Property damage by VM technician

[Deb7]

Any advice PLEASE

I had a VM technician visit to move my hub to enable me to attach the new phone connection to the hub, the hub was open where near the phone, on 15/9/23.  Yesterday my Internet stopped working so I moved furniture to make sure all the connections were secure and discovered a huge wet patch on my carpet.

It turns out that when the technician screwed the new connection to the skirting board he has screwed a long screw right through the water pipe from the radiator which runs behind the skirting.  He has screwed it right in line with the pipe, almost as though he was aiming for it!

VM will take jo responsibility for this, the person in the complaints department virtually blaming me  for not supervising him doing his job, which I assume he has had training for, and they will not provide any compensation for damage to my property (pipe, skirting, carpet, damp smelly living room) caused by their incompetent technician who I was expected to supervise.

I now have no hot water, no heating as the leak from the pipe has reduced the pressure in the heating system and none of this will work.

I arranged for a VM technician to provide a service and as so expect them  to be able to competently carry out the job without damaging my property, it is NOT the customers responsibility to supervise the work of VM employees.

Any advice would be welcomed.

Thank you

[goslow]

In similar past topics, which have been described on here, VM may engage the customer back and forward in communication over a long period of time. A repair contractor may even come out to look at the work but not much fixing seems to happen very quickly based on these past topics..

VM has a duty to provide services with reasonable care and skill so speak to Citizens Advice on how to proceed.

https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/about-us/contact-us/contact-us/contact-us/

You should get a reply from VM on here but it could be in several days time and even then it will be to relay the information onwards.

[Akua_A]

Hi @Deb7 

Welcome to our community forums and thank you for your first posts.

Sorry to hear you have had damage done to your home during an installation. This is certainly not the level of service we look to provide and we want to want to do our best to help. To best investigate this, I have sent you a private message. Please keep an eye out for an envelope at the top right corner of your Forum page. Let me know if you have any issues locating this.

Thanks,

[-tony-]

expect nothing meaningful other that the above from VM and you wont be disappointed - they are likely to run you round in circles hoping you get fed up and go away

speak to your house insurers - they may help otherwise you are on your own certainly in the short term

[asim18]

I would have assumed VM's employees would be insured against damaging people's properties.

This should really be a 12-24 hour case, from initial logging to full resolution.

If I, or one of my employees made such a mistake I would have immediately contracted some builders to fix the mistake! But I'm guessing VM would rather put the money towards the CEO's next ferrari rather than fixing the damage they've done.