Relocating broadband modem within house

[frodofrod]

I need to relocate the internal broadband fibre modem from one room to an adjacent room. The current location is going to become an ensuite so can't contain a powered device. Should be straightforward methinks  -just get in touch with ee and they will arrange it.

Wrong!

When I eventually get to speak to someone who understands what I want done, I'm told that I need to arrange it myself with Openreach and am given a web address for a form to fill in. I'm sceptical of this since normally Openreach only deal with service providers, not end users. but the form exists, and after a few days delay I'm contacted by the Network Rearrangement team, and after some back and forth and paying a fee of approximately £100 direct to a bank account, they send me an appointment for 10 days hence, which was this morning. 

I wait in all day, no engineer arrives, no message. I email the Network Rearrangement team, the only way I have to contact them, no response so far. I try the Openreach chatbot for complaints, and go into a loop of 'you need to contact your service provider -but they aren't involved in this - we only deal with complaints once work is complete(!)'.

Anyone else ever needed to relocate the broadband connection within their house and succeeded? 

[JimM11]

@frodofrod Have you tried the form method again and see if they call or reach out to you!

[XRaySpeX]

Somebody's having you on! As you thought OR only deal with ISPs, not end users. It's for EE to arrange this for you & pass on any charge.

[manatarms84]

Call EE back this is deffo something for them to do, they will book it in with Openreach who then comes out and moves the box if its possible.  There will be a charge for this if you are just asking for it to be moved and there is no technical reason for this.  I know because my Dad had an extension done and got the box moved think he said it was about £90.00 but I'm sure EE will confirm.

[frodofrod]

I think you may be right, I now suspect a scam.

I am pretty well clued up about scams generally, so a bit shocked. My initial conclusion is that someone at ee sent me to a scam website, which is pretty shocking!!!

I'll do some digging to try and retrace my steps in more detail, but here's a summary of what I recall so far

I contacted ee initially, not sure exactly how now, but probably on 15 July via the ee app. After a fair bit of to and fro, I was told that ee could not request this for me and I needed to request direct from openreach, using the form at openreach.my.salesforce-sites.com/form/?NRV  

Looking at this now, I realise it isn't an openreach domain, but as the url came via ee I was not checking it as I normally would. However, this form is linked to from the openreach site page

 https://www.openreach.com/building-developers-and-projects/altering-our-network/for-consumer-and-bus...

which does deal with relocating openreach equipment, so it is I think genuine. 

Anyway, I had a series of emails from Network Rearrangement <network.rearrangement@support.openreach.co.uk> and calls about the request, the sort of stuff you'd expect, then a request for payment of £126.72 to 20-00-00 00835757 which also checked out on my Natwest banking app as Openreach. Once I'd confirmed payment with Network Rearrangement  an appointment was provided for yesterday 11 aug, and confirmed via follow-up phone call.

No engineer arrived, and attempts o contact openreach via email above met no response so far, and contact via the chat app went into a doomloop of 'need to contact via supplier (ie ee).

Next steps:

1 Wait to see if Network Rearrangement get back in touch

2 Get back to ee to ask why they did not order this on my behalf as others have suggested they should. If anyone from ee is monitoring this please contact me!

[XRaySpeX]

Yes, the form's domain, salesforce-sites.com, isn't that of OR's & is registered in Oregon, USA.

The OR page pointing to it is for peeps doing building work needing major changes to major parts of the OR infrastructure.

If nowt happens from OR  within a few days I should put in a Section 75 Chargeback claim for the money.

[frodofrod]

Just had a call from someone at Openreach who seemed to know what was going on. Apologies for the engineer missing the call on Monday, some sort of process problem. Call rescheduled for Friday. Seems like this is a genuine correct route for this sort of move, Maybe recent change in process? Will follow up with ee, it would seem much better for the customer for ee to handle it.