Ofcom UK Warns Sky Broadband Over Tricky Contract Terminations

Sky (Sky Broadband) has said they’re “very disappointed” after Ofcom provisionally determined that the operator may have breached its consumer protection rules for governing the termination of contracts outside of a cooling-off period.

The national UK telecoms regulator officially extended its industry-wide monitoring programme into cancellation and termination arrangements last June 2015, which occurred after 2,000 people complained that they had suffered difficulties when trying to cancel their contract with various different providers (mobile, fixed line, TV etc.).

Shortly after that Ofcom began a related probe into Sky’s broadband and phone services (August 2015), which included a focus upon whether or not Sky had contravened General Condition 9.3 (i.e. terminating a contract outside of the cooling-off period) and in so doing had made it harder than it should be for customers’ to escape the operator.

Ofcom’s Statement

Following an investigation, Ofcom has provisionally determined that there are reasonable grounds for believing that Sky contravened GC9.3 of the General Conditions between 1st May 2015 and 31st July 2015 in respect of landline and broadband services.

Ofcom has therefore issued a Notification to Sky under section 96A of the Communications Act 2003 (the “Act”). Sky now has an opportunity to make representations to Ofcom on the matters contained in the Notification before Ofcom makes a final decision in accordance with section 96C of the Act.

According to Ofcom, GC9.3 is designed to ensure that the conditions or procedures for contract termination do not “act as a disincentive for end-users changing their Communication Providers“. The outcome is still provisional and thus subject to change, although Sky is clearly unhappy.

A Sky Spokesperson told ISPreview.co.uk:

“We are incredibly proud to have the highest customer satisfaction levels in the industry, as ranked in the last Ofcom customer service report. We have worked with Ofcom openly and constructively throughout their investigation so are very disappointed with this provisional decision. We will review the provisional assessment in detail and put forward our case before Ofcom makes its final decision.”

In fairness Sky does tend to attract some of the lowest levels of complaints among all of the biggest phone and broadband ISPs (example). The regulator’s own data also appears to show that Sky delivered a large reduction in the number of complaints related to cancellations between September 2015 and January 2016.

However one bit of good news for Sky is that Ofcom has dropped a related probe into consumer cancellations that occurred ‘within’ the cooling-off period (the above findings focused on those that occurred ‘outside’ of the operator’s cooling-off period); GC22.

The regulator has not set a firm date for the final outcome of their investigation, although they usually tend to uphold provisional rulings. After that it’s just a matter of what penalty (if any) is imposed. Ofcom could choose to impose a financial penalty or force through further changes, although Sky may well argue that it has already delivered a marked improvement.