BT Completes Refund of £18m to UK Customers Over Contract Failings
The telecoms regulator has today revealed that UK broadband ISP and phone giant BT (inc. EE and Plusnet) have now refunded or credited £18m back to customers. This follows last year’s Ofcom ruling (here), which found that the provider had “failed to provide” 1.1 million customers with clear and simple contract information before signing up to a new deal.
Just to recap. Since June 2022 broadband and mobile operators have been required to provide customers with a short, one-page summary of the main contract terms of their chosen package before entering into a contract, including clear examples of how any price increases might impact the price they pay. But Ofcom’s investigation found that EE and Plusnet had failed to do this for a sizeable number of customers and fined BT £2.8m.
As well as fining BT, Ofcom also required the provider to amend its sales process and refund any affected customers who may have been charged for leaving before the end of their contract period. “We told the company that if it was unable to refund any money, it must donate it to charity,” said the regulator.
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As a result of this enforcement action, Ofcom has today posted a brief after action report that reveals how BT has now refunded or credited £18 million back to customers and donated £440,000 across 17 charities where refunds or credits were not possible.
Ofcom Statement
The company broke our consumer protection rules designed to ensure telecoms customers get clear, comparable information about the services they are considering buying.
Following engagement with Ofcom, BT contacted the majority of affected customers, explaining that it had not provided them with the information to which they were entitled, and giving them the opportunity to request the information and/or cancel their contract without charge.
However, before these communications were sent, some customers affected by the breach left BT before the end of their contract and may have been charged an early exit fee. Our rules are clear that if the required contract summary and contract information is not given, the contract is not binding on customers. As a result, an early exit fee should not have been payable by these customers.
As well as fining BT, we also required it to amend its sales process and refund any affected customers who may have been charged for leaving before the end of their contract period. We told the company that if it was unable to refund any money, it must donate it to charity.
As a result of this enforcement action, BT has now refunded or credited £18 million back to customers and donated £440,000 across 17 charities where refunds or credits were not possible.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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Oh dear, first the EE outage taking some time to resolve, despite lots of engineers and mature monitoring systems and now this!! Not a good time for the hero company adored by Big Dave, BT Ivor and some others on here.
Tut, tut, “failed to provide” 1.1 million customers with clear and simple contract information before signing up to a new deal.”.
“Ofcom’s investigation found that EE and Plusnet had failed to do this for a sizeable number of customers”.
Hmm, the ALTNETS that my family and friends migrated to (mix of BT and VM originally), didn’t get any of this hidden sign-up feature – is it a plus feature over an ALTNET of joining BT then? 🙂
As ever, we are truly grateful for your pearls of wisdom.
Hardly anyone adores BT, though there are a couple of fanboys, everyone else is pretty down the middle and thinks you’re weird, obsessed and incoherent.
@Big Dave, that’s the 4th occasion I have enlightened you. Glad you are finding my wisdom informative.
@Polish Poler – “everyone else” – another claim without substance. Weird fro not adoring BT lol
@Polish Poler, I am glad we have competition, I have to admit, I have not been a fan of VT for years, when i was with them, their customer service was as bad as Vodarubbish, I only went to plusnet because they could give4 me a connection at a decent price, quickly and not charge me for reconnecting the phone line. my idea was to stay with them for 18 months and then go, but they kept giving me good prices and the service was good, not like BT at all, but then at the time they were run as a separate company. The other part of me was just too lazy to look around.
As for Openreach, I just don’t agree with a private company running the network, no more than I agree with private companies running our electric and gas network. But since we do have a private company running it, we need competition, and that is where Altnets come in.
I am not a fan of Microsoft, but when they came out with the Windows phone, I thought great, more competition in the phone OS market, sadly it did not last.
I have far better things in life to adore or despise than a telecoms company and don’t waste emotional energy on it.
Try it, might be liberating.
Any closer to full fibre? Netomnia follow your plan to illegal install poles or are they closer via PIA now?
Not sure who your comment is to, but aren’t poles permitted development for telecoms, hence the news stories complaining by public.
Yup, but you can’t put them anywhere. Stick them in the wrong place they aren’t so permitted.
On who I’m talking to think about how few people write ‘altnets’ as ‘ALTNETS’. Then how many people who do that are obsessed with symmetrical broadband and PON standards. Then how many of them insist on letting everyone here know on the regular. Then let’s add frequent references to having gotten friends and relatives to move to altnets. Maybe a pretty strong fixation with Netomnia.
If you’ve been around here a while might well remember someone fitting all those talking about trying to plan Netomnia’s route to them and somewhat unhappy their options were Openreach copper or Virgin Media coax.
@fanny adams. You’re living up to your name here like. You sound like the sort of customer who would say if you don’t give me a good deal I’ll tell my friends and family to leave as well. You say now this as if it’s something that’s just happened
Excellent. Whether through intent or error they broke the rules, they pay the penalty and those they wronged are compensated. This is how it’s supposed to work.
very true but surely it’s the pockets of the BT, EE and Plusnet customers where the money comes from, certainly not from the pay/bonuses of those involved.
Yep,
I have held my bet shares for over 30 years just waiting for them to hit 10 pound a share
They were over £15 at one stage, can’t ever see them going there again!
Is there a way for ex consumers who were subscribed to them in 2022 to get a refund?