Chorus Vandalism

mathias

Chorus have just made a very angry person out of me in the last hour , I work nights and these guys just woke me up drilling bloody big holes into my house !!

I go outside and theres two guys drilling away at the fascias that I just spent a few hundred euros having replaced. They said they got persmission !!

Well not from me they didnt , no notice ,nothing , no one called around to ask if they could rip up my fascias and hang their thick black ugly cable off it.

I told them to stop , and called their office , and called the Guards , just who the hell do they think they are coming on to private property and wrecking my home improvements ?

I am outraged , I will be taking whatever steps are necessary to have the damage repaired and getting the costs back from chorus , and if they want to run their cables across my house , they will approach me properly and we will discuss how they are going to do it without damage.

The Cheek of them , has anyone else had this issue ?

bibibobo

I would get a solicitor onboard asap.
Furthermore, i have heard of people refusing to allow services such as NTL to cross their house at the facia soffits.

Bazzy

check the deeds on your house they may be well within there right to do it not drilling in like that but they may legally be allowed run a cable

mathias

check the deeds on your house they may be well within there right to do it not drilling in like that but they may legally be allowed run a cable

This is a private estate and always has been , under no circumstances is anyone allowed to install anything without the owners permission , they most certainly are not allowed to drill into my house without my permission ,

They will be taking that eyesore of the white fascia l just spent money having done , and they will be replacing the section that they damaged , and I'll be taking them to court if I have too.

bibibobo

mathias wrote:

This is a private estate and always has been , under no circumstances is anyone allowed to install anything without the owners permission , they most certainly are not allowed to drill into my house without my permission ,

They will be taking that eyesore of the white fascia l just spent money having done , and they will be replacing the section that they damaged , and I'll be taking them to court if I have too.

be sure to take plenty of photos and keep a detailed record of times and events to back your case up.

Sponge Bob

was there a cable there before you changed the fascia ?

how long have you been in that house ??

mathias

Makes no difference , its my property ,

but FYI there was no cable , as a matter of fact the only real option for this estate has always been sky or your own aerial

byte

Moved to Cable forum

TVDX

So to clarify, did you ring them to get Chorus in?
Or did someone else in the house ring for them to come and install.
It isn't right what they did but it is not unheard of.
If you fall behind in payments it isn't unknown that they will come unannounced and take mmds aerials down.

The tax man

mathias wrote:

Makes no difference , its my property ,

but FYI there was no cable , as a matter of fact the only real option for this estate has always been sky or your own aerial

Would I be right in thinking that you're not a Chorus customer,if there was no cable across your house in the first place??

mathias

Just to clarify , I am not now nor have I ever been a chorus customer , or Ntl for that matter , these guys just took it upon themselves to come onto my property and start drilling holes in my house.

Got information back from the Guards earlier on , unless they had express written permission , what they did was criminal damage and have asked me if I want to press charges , I do !

I'm pushing this all the way.

No one from chorus approached me about this ever , they just brought their ladders in and proceeded to drill into my new Fascias , needless to say , my solicitor is involved now as well , we have an appointment with the NTL supervisor and my solicitor at 3 on Monday.

The nerve of these guys to just come onto my property and start drilling , its outrageous.

If they had asked before they just drilled into the house , we could have come to some arrangement , but no way is it OK for them to just trespass and do what they did.

TVDX

I can't believe they came on to the property like that without anyone calling them asking to install the service.
Keep us up to date on this, I'm bookmarking this thread.

yayamark

Jesus i hate chorus, everything about them sucks.

my broadband has been down for last 2 days rang chorus friday to ask why.
"no reason, a tech will ring u."

Rang back 4 hours later.

"oh, he will ring u shortly now"

Still no answer, my bb is working now but thats not the point, poor poor service.

delly

Jesus, I can't believe they just went ahead without even knocking on the door. If this was me, I'd probably be having the same feelings as you mathias. While I am a Chorus subscriber and have never had any problems with them, this type of property damage needs to be taken as far as possible to make them understand how much of a violation it is to mess with someones house without permission.

steveon

As a former installer for Chorus mathias I can tell you that Chorus cannot install, run or enter your property without your written permission and they have to follow any instructions, and agreements with you to the T.

I am horrified to have read what they have done to you, and I wish you the best of luck in getting it sorted. They usually dont install Cabling systems anymore due to cost, so where are you living as coming across your property must be of some beneficial cost to them. In your consultation with them you should demand a free service somewhere in your house, they usually offer upto 3 years but stand firm and you will get longer.

My advice as always is get everything in writing and secure the document for future negotiations as I know people who had similar problems in the past with Chorus previous company owners here in Limerick such as westward cables and horizon multichannel ..

Best of luck..
Keep us informed of your progress.
Steve

Solair

Seems like these guys need a major dose of community relations training!
That's crazy.

Fair enough if it's emergency repairs to existing cable. But, that is nonsense.

We had major issues with chorus contractors in Cork (we were customers at the time). They walked on slate roofing without using roof ladders and did serious damage.

All points to complete lack of training.

Also, I can't see why NTL/Chorus and other cable companies cant be given rights to share poles and ducts with eircom. It seems reasonable that any telecommunications infrastructure could be run along them. E.g. you could have the mainline cable run along the eircom poles, then just do thinner coax drops into houses, they wouldn't necessarily even have to go overhead. Just down the side of the pole and shallow buried in the garden.

Even if it were only used where a householder specifically didn't want the cables on their property. They could hop out onto the telephone poles and back in again.

It's also got to be made manditory that newly built housing developments get essential services pre-wired in.

i.e. ESB, Gas Water (already must go in)

But also eircom (as it gives access to a plethera of other providers over the telephone wires), local licenced cable operator (broadband possibilities/phone etc) and a duct system for any future options e.g. new cable companies etc the likes of smart, magnet etc should they want to come on board.

It's madness giving Smart/Magnet exclusive access and creating little mini-monopolies.

steveon

To be fair to Chorus they carry a strict no roof no ladder rule, so any contractor carrying out any work on a roof without one serves the risk of getting sack or warned against it if caught. They regularly followed us around and took photos to prove to their insurers of safety measure been taking whilst working at heights.

Chorus also have pre-wired a lot of estates in ducts also used by the telecoms industry but in most cases they are separated.They usually only wire a home with one cable however. They have stopped pre-wiring homes underground due to vandalism, and illegal theft of service. Also a lot of older underground installations were poorly carried out and 50hz cabling was used, often a white colour around Limerick and this cannot be changed easily to upgrade the service to Digital.

As a result of this they decided to use the MMDS system as a cheaper alternative, something I personally feel they will regret in time, especially as newer homes are built with no chimneys and Large pole up to 15ft being used are ugly and put people off from connecting to them.

I totally agree that every provider should be forced to use the same duct, I think this is the way it's carried out in most parts of the UK. I think everyone needs to work together and hide as many cables as possible with the ability to easily upgrade as who knows what the future holds.

Sponge Bob

The "common ducting" issue is a gross failure of government policy.

Their own civil servants told them to install common ducting in jan or feb 2002 . This would have not required laws, merely a ministerial order re the plannning regs and the building regs from environment.

Since then the environment ministers dempsey cullen and roche have done nothing to change the planning and build regs and at least 400000 homes, nearly a quarter of the national stock, could have had these ducts had they acted.

Back to the original issue. If Chorus NEVER had cable on your house ...and you never told us when it was built and whether you always lived there .....and never sought and got permission to install it in the form of a wayleave then they have trespassed and criminally damaged your property.

I would not put it past them to claim they have a wayleave ....by forging one .

Then again there may be a wayleave.

mathias

Well, unsurprisingly , the solicitor showed up yesterday but the chorus rep did not ,( so now , no amiable settlement ) , lots of official photos taken , with the guards present , proceedings have now officially started to recover the costs of having my fascias replaced where they drilled into them.

So the case is on , for the criminal damage , thats been instigated too , but I cant get any feedback on that , its a matter for the Gardai.

zilog_jones

Good luck with this - I hope those shítehawks pay! I've heard of stuff like this happening before around here, but not where there wasn't already cable there.

AFAIK in Limerick there's a lot of underground cabling, but on any terraced or semi-detached street they just stick it under/in the fascias or along the front of the houses somewhere.

steveon

Cant say Im one bit surprised of lack of representations of chorus, I'm delighted to see your not like most people who would just accept whatever chorus throws at them and its about time someone took the necessary steps to put them in their place.

Well done Matt and best of luck and I wish you a speedy remedy and solution to your problem

lucernarian

I really hope that Chorus get their comeuppance by this. And they still haven't contacted you??

paulm17781

Any update on this?

Victor

There may also be a planning issue - many councils won't accept overground cables these days.

localhothead

may thanks for the info .