Cowboy Cablers

Wicklowrider

Visited offices of a local Old Age Care group yesterday. I was asked as a favour to try and diagnose a network connection failure on one of their pcs. There are four pc on peer-peer network. Cat 5 cabling was heaped in coils and snaking over the carpet. A health and safety officer would have fit as its an accident waiting to happen. Router and switch heaped in a mess of cabling on the floor behind a filing cabinet. Fault turned out to be connection at skirting board damaged internally. I suspect this could have happened because someone stood on the cable. The people in the office recently paid €3000 for the cabling. Is it me or is this just pure messing? The firm is a local one and up to now I'd have reccomended them based on dealings I had with them years ago.

Also - if you were faced with a situation where cabling wasn't a good option would'nt wireless be the sensible option?

seamus

Wicklowrider wrote: »

Also - if you were faced with a situation where cabling wasn't a good option would'nt wireless be the sensible option?

For a LAN where file-sharing is involved, I wouldn't be rushing to use wireless unless cabling was really not an option, or unless the computers were being moved on a regular basis.

Even if the machines are cabled directly to a switch (as opposed to sockets on the wall) there's no excuse for not running some conduit to keep everything tidy.

If someone was charging me €3k to cable up four computers, I'd expect them to do a nice clean job and replaster & repaint everything afterrwards too!

Capt'n Midnight

:eek: did the 3K include the cost of the computers ?

Seriously did it ?


How could they justify that on a time and materials basis ??

Wicklowrider

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

:eek: did the 3K include the cost of the computers ?

Seriously did it ?


How could they justify that on a time and materials basis ??

The 3K, as far as I could make out from invoice, covered 4 x phones ( cost of phones €390) conduit ( aprx 10 metres) cat 5 cabling and phone cabling.

No drilling, plastering etc. Job was less than 1 day for 1 man.

They were charged extra for setting up the computers which had already been networked in another office.

They were robbed!

Capt'n Midnight

3K and they didn't use cat 5 for the phones ...

ToxicPaddy

Jeez thats brutal.. we have had a lot of structured cabling done in the office over the past 12 months, all very professional, cables ducted, patched to a proper patch panel, labelled, tested etc and came no where near that.,

Any idea who did this? Was it a professional company or some lad chancing his arm?

If it was me, I'd have him back in there sorting it out and if he refuses, legal action would be the next step.

• Take photos of everything
• Document exactly what was agreed workwise
• Document what was not done
• List all health and safety issues, exposed cabling, wires etc

Id say you have a good case for a complete refund of all work carried minus
the cost of the phones.

Tox

Standard Toaster

3k...Jesus H :eek:

roryq

I've seen a lot of these sort of cabling jobs.. Cables ran and taped half way thru the run.. Cables run un-shielded beside power cables. Customers being told cat5 can run for 200m. Hotels were the worst for this.

I would be getting the people back in and ask them to get to certify the cabling.. Anyone good cable engineer will be able to do this.

If it returns a fail get them to re-run or give the money back.

Lot of shabby work out there for a lot of money..