Leaving ISP for another: has ISP the right to levy charges?

Under Ofcom's new rules for migrating to a different ISP for broadband services, I've now arranged a move, and the technical changes by Openreach for that will happen, so I'm told by the gaining ISP, in 10 days from now. It'll include swapping to FTTC from ADSL, as well as the new FTTC service becoming an annual contract.

I expected to hear from the losing ISP but after not getting any reaction decided to inform the current (losing ISP) myself instead, which I duly did by e-mail. They've since agreed that the current ADSL account with them will be terminated on the required date.

I've been with the losing ISP for a good many years and so lost touch with their T&Cs, so have just looked them up. Aside from the fact that the T&Cs refer throughout to MAC codes and also seem to presume that all BB accounts are annual ones, I was horrified to see the following terms relating to cancellation of accounts (I've selected the relevant bits):

"All Services including Broadband & Telephone Line cancellations & outbound migrations during the contract term will incur a cancellation penalty charged at 100% of the monthly recurring charge for each remaining month of the contract period plus £85.10 + VAT to cover XXXXXXX's liabilities to third party providers.

Any Broadband Service which is terminated is subject to a cessation charge of £31.12 + VAT, payable prior to the termination.

We will allow you to migrate away or cancel your service upon expiry of the contract term and upon settlement of all outstanding charges.

We will allow you to migrate away your Broadband and/or telephone Service(s) to another service provider or cancel services entirely during your contract period but you will be liable for cancellation charges.

This Contract may be terminated by either party on giving at least 30 day’s notice to the other expiring on the last day of the minimum Contract term or at any time thereafter. If XXXXXXX gives notice you shall pay all charges up to the expiry of the notice. If you give notice, you shall pay all charges until 30 days after the date XXXXXXX receives the notice or until expiry of the notice, whichever is the latter. Your notice does not avoid any other liability for Service already provided."

Any notice of termination of service must comply with XXXXXXX and be in writing including your account username, name & address sent by either royal mail first or second class to xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx. Xxxxxx will not accept telephone or email terminations as identity & delivery cannot be guaranteed.

In the context of my move to an alternative ISP, are these conditions, and therefore exit charges, valid? I thought that migration was free, under the new Ofcom rules? Does the losing ISP have the right to charge me £85 + VAT, plus a further £31 + VAT, because I have decided to move to a different service provider? Because, like many BB users, I pay my monthly fees to them by direct debit (and in advance), they would have the means to extract these charges via that DD.

As it stands at present, the losing ISP isn't being co-operative over the cancelling of the DD in due course. They use an agent to deal with users' monthly/annual payments and claim that they have no mechanism for requesting the agent to stop taking the direct debits from the requisite date. This is clearly nonsense, as the very least they have is a telephone or e-mail with which to do it. Unfortunately, the agent's website has no means for end-customers like me to contact them, only businesses. I'm presuming, anyway, that the regular DD could only be stopped by the ISP requesting the agent to do so, not me. I think my bank would say the same.

I've asked the losing ISP to inform me of any outstanding payments/fees due, but they've not commented to me at all in that respect.

Edited by deleted (Tue 24-Jan-17 15:45:33)

Short answer - yes they can if it is in your Ts&Cs.

However, you should be in a rolling monthly minimum term if you haven't had any special deals or recontracted in the last year so the per month fee for remaining contract should not be relevant.

The £31 according to those terms should only be charged if you cease your broadband not if you migrate. BT charge for a cease. This does get slightly confused if you are migrating to/from an LLU provider as there can be a cease charge levied on the previous provider by BT.

Has the ISP actually told you there are going to be charges? From what you have said I assume they haven't.

When you informed the old provider you were very clear you were migrating the account and not ceasing it? If you said you were ceasing then they may well terminate your circuit, charge you a fee and you will be left with no service to migrate requiring you to start from scratch with a new ISP. If you told them you were migrating then all is more than likely going to be fine.

But, surely if Ofcom have set those rules then every ISP has to cooperate by them otherwise they'd be breaking them. Or, are Ofcom now taking a back seat and just allowing ISP's do what they like? I'd hope and think not.

Edited by deleted (Tue 24-Jan-17 16:02:06)

I am not aware of any Ofcom rule that says a provider cannot charge you for leaving them, especially if you are in a minimum contract term. The provider can't stop you from leaving but I believe they can levy charges which are owed under their Ts&Cs.

Edited by ian72 (Tue 24-Jan-17 16:13:26)

Wow, thanks for the prompt response, ian72.

"yes they can if it is in your Ts&Cs".

Hmm, okay. I interpret your second paragraph to mean that if termination occurs part way through a month, say, they'd require to be paid in settlement for the whole of that month. No other services are being provided at present, BTW. If so, then that would not seem unreasonable. I've already told them that I'm perfectly willing to pay the ending month in full, even offering to pay them by cheque if necessary, but they've declined to comment.

When I contacted them about the move I specifically used the phraseology "terminate my ADSL account, including the e-mail service". I deliberately avoided the term "cease", because as you say that means something different. They admitted they'd seen new information on the so-called tags checker.

So, the answer to your question is No, they've not as yet told me there are going to be charges, but I'd have thought that the least they would have mentioned would be a need to settle a full month's payment (if you see what I mean). Instead, silence.

I hope you're correct and that the lack of co-operation from them at present isn't an indicator of something more foreboding.

Incidentally, do you think I'm correct about the DD mechanism - that it's up to them to cancel the arrangement, not me? If me, how do I do it?

Edited by deleted (Tue 24-Jan-17 16:15:44)

Ideally you wouldn't say terminate either - it is normally easiest if you don't talk to them at all but if you do only ever say migrate not cease or terminate.

Normal notice would be 30 days and so at the least you would expect to pay 30 days notice period (not just the remained of the month) but some ISPs only charge up to the cease date.

Some info on ISP Review as to the process (I am assuming their info is correct) here.

Step 6 of the new process:

6. The losing provider sends out a similar switching letter to the customer, albeit one that includes information about any exit fees or other issues that may impact your service (e.g. the possible need to return your old ISPs bundled broadband router)

However, the process may not apply to your ISP who I am guessing is Vispa - I am not 100% sure if the Ofcom code covered ALL ISPs or just the major ones.

Yes, I'd already seen that ISP-Review article and ISP-Review's published procedure. As the end-customer, I tried to follow that procedure but the latter broke down because, after requesting the gaining ISP for an account and being subsequently supplied with the changeover date and other pertinent information, I then heard absolutely nothing from the losing ISP. Time being of the essence, I wasn't just going to wait around, and after consulting the gaining ISP and them saying that there was nothing in the new rules stipulating that they had to officially inform the losing ISP, I decided to take the initiative and notify the losing ISP myself.

It might be that the losing ISP's T&Cs are outdated and no longer have any weight, but if so why are they still being displayed on their website? If those T&Cs are at all still relevant, then I suppose I should have given the losing ISP at least one month's notice of my intention. However, there's no mention in Ofcom's rules about needing to do that. It's all supposed to be a process that should not take more than 10 days to complete.

It seems to me that there's still considerable confusion among ISPs and users alike over the new migration rules. It's been over 18 months now since they were introduced by Ofcom. Among ISPs, can't see why there should be any exemptions from the rules. The idea was to make for easier migration and greater clarity, but exemptions would surely mitigate against that?

When you said you heard nothing, did the gaining ISP actually place the order as a migration? If they did not then this can cause confusion.

Also how long between ordering and contacting the losing ISP was there?

It is likely that your contact has set the wheels in motion for a cease, and thus triggers the page leaving fee clauses (which are allowed), the ideal would have been to chase the gaining ISP to discover why they've informed the losing provider (in a number of cases this has been down to them doing something funky with the orders)

I can't be 100% certain of that, for obvious reasons. In my ordering placed with the gaining ISP, I pointed out who my existing ISP was and that my account with that ISP would be ceasing from (more or less) the end of January (the new service is due to go live on 3rd February). Other emails have gone between me and the gainer in the meantime, with me often mentioning migration, so I've assumed that the gainer has understood that it is indeed migration and not a total take-down of the entire connection. The gainer has apparently been using the 'tag information'.

There were approximately 4 days between ordering and my contacting the loser. I only did the latter because, in my interpretation of the Ofcom rules, I'd expected the gainer to contact the loser instead. But on that 4th day the gainer told me that they were not obliged to do that.

I'll now double-check that the gainer has put through the correct sort of order, but I suspect they have.

Aha

a) No need to point out who the old provider is, the systems handle all this
b) Mentioning old ISP was ceasing, may have led them to order a provide rather than a migration
c) If things started of as a cease, switching to migration is difficult, only safe route at that point is cancel everything and stay with existing provider and hope the cease does not actually happen, i.e. gets cancelled
d) Who was the gainer, as if this is a migration that is between two services where standard migration rules apply then they are meant to submit things as a migration to the wholesaler thus triggering the migration mechanism.
e) If gainer had just through a migration, wholesaler would have been notified and a contact to the losing ISP made (retailer ISP may be unaware of who this is at all) and the loser would notifty, usually within a few days, so it may be that 4 days was too soon to panic, but panicking has caused issues.

I've avoided saying who the ISPs involved are because, who knows, they each might end up doing the right thing in the end. I've no desire to tarnish their reputations, only to describe what's actually happened thus far. Perhaps all I should say is that the gaining ISP is a well-known independently-run one, with a very good reputation, and which runs from offices in Herts. It's not one of the huge players.

To double-check, I've now e-mailed the gainer to make it absolutely clear that it's a migration that I ordered, not a cease-and-provide.

Yeh, the terminology here can definitely cause confusion. Although I was aware from the outset not to give any instruction to the loser to cease the line connection (rather, to terminate or cease the account, and that I'd be transferring to another ISP), as you can see it's all too easy to end up using the word "cease", even though meant in a different way. As I understand it, the loser should specifically ask me, once they hear from the gainer, whether the change is in accordance with my requirements. Clearly, that's useful in preventing misunderstandings from happening. But that's not happened thus far.

In an e-mail reply to me the other day, the gainer told me that the loser normally sees the proposed new tag and so there's no need to formally notify the loser of the pending change. The slightly worrying thing is that the gainer expressed that to me as "our orders will usually inform them the line is moving away from them; they should then usually contact you to confirm if this is correct". That by itself is ambiguous because what's meant by "the line is moving away from them"?

Bear in mind that the new account doesn't begin until 3rd Feb, when Openreach are due to make the requisite mods at the exchange and street cabinet. Remember, this move involves also a change from ADSL to VDSL.

Edited by deleted (Tue 24-Jan-17 20:04:38)

I've migrated away from BT as well and I have been told all early termination and cessation charges have been removed due to the price rise.

I was told I could either migrate or cease my service and phone line, neither would incurr a charge.

From what I think you have said I feel that any problems you might experience are probably down to yourself and not the two ISPs. You should never have contacted the losing ISP instead of which it appears that you did and this may well have led them to believing that this was a request to cease your connection. Since you appear to have initiated the action by speaking to the losing ISP and telling them that you are leaving I am unclear as to why you feel they should be informing you that the gaining ISP is taking over your line since the losing ISP's records quite possibly have you recorded as a cease.

It would have been better to follow the OFCOM code and deal solely with the gaining ISP. That you are moving from ADSL to FTTC is immaterial, the same procedure applies when moving from ADSL to FTTC as it does for ADSL to ADSL and FTTC to FTTC with the process being gainer led throughout.

Price rise leavers are another category

MCM,

I did, in fact, do exactly what you say I should have done - the very first thing I did was to contact the gaining ISP to say that I wanted to move from my existing ISP to them. So, I followed the Ofcom rules absolutely correctly by doing that. However, in due course the losing ISP never contacted me. I therefore had to re-contact the gaining ISP to ask why. They maintained that they didn't have to formally notify the loser. Although I queried that, it was left for me to have to contact the loser to at least tell them that an order for a migration had been placed. If I hadn't done that I could have possibly been waiting around for a response from the loser forever. Remember, there's just 10 days (currently less now) to complete the whole thing. In fact, as matters stand I've still not received a formal request from the loser for me to verify that I want to move and that the order in place is correct in what it's asking for. As merely the end-customer, I'm not privy to the so-called tag information. If the ISPs themselves don't appear to be following the rules as normally understood, what do you expect me to do? Just sit back and ignore it?

Edited by deleted (Tue 24-Jan-17 22:46:13)

A no response from the loser means the migration happens, they would need to positively respond to say the end-user has objected to the migration. So if the letter was sent and lot by the post, the migration would go ahead.

In the migration scenario it is highly likely the retailer would not be contacting the losing provider, but is done as part of the placing of the migration order with the wholesaler.

Some providers have a track record of messing things up more than others. Only waiting four days may have been the issue, and the wording from the gaining provider if correct, suggests they may have gone ahead with a provide rather than a migrate. Some providers do this and play a little loose with the rules.

I did, in fact, do exactly what you say I should have done

You may well have done initially but contacting the losing ISP so quickly after placing your order may well have disturbed things. I still fail to understand why you even contacted the losing ISP since the only reason they have for contacting you at that point is to let you know that your line is being moved and since you had initiated the move that is what you wanted to happen. It's those whose line is being moved against their wishes (slammed) that have the most to gain from receiving a latter from the losing ISP. Four days is very little time given the probability of the post having been sent second class and the possibility of it then being delayed by a day or two.

Absolutely right.

There are as far as I can see only two reasons why the losing provider is supposed to contact the customer.

The prime one is as you say, to prevent slamming. The secondary one allows the customer to change their mind within the ten days - which in practice is more like eight. The notification from the gaining ISP should give that cut-off date when it becomes too late to stop Openreach or BT Wholesale.

In reply to a post by meditator:

Incidentally, do you think I'm correct about the DD mechanism - that it's up to them to cancel the arrangement, not me? If me, how do I do it?

You, as the account holder, always have control of any direct debit applied to a bank account. When I decide to finish a direct debit, for any reason, I just go online and cancel it there and then. From that point it is no longer a valid mandate, i.e. if your bank paid out using it they would be liable for the losses. Read the DD blurb.

If I haven't informed the company. usually they write/email me within a couple of days. From that moment onwards they can threaten / plead whatever they like. I have control of access to MY bank account. But usually I do notify them beforehand.

Credit card continuous payment authority are a totally different headache but I seem to recalll clamp downs by the regulator on companies abusing them.

In reply to a post by meditator:

I did, in fact, do exactly what you say I should have done

IMHO, you "generally" did the correct thing!!

However, my concern is that you may have accidentally confused the issue by some of your "terminology"!!

Unfortunately there is a "bureaucracy" involved that can get very easily de-railed if any misunderstanding occurs.

If, when you contacted your "Losing-ISP", you used the words "Terminate" or "Cancel" (regardless of the context you used them) it "could" be taken to mean that the Losing-ISP thinks you are simply Terminating/Cancelling (& perhaps subsequently placing a separate NEW-Order on A.N.Other ISP) rather than a migration.

Such a misunderstanding would screw up a Migration process!!

(NB:- Dependant on the Losing ISP, Terminating/Cancelling "may" invoke charges, whereas Migrations usually don't)!

Under the situation, I would suggest making a further approach to your Losing-ISP (& hoping that you don't simply get a "Jobsworth") & making sure that he understands that the discussion has ALWAYS been about "Migration" & NOT a total termination of Broadband provision!

In reply to a post by meditator:

Incidentally, do you think I'm correct about the DD mechanism - that it's up to them to cancel the arrangement, not me? If me, how do I do it?

NO!

It is YOUR Instruction, to your Bank, that you are Cancelling (hence, ONLY yourself has the Authority to Cancel it)!!

"How you do it" will partially depend on your bank, but generally (either/or):-
* - Go online & cancel it there.
* - Drop them a letter.
* - Go into the Branch.
* - Ring them up.

However, please do NOT do this until you are absolutely certain that ALL dealings with your Losing-ISP are FULLY completed!!

The risk to premature DD Termination is that, if your Losing-ISP tries to collect a Payment & can not (whether you think it may be disputed or not) "could" lead to an adverse Credit Rating Report!

(NB:- Even if you dispute this Adverse Rating, trust me, it is MUCH harder to get it removed than simply preventing it getting there in the first place).

Well, many thanks one-and-all for the wealth of advice you've provided these last 24 hrs.

Yes, you seem to agree with my understanding that the gaining ISP is supposed to either post off a letter to the losing ISP or to inform them of the proposed migration by some other approved means, but in this case the gainer told me that their practise was not to do that but instead to rely on the loser seeing a change in the tag info for the line. They told me that some days later, not at the time I placed the order. Presumably, this 'tag' gets automatically updated when an order is submitted by the gainer to a wholesaler? This seems to fit with what one of you has said about some gainers merely doing the whole of that step via the wholesaler. So the gainer in this case didn't send off a letter or e-mail and instead verred away from the recommended method, doing it informally (for want of a better description). Unfortunately, that then left me, the end-user, not knowing what was going on (effectively, I'd been taken out of the loop), and the more and more I waited to hear from the loser, the more I assumed that they'd not realised that an order for a migration had been placed. Part of the reason for the 10-day period is so that the end-user can if necessary get the required change absolutely agreed with all parties, or even cancelled, so I used it and contacted the loser. What would you have had me do? Wait until a further 6 days had passed and then try to sort the matter out on the very eve of the changeover?

As for the subject of DDs, perhaps I've been labouring under a misconception for many years. I thought the whole idea of a DD was that it guarantees that the retailer/merchant will always be paid, using the terms of the mandate. Maybe I'm getting DDs confused with some other banking arrangement? I know the customer can stop standing orders, for instance, but SOs are not the same as DDs. But what you guys are telling me is that, in effect, anyone can purposely default on their utility accounts, council tax, etc with impunity, if they want to, by just going along to their bank and asking for the DDs to stop. Hmm, well that's something worth knowing.

There's good news to report, however, that fortunately now transcends all of this. Last night I sent e-mails to the two ISPs making it 100% clear that it was a migration I'd ordered (with change to VDSL) and not anything else. The losing ISP (my current ISP) has now this morning responded to that, saying that they've been treating it as a migration, and still do. (Pity they couldn't have told me earlier!). And the further good news for me is that they've said that they've now finally instructed their agent to cease the DDs.

Unless my gaining ISP maintains that the order is something different, I think it's safe to say that the problem's now sorted.

Edited by deleted (Wed 25-Jan-17 11:19:50)

You are still misunderstanding some of this.

The gaining ISP places an order on the wholesaler. The wholesaler informs the losing ISP. The gaining ISP doesn't need to know who the losing ISP is. It can get more complex where moving between whoelsalers but that is how it should work.

DDs are not a guarantee for the company. DDs are under the control of the account holder. But, cancelling a DD when there are outstanding debts can be a bad idea and may cause credit issues. However, you can get a list from your bank of all DD mandates (online, by phone or in person) and you should check them to see if their are old instructions that are no longer required and get them removed. Best practice on completing dealings with a supplier is to terminate their DD mandate ensuring no accidental charges can be made.

Excellent news that the ISP has confirmed it is a migration. Hopefully all shall go well, and most likely would have done if you had done nothing after placing the initial order. Things may go quiet after placing the order but generally you just deal with the gaining ISP to arrange dates/etc and everything else should fall in to place. This is assuming you have already confirmed you aren't in contract and won't owe anything to the losing ISP.

In reply to a post by meditator:

And the further good news for me is that they've said that they've now finally instructed their agent to cease the DDs.

As others have advised, on your Bank account you have had placed a "Direct Debit Authority".

Whilst your ISP may have instructed their agent (supplier?) to stop using that authority, only you can have it removed. In any of the ways that have been listed.

Say at some time in the future the agent's systems get hacked. The hackers thereby gain access to that d/d authority and can debit your account with no warning.

As I and others have also said, do not do anything to it until you are sure all valid debits and credits have completed. Then get it removed.

I do wish ISPs would be more clear in their T&Cs.

When you take a service from an ISP you enter a contract with them. Legally that contract exists until the day you leave and final payments as agreed are paid.

That is an entirely separate construct to the Minimum Term, which while a condition of the contract is not in and of itself a contract.

Some ISPs are clear in their T&Cs as regards leaving / termination fees and specifically refer to things such as "within the Minimum Term period, fees X Y and Z will apply".

What muddies the waters is when the T&Cs refer to the Minimum Term as being within contract and after that as outside contract. It's just horrifically imprecise.

Faced with the terms you quoted there I can only suggest you ask your losing ISP to clarify their contract terms as regards leaving / termination fees. It's unusual to see such charges outside of the Minimum Term but nothing surprises me in these days of ever escalating phone and BB prices.

Ian72,

You are still misunderstanding some of this.

That's fair comment. But I don't think you'll find many users yet to switch under the new rules who'll appreciate the involvement of the wholesaler, as described in your second paragraph. My view as a result of my recent experience is that there's lack of clarity surrounding the exact nature of the handover - of exactly who does what. It could do with a bit of tightening up. I thought I knew what the process was, and had written it down, but it didn't quite work out as intended. The losing ISP at some stage is required to contact the customer to get confirmation of, and approval for, the switch to take place (to prevent slamming) but if the losing ISP doesn't do this in a timely manner the user can be left wondering what on earth's happening and whether the losing ISP has been informed. I don't recall seeing any rule about the losing ISP needing to do this within, say, 48 hrs, but given that the entire switchover has to take place within 10 days, it wouldn't be unreasonable, in my view, to require something like this.

Just a final few words on the issue of DDs: fortunately, I've never ended up owing companies money or defaulting on payments, so all of my own past DDs have been plain-sailing. But I can certainly recall - oh, must have been way back in the 1990s - a situation where I'd arranged with the ISP I was with at that time to end my Internet account. The payments were, I'm pretty sure, by DD but when I approached my bank to stop the DDs the bank refused and insisted that it was for the ISP to end the DDs, not me. I must say I was horrified at the time. From that point on, getting the DD stopped was a nightmare, primarily because the ISP was in financial trouble, was about to go under, and wanted to hang on to every last penny of income it could. That event has remained in my memory ever since. In those days DDs weren't that common and it could be that the banking rules on DDs were different then. Thanks for bringing me up to date on the matter, though. To ensure the current DD is 100% closed, I'll make a point of instructing my bank when I next pay them a visit.

Edited by deleted (Thu 26-Jan-17 11:36:09)

The 10 days is the term that has to be waited before the ISP can move you over. It isn't the term they have to do the transfer - the transfer could take weeks or months but cannot be LESS than 10 days.

And if you haven't got a list of DD mandates from your bank it is worth doing and clearing down any that are no longer active. This ensures there can be no accidents later on down the line. Mostly it won't be a problem but it is good practice.

The losing ISP at some stage is required to contact the customer to get confirmation of, and approval for, the switch to take place (to prevent slamming) but if the losing ISP doesn't do this in a timely manner the user can be left wondering what on earth's happening and whether the losing ISP has been informed. I don't recall seeing any rule about the losing ISP needing to do this within, say, 48 hrs, but given that the entire switchover has to take place within 10 days, it wouldn't be unreasonable, in my view, to require something like this.

There are some corrections needed to this:

1. The contact letter is not seeking approval, since non delivery of a letter or you not replying are taken as acceptance anyway, i.e. no action is needed from you for the move to go ahead
2. There is no switchover 10 day period for it to happen, in fact is CANNOT happen faster than 10 days, as there is the 10 day period given for you to respond to contact by the losing provider and cancel the migration. Thus usually time frame for a migration now is in the 3 to 4 week period, yes a lot slower than in the past.
3. Providers if I recall is meant to contact you in a timely fashion, i.e. no firm rule set, but if a provider is consistently failing to do so i.e. letter arriving after switches have happened then should be picked up in complaints to Ofcom and they'd act or issue fines etc

The new system is such that
a) Contact new supplier
b) Sit back and let it all happen
c) If something goes wrong e.g. still billed by old supplier afterwards then remedies such as direct debit guarantee and the usual routes are there.

Hi,
Reading their T&Cs that reads to me like if you cancel "Within" the contract period then they will charge 100% of the remaining contract + and admin fee.
As you are not within the contract then that does not apply to you.
The termination "Cease" charge is only raised by the suppliers if it is a cease and not a migration, so as long as the new supplier has done it properly (and seems from the loosing provider they have) then this also does not apply.

As for the DD, both parties can cancel this but I would hold off until the final invoice has been raised, if nothing is due but they still claim on the direct debit then there is a procedure in place called "The direct debit guarantee scheme" this means that is a direct debit is taken and it is incorrect in anyway (IE wrong amounts or not due at all) then the bank will reimburse you and then claim it back from the other side, you don't have to do or prove anything.
So your covered there as well.

The only thing you may have to pay for is any charge up to the end of your notice period (the period when either the gaining provider or you send them notice you are leaving) but that would be dependent on the loosing providers terms under notice period.