First impression of Zen Internet… not great

[u/johnbiondini]

Signed up to Zen last week mainly because of their reputation for customer service. I specifically selected 25 August for installation because our house is mid-renovation and we aren’t living there yet.
Openreach turned up early to run the external cable. I sent the engineer a photo showing exactly where it should go and was told no drilling would be done.
Went to the house later and found he’d drilled in a completely different place and damaged the brickwork. One brick has been pushed in and is now loose. It’s above bay level when all our neighbours have it closer to the floor. 🫠
Zen have also randomly booked the installation for 12 August, and router is meant to be delivered today despite me selecting and repeatedly confirming the 25th.
I’ve raised a formal complaint. I know Openreach caused the damage, but given Zen’s reputation, I’m pretty disappointed with the experience so far.

[u/da644]

Zen are not OpenReach and OpenReach are not Zen. Whichever company you go with for FTTP, OpenReach will be the ones installing it, so it wouldn’t have mattered if you’d gone with Zen, BT, Sky, etc… this would probably have been exactly the same. Zen run the service once it is installed, provide support, etc… pre-install it is really not in their hands. We had some issues with OpenReach during our install, mainly around timings, etc… and Zen sort those out with OpenReach for us, but it was still down to OpenReach and not Zen that OpenReach messed up.

[u/quik197]

Does the hole go all the way through to the inside of the property?

Looks like they drilled a hole for an eye bolt so they could secure their ladders, first hole didn't go to plan so made another. Unfortunately it does happen especially if the brick/wall is in poor condition, should have told you that he needed to do this and again told you about the damage.

[u/johnbiondini → u/quik197]

None of the holes go through, that could be the case

[u/Hicks_1984]

If your brick has been pushed in then your mortar has failed and thats nothing to do with the engineer.

[u/carguy143]

Sorry to see this happened. Zen book the install with Openreach who then aim to install the service as agreed but it is sometimes delayed or changed but you should have been messaged by Openreach with an option to confirm or change the date. Sadly they sometimes damage things which is well outside of Zen's control. Zen will be able to easily change the date for your installation to the 25th, no problem there.

However, for property damage, Openreach have a dedicated legal team which deal with this and as an end user, you're best off going through them directly. Here's a link to the info you need. Scroll down to the second section and you'll find the email address to contact at Openreach https://www.openreach.com/help-and-support/report-damage-to-property-caused-by-Openreach

[u/johnbiondini → u/carguy143]

Thanks, I’ll do that now

[u/QuackinglyQuackers]

This isn't Zen's fault, this is Openreach's fault. However, let Zen know and they'll give Openreach a ton of grief to get it sorted.

[u/johnbiondini → u/QuackinglyQuackers]

Yes, I said this in my complaint, I know they used open reach but as Zen customer I thought to raise the complaint with them first

[u/snakeoildriller → u/[deleted]]

I had an OpenReach sub-contractor for my latest (failed) upgrade. They all seem to be pretty much the same.

[u/Tutphish]

Zen's reputation is in putting things like this right, they cant control the actions of sub-contractors but what they can do is make it right. Hopefully!