have. To find out what you have, please refer to your latest bill.

Pre-authorisation of any engineering visits

Before we schedule an engineering visit, we ask customers to review the charges on this page and authorise the engineering visit.

As above, if there is a fault caused by a problem inside our control or that of our provider, then you will not be charged for the visit, no matter the length of time it takes to resolve the problem.

However if the engineering visit uncovers a fault that is not inside our control (damage/misuse/your equipment), or you miss an organised engineering visit, or there are other challenges outside our control, then there will most likely be a charge.

If you are unsure - please do ask us. We don't like to charge anything extra than we have do.

Giganet Local/ Fibre Cities and Salisbury

Giganet National

Examples

All examples include work carried out during the course of a standard working day.

• "You report no internet and would like an engineer to visit to 'fix' the service. The engineer finds that the cables have been unplugged and the equipment has been switched off, and there is no fault with the service after plugging everything back in":
  • Local/Fibre Cities/Salisbury Charge: £81 + £25 = £106
  • National Charge: £90 + £25 = £115
• "You report slow speeds and would like an engineer to resolve the problem. When they turn up, and check the underlying fibre service, they see the speeds anticipated. The slow speeds you report are being reported on a Wi-Fi connection, and when testing to a 3rd party speedtest server which is out of our control."
  • Local/Fibre Cities/Salisbury Charge: £81 + £25 = £106
  • National Charge: £90 + £25 = £115
• "You forget the installation for the full fibre broadband connection was happening and are not home when the engineer visits"
  • Local/Fibre Cities/Salisbury Charge: £81 + £25 = £106
  • National Charge: £90 + £25 = £115
• "You accidentally cut the incoming fibre optic cable when pruning some plants outside your home, you need the fibre cable repaired"
  • Local/Fibre Cities/Salisbury Charge: £92.68 + £25 = £117.68
  • National Charge: £144 + £25 = £169
• "You'd like the full fibre ONT moving into a different room in the house due to some re-organising at home. The work is quite involved, and takes 1hr 45mins.":
  • Local/Fibre Cities/Salisbury Charge: £92.68 + £41.74 + £25 = £159.42
  • National Charge: £144 + £25 = £241
• "You have accidentally spilt a liquid on the full fibre ONT, and it's damaged it and you need a replacement"
  • Local/Fibre Cities/Salisbury Charge: £92.68 + £34.80 + £25 = £152.48
  • National Charge: £POA
• "You have no broadband connection, and the engineer is dispatched to resolve the problem and discovers that the cable has developed a fault near the telegraph pole due to wear and tear"
  • You will not be charged the call out or potential additional time to resolve this.
• "You report a fault and we schedule the engineering appointment for Tuesday, but the engineer doesn't turn up on Tuesday":
  • You will not be charged a missed appointment charge.
• "You report a fault with the service, and the engineer turns up and finds the service to be working. It turns out that the router is misconfigured due to our error"
  • You will not be charged for our error. 

This is not an exhaustive list, but aims to provide some common examples where charges may or may not apply. 

Terms

• Charges refer to home broadband services only.
• All charges include VAT at the prevailing rate.
• Giganet charge the raw underlying costs for each supplier chargeable component without markup, however for any chargeable visit or an abortive engineering visit, we do levy a small admin charge per incident to cover the administration, billing and interfacing between our supplier and the customer. This charge is often vastly under the true cost. 

Standard Chargeable Visit

A standard chargeable visit is applicable in cases such as:

• Repairing faults where this work is not covered under the terms of a service contract
• Providing or rearranging services where standard charges are not available.
• Internal and External Shifts.
• A fault is found not to be with any fibre infrastructure service or equipment. In particular this covers the situation where no fault is found, or the fault is found to be on non-Openreach equipment, or is due to damage caused by someone at the customer's or end user's premises, or due to theft, loss or removal of equipment, or in the case of customer or end user owned or rented equipment (but not Openreach's network) faults caused by external or environmental factors (eg lightning, electrical surges or floods).

Additional Terms

• For charging purposes part hours are rounded up to the next whole hour.
  • E.g. if an engineer was at the premises for 2 1/2 hours, this visit would be classed as a 3 hour visit. Therefore this would be charged as the call out including first hour + 2x additional hours.
• If the Openreach engineer is already visiting the premises to carry out other work only the hourly charge will apply.
• If for operational reasons Openreach chooses to spread the job over several visits which in normal circumstances could have been carried out in a single visit, a single Standard Chargeable Visit charge will apply. Otherwise a Standard Chargeable Visit will apply per visit per engineer.
• Charges for network infrastructure over and above standard requirements are charged as excess construction which are £PoA (price on application).

Abortive Visit Charge

• An Abortive Visit Charge (AVC) is applied where an appointment is agreed for work and the engineer arrives within the appointment slot but is unable to carry out the work at, or gain access to your property.
• The charge is applicable when we've informed you that the job has been appointed and confirmed for the date/time period in question, and the engineer has arrived on site within the appointment slot and:
  • The engineer is unable to gain access to the site or premises, or;
  • You are not ready for the work to be completed (e.g. building work), or;
  • The person who placed the order or their representative is not available to provide detailed work instruction (e.g. installation location)
• We will also charge an Abortive Visit Charge when:
  • You request that the appointment is cancelled or delayed where you provide less than 2 working days' notice. Each late appointment cancellation or delay will be charged for separately.
  • An engineer is unable to complete the job due to an incorrect address, incorrect order, or order duplication etc.
  • A responsible adult is unavailable. Engineers cannot enter premises where they would be escorted solely by a person under the age of 18.
• We will NOT charge when:
  • The job has not been appointed
  • The engineer misses the appointment
  • There is no access to line plant (external infrastructure required to provide the service) which is not within your control
  • An engineer simultaneously delays more than one order at the same address. Only one charge will be raised.
  • Faults are ultimately proven off the customer’s site and access wasn’t necessary.
  • An engineer is unable to attend due to MBORC (matters beyond our reasonable control) scenarios such as snow, flooding, foot and mouth, security alerts etc.
  • Appointment slot details have not been correctly communicated within our systems
  • This charge does not apply to refused access on fault reports which is covered by Time Related Charges.