BT Damaged My House, Refuses Any Liability for Damage, Tells Me Sue Their Contractor

[MissHammer]

Living in England, about 6 months ago I joined BT to get full-fibre broadband. When the engineer installed the fibre optic cable through the exterior wall, he SMASHED (not drilled but smashed) a fist sized hole through the roof of my porch. I complained to BT, who put me in contact with their lawyer. After I got in contact with her, she sent me a form to fill in. I filled in the form giving all the details and gave a description of the damage, along with photographs and a quote from a local builder to repair the damage.
I then received and email back from her saying;
"Investigations into this matter have revealed that [Contractor] were working at the incident location at the relevant time. BT is contracted with [Contractor] to carry out works on its behalf. Pursuant to the contract between BT and [Contractor] are required to indemnify BT against claims brought against BT for damages and/or loss and/or injury. Your claim therefore should be dealt with by [Contractor] and/or their insurers. I have forwarded your claim to [Contractor] and asked them to correspond directly with you in relation to your claim. Our file will remain open and we will maintain contact with [Contractor] throughout the claim."
In the weeks since, I have (of course) received no communication from [Contractor]

My questions are;
(1) I only have a contract with BT, never having heard of [Contractor] until now, and indeed, have only BT's word that the engineer really was working for [Contractor]. Is it not BT that bears the responsibility of any damage anyone working for them does to my property, contractor or not?

(2) If the answer to (1) is yes, is BT's lawyer breaking any laws by falsely telling me BT is not liable, and, if so, to what professional body do I complain about this?

(3) What should be my next step?

[R0b]

(1) You are right, your contract is with BT and therefore it is BT that should be dealing with your claim. Their lawyer who has sent you that email is simply trying to pass the buck and if they choose to sub-contract their work out to a third party, that does not absolve them of liability. The reference to an indemnity is between themselves and the contractor and has nothing to do with you.

(2) I wouldn't say that the lawyer is breaking any laws or code of conduct as such, they are merely trying to palm you off to their contractor to deal with the claim rather than themselves.

(3) You have a couple of options, either try to deal with the contractor directly which could be a right royal pain in the backside especially if insurers get involved or you can send a letter before action to BT to the lawyer who emailed you and hold them directly responsible, or you could send a letter before action to the contractor as well and then issue proceedings jointly against BT and the contractor to maximise your opportunity of success by either winning at a hearing or settling the claim.

Do be careful who you issue a claim against with BT as they have many companies within their group and if you issue a claim against the wrong or incorrect BT entity, you will lose or have to forfeit some of your claim to then pay for applications to amend the correct BT name you are claiming against. Looking at their latest terms and conditions, you are contracting with British Telecommunications PLC of 1 Braham Street, London, E1 8EE with company number 1800000.

Feel free to post up any letter before action drat if you want feedback.

[MissHammer]

(1)
Do be careful who you issue a claim against with BT as they have many companies within their group and if you issue a claim against the wrong or incorrect BT entity, you will lose or have to forfeit some of your claim to then pay for applications to amend the correct BT name you are claiming against. Looking at their latest terms and conditions, you are contracting with British Telecommunications PLC of 1 Braham Street, London, E1 8EE with company number 1800000.

Thank you for your answer.
As I understand it;
(1) I entered a contract with BT (presumably British Telecommunications PLC) via a phone call, calling a number from BT.com to supply fibre internet & phone to my house.
(2) BT then contracted with BT Openreach to do the work of running fibre to my house.
(3) BT Openreach then contracted with the contractor MJ Quinn to do the work.
(4) An engineer call 'Connor' who turned up in BT Openreach marked van, did "the worst install we've ever seen" (a quote from BT engineers who came to fix the fibre line - they took a picture to show their co-workers), strewed rubbish all over my driveway, didn't make sure the line actually worked, and drove off before I could go outside and see the damage. The line didn't work for almost 4 months and took over 10 BT engineer visits to finally fix - the problem was finally traced to 'Connor''s very poor fibre optic splice.

So should I just press BT and,if they don't respond, make a 'letter before action' (what exactly is this?) and then if necessary a small claims court action?
What are the advantages and disadvantages of going after both BT Openreach and MJ Quinn as well?

Can I also claim extra money for the many, many hours I've spent trying to get this problem fixed?

[R0b]

Your contract is with BT Plc so the general rule is that it is the service provider you take action against. It is irrelevant as to whether BT subcontracted the work out to someone else to do the work on their behalf, as I said that is their problem not yours. However, given that they have named the contractor who did the work you could if you wanted to, join them as a defendant for negligence and damage to property. The reason you might want to do this is if the judge finds that you can't for some reason (a reason I would find very hard to believe) claim from BT, then your fallback would be to claim against MJ Quinn. It means you don't have to issue a separate claim against MJ Quinn and go through the whole legal process again.

In this situation, I would suggest you go back to the BT lawyer and say that you've attempted to contact MJ Quinn without any response but in any event, your contract is with BT Plc and so they are responsible to you for the damage caused. It does not matter whether BT's obligations to supply a telephone and broadband line is sub-contracted to a third party, you have no relationship with them only BT. On that basis you expect them to make prompt arrangements to either repair the damage or pay you the sum of money required to get someone else to repair it. If you don't have a response within the next 7 days then the next step is a letter before action with a view to issuing legal proceedings.

On a separate point, have you considered whether you are eligible for automatic compensation if you have had a loss of service for 4 months? It was something introduced by OFCOM and there's more information here (click link).

Claiming back costs for wasted time is usually reserved for business staff costs being diverted but for individuals such as ourselves, you are not normally entitled to claim back wasted costs as a legal remedy unless for example you have suffered loss of time off work or something like that. You may try, but you would have to justify the legal basis for doing so.