Migrations - Breaking news

Just received an e-mail from Ofcom's information alert service:


"Ofcom today announced new rules intended to ensure that customers are able to switch to a different broadband provider quickly and easily. This follows a public consultation published in August.

From 14 February 2007, General Condition 22: Service Migrations will require broadband providers to supply consumers with a migration authorisation code upon request and free of charge. The new rules will also make it the responsibility of all broadband providers to ensure that technical and operational problems such as tag on line do not hinder consumers

This will a cause for much rejoicing in the Pipex forum (and a few others I suspect)

Yes, much rejoicing until the ISP who has to give the customers owing money a MAC sells the debt on to a debt collection agency

Fair point.

But a contract has always need two people; both to honour their side of it.

Pipex have already started doing that with customers who don

What makes you say that? The only time a company would pass on a debt to a collection agency is if the customer did not pay the debt, didn't challenge or dispute it and refused to discuss the matter altogether. If the customer did pay it when asked, willing to discuss the matter or deal with it as a dispute there would be no problem. If the customer did not do any of these and it was passed on to a collection agency then almost every consumer contract permits a company to reclaim/add-on the collection agency fees as long as their charges were not excessive. I fail to see the argument.

edit spelling

Edited by rsharma (Wed 13-Dec-06 14:36:11)

I think those ISP's who have got long contracts must be looking at this nervously.
Basically it means that any customer can leave an ISP at any time irrespective of how long they've signed up for. Yes, the customer will still be liable for the remainder of the contract, but it means the ISP will have to spend some time chasing that debt.

For small ISP's this potential delay in income will cause chaos with their cash flow as the monthly income they were expecting suddenly isn't there. They will probably get the funds eventually but it could take months.

It isn't just small ISPs either, this point came up back when the current MAC process was being sorted out and some of the larger ones were very nervous as well.

This may also have some impact on the habit of bundling hardware with services as the ISP must consider the risk of people taking the hardware and then getting a MAC and leaving knowing full well that the time it takes to recover relatively small amounts of money may result in them getting away with it.

Not just hardware either. Look at the number of offers for free connection or free migration. A lot of these are only free if you stay 12 months.
Is an ISP going to chase you for the cost of a migration fee ???
This could lead to an end of those sorts of offers.

In reply to:

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I think those ISP's who have got long contracts must be looking at this nervously.

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Not really, because OFCOM's "punishment" is no more than a slap on the wrist anyway, so it really doesn't matter what their rules say.