Driver crashes into telephone pole so no landline or internet

Some idiot drove into telephone pole and knocked it down so several homes without telephone line now including mine.
I was working from home but unable to do so now, so have to travel 55 miles a day to go to work, have had to do this for a week now so not happy. A huge inconvenience in both time and money.
And in my spare time unable to watch you tube on tv and films etc on Amazon Prime.
Am I able to claim damages/compensation from this drivers insurance? Would I contact local police to get these details?

Do you have decent 4G? Managed to work off 4G for a couple of months no bother when our internet was gubbed. Appreciate some folk do have work from home that needs superfast broadband but for general desk jockeying it’s suprising what 4G can do. Cost me £20 a month for unlimited 4G, ended up using 100GB per month

That’s what 3/4/5G dongles are for. I keep an ancient 3G dongle (now on a free contract), so worst case, I can stick it in the front of my PC and carry on working.

Or tether your laptop to your phone – esp if its a company phone!

As above, you only need 2-3mbps up and down even for teams calls, and a remote desktop/citrix/vpn connection.

Yeah go mobile at home for work data, and also enjoy spare time doing/making/enjoying/visiting things (and people and places) IRL that Amazon (sic) Prime Time/youtube etc doesn’t ‘allow’ you to enjoy? Every cloud, etc..

Am I able to claim damages/compensation from this drivers insurance?

I highly doubt it. From your service provider / BT, maybe.

If you’re a home worker and have to attend an office, your employer should be paying you for the mileage.

As others have said: work mobile, Wi-Fi hotspot.

I don’t have a landline on 4g for everything.

Watch netflix n chill n evrythink

Assumes the OP has decent mobile. We’re doing well here to get GPRS on mobile – 1 bar with no data, maybe GPRS if you put the phone on a high shelf in an upstairs room.

No way I’d be looking to do a teams video on that – sending a text message on WhatsApp doesn’t happen when the internet (or power) is down.

Most of the time the FTTP means we don’t notice the lack of mobile signal.

Assumes the OP has decent mobile.

No he doesn’t…..

tomd
Full Member
Do you have decent 4G?

When something similar happened to my dad’s connection except a van took one of the green roadside cabinets clean off so completely wrecking the cabinet, the cable etc.etc) he was given a 4g dongle within about 24 hrs. On the compensation front, as I understand it you should be able to claim £8 a day after the first 48hrs from your ISP for denial of service, whoever is responsible for the outage. We lost our landline/ internet for a month when water got into the connection down the road and it took that long for Openreach and the Council to sort out the traffic management etc. I received 30X£8 in credits for that. I was told by Plusnet to use 4g and a local wi-fi hotspot on the phone. Actually cost me about £35 in data fees.

Was the driver ok ?

I drove a Peugeot 106 into a telephone pole in 1999. Ripped out 5 peoples phone lines. Me and my mate got invited into some lovely ladies house who just had her dressing gown on and a clothes horse full of her “sexy” underwear. She made us sit down and have a cup of tea.

The internet did not exist back then so no issues there.

I never had to pay for the telephone pole.

This post is of no obvious use to you. Apologies.

Was the driver ok ?

Luckily they managed to knock of a cyclist before hitting the pole so not a total loss.

Was the driver ok ?

Exactly this.

The internet did not exist back then so no issues there.

It didn’t?

People weren’t using it like today, 56k dial up and all, but it existed.

Oh the memories…
https://www.considerable.com/home/technology/amazon-apple-yahoo-original-websites/

I take it you have raised a fault… Don’t assume a repair is ongoing just because Openreach have been out (or not) and made the pole safe.

Normally when you are out of service they will repair very quickly, the only real issue is availability of the specialist team for poling. If it’s on a busy road and you don’t have temporary service the normal noticing for roadworks do not apply either.

How is “the idiot”? Whilst he/she/they may not win a driving skills award any time soon, they probably didn’t do it on purpose.  It’s also possible that hitting a pole hard enough to knock it over might result in injuries a little more inconvenient than losing your phone signal for a bit. Life changing even.  Unable to watch Amazon prime you say?

We had a similar thing with green cabinet – it ripped the power out, they put it on batteries for a few weeks, but open reach could predict when the battery would expire and replace it before – so would be out for a few hours every 6-8hrs!
Like somebody said – some people got sims for their mobiles from BT

Am I able to claim damages/compensation from this drivers insurance?

Actually interested in the answer to that – think the phrase is “reasonably forseeable”?

Or do you claim of BT for lack of service and they go after the driver.

And assumes the driver was responsible and didn’t have an unexpected medical episode etc.

in answer to your question OP, will you be able to get compensation off the drivers car insurance – in short no. why would you be able to, you’re not an injured party nor had your property damaged? speak to your ISP is your most likely route under some form of outage clause under your contract with them and see what they can do about restoring connection asap

why would you be able to, you’re not an injured party nor had your property damaged?

If he’s incurred additional costs in order to work, and that would be reasonable foreseeable if you knock out a phone line…..?

Not really relevant but in the STW court of public opinion justice…

Did you decide to live 55 miles from work knowing you would have to go into the office sometimes or has it always been just remote working?