> They know how to play the BT game.

Ever since the introduction of the "Automatic Compensation Scheme" the larger ISPs (zen being one of them, the scheme covers about 80% of UK customers) have had a bigger stick to whack Openreach with as Openreach have to contribute to the payments to end customers. (Some altnets such as CityFibre have also started signing up to the scheme, but iirc CityFibre don't pay per day for faults, only missed appointments and delays to connecting a new line)

One thing ISPs can do (but increases their costs) is increase the service level on your line, standard service is iirc end of 2 full business days, which most residential lines are on. Next level is end of the next working day, next level is end of same day (if reported before 1PM and next day if not) including Sundays/Bank holidays. And the next is 6Hr fix around the clock. But the higher the service level the more the ISP has to pay OR for the line. I can see "more specialised" ISPs such as A&A increasing the service level of the lines but passing that cost on the customer (one of the reasons of their increased cost, but as you said you get what you pay for, though this is just speculation as I have no idea if they actually do, just seems like something they would do - A&A are known not to be fobbed off by Openreach).

However the "Automatic Compensation Scheme" and increased service levels still doesn't stop Openreach taking their time. Recently had an FTTP outage which took a week to clear, Blinking PON, first tech who turned up determined there wasn't an issue between the pole and the premises but as he was "first level support tech" there wasn't much else he could do, he did however call someone at the exchange to poke around which a few things (which he told me was "above that persons pay-grade", so he shouldn't really be doing it but it was worth a shot as its fixed issues in the past) but no dice and the call would have to be escalated (They said it was a one-way light issue).

Next call was a missed appointment, Booked the callout, waited in until an hour after the time, called the number I got on the text and it was the same person as the callout before, OR had screwed up and put it back on his job list instead of escalating it, not the end of the world, just wish they had told me so I didn't waste most of the day waiting for someone who wasn't going to turn up.

3rd call out and this tech re-splices every splice between my house and the exchange, tech told me it was four splices (not including the splice in the "customer service point"). Still no dice. At which point they believe its a problem with a fibre card in the exchange, it will need resetting which they don't want to do in the middle of the day because it will knock everyone connected to it offline while it resets. Fair enough, he tells me they will get it done overnight, next morning still flashing PON, call the number for the 3rd tech and they confirm that the card wasn't reset and they will get it done that night.

Next day, Still Blinking PON, I'm just about to call the tech again (this is about 8am) but as I'm pulling out my phone PON goes static green, I start rebooting and reconfiguring kit (I was using my own 4G back up, I hadn't config'ed auto failback, so was killing one connection and restarting the other) when my phone rings, its the 3rd tech to tell me that they hadn't reset the card overnight again so he did it himself, something he wasn't supposed to do but heck it was getting silly at this point as it had been a week and from his end it was looking like my ONT had connected and was calling to make sure I was connected (which I was).

So even Openreach have to take the advice of the The IT Crowd every once and a while, because it turns out my week long outage was cleared by turning it off and on again.