What Happens to Routers Returned at End of Contract?

I have a number of Plusnet & BT routers that are out of contract. Plusnet have just emailed me to ask for the latest back for refurbishment.

My question is what happens to them?

There is an obvious environmental cost in returning them. Packaging, coutier etc and if all they do is crush them then my local council offers exactly the same service for electronics without the cost & environmental overheads.

Is it worth returning them or is it just a misguided government initiative?

Some are fully refurbished and used as spares, some are supplier to OR technicians for use - when I had some early FTTP issues, I was given an "Engineer spare" of teh consumer version to use as there was a bug in the business firmware.

The rest are recycled - plastics extracted, valuable metals recovered and minimal landfill.

Just get a lable from PN and send back one big parcel.

The WEEE obligations require BT to offer to take back their devices. Anything current-gen that can be refurbished and used again will be, anything that is older will be 'recycled' as in crushed and have the various parts separated out.

If your council offer a proper electronics recycling service then it's probably no worse than what BT are going to do to older devices.

I had one from a previous VDSL connection supplied by Shell Energy. When the year was up, I switched to a cheaper deal (they wanted a lot more on renewal). Within the hour of me cancelling, the first email came, asking for their router back.

They then send emails and texts every day or two, threatening to charge me some silly sum unless I returned their router.

As it happened, they had sent me two or three routers due to their admin incompetence, so I simply returned one that I had never even opened (except to take the return label out of the box).

Their hassling me encouraged me to take my time getting round to sending it back, but I did it after a few weeks.

I knew when it had arrived, becasue the barrage of threats stopped.

My Now Broadband vdsl router is still in its box and now being used as prop for a lte modem.

Not sure what to do with it .. I never wanted and i never wanted to pay postage and packing for it either.

In reply to a post by jpm:

The WEEE obligations require BT to offer to take back their devices. Anything current-gen that can be refurbished and used again will be, anything that is older will be 'recycled' as in crushed and have the various parts separated out.

If your council offer a proper electronics recycling service then it's probably no worse than what BT are going to do to older devices.

BT's effort is something that they as a multibillion pound corporation should be paying for and doing, not palming it off on to an impecunoius local authority.

The manufacturers of electronic equipment finance the recycling by local authorities. If anything, the authorities probably make a profit from this waste.

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/collecting-used-and-wast...

In reply to a post by hunnymonster:

In reply to a post by jpm:

The WEEE obligations require BT to offer to take back their devices. Anything current-gen that can be refurbished and used again will be, anything that is older will be 'recycled' as in crushed and have the various parts separated out.

If your council offer a proper electronics recycling service then it's probably no worse than what BT are going to do to older devices.

BT's effort is something that they as a multibillion pound corporation should be paying for and doing, not palming it off on to an impecunoius local authority.

They do! Each router comes with a paid-for Returns bag.Has done for many years. As has been posted, it's a legal requirement.

Same here: I was charged £10 for delivery of something I had no use for. Next time round, I think the charge was "only" £8.50 for P&P. Still no way to decline it.

Again, that box remains unopened and will stay that way until the end of the contract, when I expect I'll have to send it back.

I think they want you to return them or else you get charged £50 (at least that's what I had with TalkTalk).
When I switched from TalkTalk to BT I received a letter and email saying I must return my equipment within 30 days or else I'll get charged £50 penalty.

What actually happened was when I contacted initially TalkTalk for a router technical problem in the first year of my 24 month contract I had an issue where my router stats would reset on the 30th day. I thought it was technical problem but later found out it wasn't. Every 30 days my router stats would reset. TalkTalk sent me a new router replacement.

I did not switch to the new replacement router back then. Kept observing and noticed it was simply superficial 30 day reset but the connection did not reset. So I decided to remain on the old original router while the new one remained with me unused.

Later on I got an email to return my old router but the new router remained unused! So I took advantage and instead of returning back both routers, I returned back only one of the routers! I then managed to sell the replacement router on eBay for £25 as new. That was my luck.

I do have 3 older Sky routers from many years ago. However, back then Sky never seemed to have requested those to be returned. I think this wasn't a policy. I can't seem to sell the old routers as they seem to be too much outdated (especially the ADSL routers).

If your ISP remains silent and doesn't ask you to return them then you can try and sell them on eBay, Facebook Marketplace, Gumtree, etc. Obviously someone will be benefited from them.

They are of no use to me as a those routers are ISP locked. I think the ISP simply gives those used routers (factory resets them) to new customers. If a new customer complains of technical faults only then they replace them with a new one.