UPD Ofcom UK Finds Broadband ISP Plusnet May Have Botched its Bills

A probe by telecoms industry regulator Ofcom has today found “reasonable grounds to believe” that Plusnet may have continued to incorrectly bill customers of their fixed line broadband and phone services between 7th March 2008 and 3rd September 2015, even after they left.

The probe, which began in May 2016 (here), set out to examine whether or not the ISP had failed to comply with its obligations under General Condition 11 (specifically GC11.1), such as by potentially charging for a phone and broadband service that “was not live for a period of time between 2008 and 2015“.

GC11.1 states: “The Communications Provider shall not render any Bill to an End-User in respect of the provision of any Public Electronic Communications Services unless every amount stated in that Bill represents and does not exceed the true extent of any such service actually provided to the End-User in question.”

Ofcom Statement

Ofcom has reasonable grounds to believe that Plusnet contravened GC 11.1 by rendering bills to end-users in respect of broadband and telephony services for amounts that did not represent and exceeded the true extent of the service actually provided to them. Plusnet had continued to bill certain end-users for broadband and telephony service after their service had been cancelled.

At this point it’s very important to highlight that Plusnet initiated the investigation itself, as opposed to waiting for Ofcom to uncover it through customer complaints. Very few operators have been quite that open and honest with the regulator in this way, so credit where credit is due.

A Spokesperson for Plusnet told ISPreview.co.uk:

“We would like to apologise to our customers. This is a historic issue of a very small number of our customers being overcharged. We reported it to Ofcom and contacted all affected customers so we could arrange a full refund, before the investigation had begun. A number of new robust measures have been implemented to prevent this from happening again.”

Plusnet will now have a chance make representations to Ofcom on their preliminary ruling and a final verdict should follow soon. We wouldn’t be at all surprised if Ofcom lets Plusnet off without a big fine, especially given their honest approach, although much will depend upon the scale of the problem.

At the very least Plusnet may need to reimburse the affected customers and introduce some improvements to their billing system, which they might have already done.

UPDATE 1:52pm

Added a comment from Plusnet above.