Cessation Charge...Eh?

Could someone please have a look in their Account Summary, and see if 'Cessation Charge', dated 28/10/2008, is mentioned as Activated?

Edited by dieselglider (Tue 28-Oct-08 22:55:46)

Hi there,

We rolled out some changes to our back-end code early this morning to automate the application of the cessation fee should you need to cease your service.

It's explained in a bit of detail here and most of you will have received an email about it some time ago.

Plenty of discussion over on Community here.

Yes.

Thanks Bob, I understand about the cessation charge in general. But the fact that it's listed in my account summary with a date, and an order status of 'Activated' has made me wonder if my connection is Activated to be ceased??

@ greyposter, thanks.

Edited by dieselglider (Tue 28-Oct-08 23:28:57)

Hi dieselglider,

It doesn't mean that a cease is scheduled on your account, be assured of that.

The way we've applied this is as a deferred contract, much like the activation ones, which just means it'll sit on your account indefinitely. If you do cancel your account this will become payable prior to the cancellation.

I did work out after some searching that this was not an "active" charge. However, I do think that you should find a better way of making this obvious - at first glance it definitely looks like a cease is in progress.

To my knowledge this is the first I have heard about cessation charges.
I cannot believe that this charge can be legal. If I go to the Cinema, Pub, Theatre etc. and pay for a service I do not pay again to leave. So after first paying to have Broadband connected and paying for the service for many years I am damned if I will be paying a cessation charge if I decide to leave! Not that I intend to cease at the moment, I have however been looking at other ISP's and many seem to be offering a cheaper subscription for a similar service. So if I move ISP, the cessation charges could eventually be self financing and save me a lot of money by the time I grow to old for Broadband.

The cessation charge is not payable on a migration. It is payable to BT via plusnet if you cancel your broadband.

It also needs to be said it's not a Plusnet charge. It's a charge made by BT to the ISP.

Edited by wingco1 (Fri 31-Oct-08 10:27:43)

"It also needs to be said" that the majority of providers take this cost on the chin.