BT/Open reach £30 to cancel contract

[postggj]

like most people my phone and broadband cost is going up and up.

My contract with BT ends in february and i have decided to cancel and go to virgin media.

 

After contacting BT today to give advance notice (30 days) they informed me i would be subject to a charge of £30 to end my service. when i pusherd this with the BT customer agent, she informed me this fee woulld be deleted if i was only transfering my service to another provider.

 

they said this £30 fee to totally cancel was not through a contract with BT, but open reach (a BT group company)

 

This seems an unfair term if true, and any ideas on this rouse of a contract with open reach and not BT

[IdaInFife]

not normally that i am aware of

 

if you are outwith or within your min term but reaching 30 days before the end there is not normally any cancellation charge.

 

Are you sure you are outwith your min term for broadband and line rental?

 

do you know what tariff you are on?

[Synergist]

£30 sounds quite like a disconnection fee, not a service cancellation fee. You want to avoid physical disconnect at ALL costs because you'll then need to spend £70 (or more) getting a new line connection when normally a migration leaves the line active and just transfers billing duties over to another provider (unless you move to an LLU provider who has their own equipment in the exchange alongside Openreach's gear, but that's outside the scope of this question). This now-common practice is called Carrier Pre-Select (CPS) billing.

 

Probably a combination of poorly understood (or vaguely asked) question, poorly informed rep and inadequately explained options. If you've reached the end of your contract period, and BT haven't automatically rolled you over onto another contract without even asking -- which they're known to do -- it shouldn't cost you ANYTHING. £30 sounds suspiciously like either two months' line rental or a month's line rental and broadband.

 

By the way, whatever you do DON'T GET VIRGIN MEDIA ADSL. If you're in a cabled area, fine - be aware they're no better or worse than BT for the most part - but their ADSL is hands down one of the, if not THE, worst ADSL offering in the UK. It's the rare trifecta of dismal speed, dismal customer service and dismal price.

[locutus]

In BT Broadbands Terms And Conditions

 

It states in the Ending your service section:

As a condition of our service, you must, when you end your broadband service request and use a migration authorisation code (MAC) or another recognised transfer process to move to another service provider. If in breach of this condition you do not do this you will have to pay a broadband cease charge of £30 by way of compensation to us. You will not have to pay this charge in the event you are moving home and we are unable to provide the service at the new UK address. For more information go to http://www.bt.com/ceasecharge. This charge is compensatory and is not subject to VAT.

[Synergist]

That's a dirty piece of smallprint. Feels like it should be ruled as contravening statutory consumer rights, I'd be interested to see if anyone's succesfully challenged this charge as it seems entirely punitive and simply there to dissuade customers from leaving. I'd have half a mind to send written notice to BT customer services notifying them of your cancellation given contract ending and your refusal to accept the £30 charge unless someone can provide adequate justification for the charge.

 

In the meantime, I'd stop any Direct Debit or Standing Order as soon as you've provided notification of intent to cancel! Watch them try and take payment then.

[locutus]

Aparently it is to recompense them for disconnecting your line from the broadband server. (Like BT doesn't add enough profit to their prices in the 1st place!)

 

I believe BT has started recording on credit files (from another thread I have read in this forum) so not paying is possibly going to do more harm than good considering this is over £30

 

I would personally pay, then complain about this to BT. If you follow the BT complaints code to its conclusion it will cost BT more than the £30 anyway, so it would work out better for them to just return the £30 to ya... Take a read HERE

[ericsbrother]

Make sure that your transfer to another provider is in place when you cancel your subscription. BT will then give them a MAC code-they have to otherwise OFCOM will bite their bum. You will then avoid this fee. I suspect BT do this to stop people just buying better deals elsewhere and not giving them notice. they normally bombard you with marketing when they hear you are off to pastures new.

[locutus]

You cannot use the MAC process to move to cable.

[MaxxPower]

This is a normal thing. You're having your phone and ADSL completely disconnected and moving to a Cable provider which is on a totally separate infrastructure, that is what the charge is for and why there's no charge if you were simply moving to another provider such as Talk Talk or Sky.

It's not only BT that charge this. All providers using the BT infrastructure will likely apply this charge, though possibly at varying amounts.

[Surfer01]

This has been in place for 2 - 3 years and Plus net charge the same. No charge if moving to another provider, but not sure about changing to cable. Seems to be a very unfair charge as basically you are paying to stop a service! Totally unheard of except with BT!

[locutus]

I will soon see if TalkTalk add this fee as I am canceling my line with them next month... I shall post here when I know for sure if there is a fee with TalkTalk, but I can give a 100% guarantee I shall not pay it... I will expect it to be wiped as a gesture of goodwill after I complain

[Surfer01]

I will soon see if TalkTalk add this fee as I am canceling my line with them next month... I shall post here when I know for sure if there is a fee with TalkTalk, but I can give a 100% guarantee I shall not pay it... I will expect it to be wiped as a gesture of goodwill after I complain

It is apparently OpenReach that is imposing the £30 fee which BT is passing on so my guess is that it would apply to any provider. Isn't Openreach part of BT?

[MaxxPower]

It is apparently OpenReach that is imposing the £30 fee which BT is passing on so my guess is that it would apply to any provider. Isn't Openreach part of BT?

 

I think the answer is both yes and no. They're a part of BT, but also a separate entity as well as I understand it.

[locutus]

BT PLC was split into several companies by the monopoly and mergers commission, but the chain as far as we are concerned is

 

BT Retail (who you and I deal with)

 

BT Wholesale (who companies like plus.net and BT retail deal with, so all companies can offer a similar service... IE BT Retail gets no preference over a TalkTalk or Sky customer.)

 

BT Openreach (who do the physical work)

 

 

Now it would sound paranoid of me to say BT were levying charges further down the chain so they could profit from the customers using a BT line but a different provider wouldn't it?....