You might not want to pay it, but the migration charge exists at the wholesale level hence why so many providers charge something for switching, or merge it into the longer contract term.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

You might not want to pay it, but the migration charge exists at the wholesale level hence why so many providers charge something for switching, or merge it into the longer contract term.

That charge is £11. There is no justification to charge £55.

In reply to a post by hypertony:

I now have the answers I need to know - thank you to everyone who commented and for Zen giving me the details.

What was the outcome? Did Zen waive the fee for you like they did me?

As I have said earlier in this thread £55 is our standard setup fee for FTTC and FTTP. It helps to cover the fees we pay BT Wholesale and Openreach plus other internal costs.

The costs we incur depend on the exact scenario. e.g.
- is it a new service or a transfer
- the type of service the customer has with another provider
- the type of phone line e.g. MPF, WLR3 or cable
- if the customer is transferring just broadband or broadband and phone line
- if we're providing the service on-net (ordering with Openreach) or with BT Wholesale
- if the serving exchange is Market A or Market B
- plus many other factors, most of which are outside the customer's control

Each scenario has a different cost. So rather than a price list with many different activation fees we keep things simple with a single fee of £55.

Sometimes the activation fee will fully cover our costs other times it doesn't.