Sky to Plusnet

The deal I've found with Plusnet expires tomorrow and having done a dummy run through the order a day or so ago found I could save myself a couple of quid even if I applied before my Sky contract expired.

Imagine my annoyance when I went to complete the order today and they wacked another £50 on for swapping Sky to BT network. I am sure this didn't show up a few days ago.

There was some talk about a charge being levied for customers moving to Sky from BT a while back, but I can't find the thread.

What are the actual rules? I don't think anyone could establish them in the previous threads.

I feel a move to Origin will be on the cards.

Edited by hk11 (Mon 23-Oct-17 18:40:20)

It should be £30 which is a cease charge and can be levied when moving from BT to LLU

Edited by deleted (Tue 24-Oct-17 10:06:00)

Isn't any move classed as a migration?

apparently not as with LLU it is often classed as a cease and reprovide

Incorrect, its classed as a migration, only if gaining provider screws up ordering does a cease charge get raised and down to gaining provider to admit their mistake internally and swallow the charge.

If the person has ordered and said they need a new line then charges may be different, but switching should not need a new line usually

I suggest reading this thread https://community.plus.net/t5/My-Account-Billing/Plu... which basically says in post 4

The cease fee is related to the type of order the gaining provider places and is directly related to whether we get charged a wholesale cease fee or not. If the gaining provider places the orders and the cease code is W or P then they are the ones we charge for.

Guess I've just been lucky when flipping between providers doing LLU to WLR and back every 12 to 18 months then.

Oddly this only seems to show up with PlusNet, others absorbing the charge rather than putting customers off maybe?

Given the numbers of people attracted to LLU deals you'd expect to see a lot more of these cropping up if it was totally normal.

It does seem that only Plusnet do it as I haven't heard of others complaining

I had the same issue a few months ago when trying to move from Plusnet to Sky. Sky's web-site suddenly added an extra charge that had not been there when, like you, I did a dummy run. I abandoned the move to Sky and went to Origin instead.
The resulting mess took a month to sort out as Plusnet had instantly placed a cease order on my line in anticipation of the move to Sky. That stopped Origin taking it for several weeks. Plusnet refused to accept that the order was placed by them, that it was their fault or that they could simply withdraw the cease order.
I found the Ofcom rules by googling, which is how I established who was responsible for the mess. Sorry I don't have a link to the document but it is called 'Ofcom - Cross-Platform Switching - EMP Back-End Process Use Cases' and goes through various switching scenarios.
My move to Origin has been a disaster in more ways than that, though. My line now connects at only 50% of the speed it did when with Plusnet. On top of that I've experienced periods of several hours when my router could not be logged in at all, resulting in no internet, even though the ADSL was connected. Sometimes when it is 'working' the internet speed (tested with Think Broadband) is as low as 300kb/s on a line capable of 12Mb/s, making video watching utterly impossible.
Origin have not responded to my e-mail complaint either and phoning them is a nightmare (though not quite as bad as with Plusnet).

In reply to a post by Oldjim:

It should be £30 which is a cease charge and can be levied when moving from BT to LLU

That was what it was reported to be when I left Plusnet, but the "new" charge is def £50.

Apparently it only costs Plusnet £11 plus VAT, so £50 is crazy!