Switching Study Claims 5 Million UK People Overpay for Broadband
A new survey of 3,000 UK adults has estimated that around 5.38 million households who are out of contract with their current fixed broadband ISP have been discouraged from switching provider due to a lack of confidence in the process, which it’s claimed could result in related users “overpaying” to the tune of £804m (total).
The Uswitch commissioned study, which was conducted between 9th and 14th December 2020 by Opinium, found that households whose broadband deals (i.e. first contract term discounts) had lapsed sit out of contract for an average of 19.75 months. The comparison site suggests that this means they end up paying £149 more than they should have in that time (this is based on an average additional payment for out-of-contract broadband customers of £7.56 a month).
The 5.38 million figure above appears to be based on the 19.5% of survey respondents who said they either couldn’t be “bothered with the hassle of switching” or “worried about losing internet” connectivity when switching to a new provider. Despite this it’s noted that almost half of consumers (49%) who had switched in the last 18 months found the process easier than they had expected, compared to only 10% who found it harder.
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Summary of Survey Results
— Some 22% have never changed their broadband ISP, and 10% don’t know when they last switched their contract.
— 37% thought that switching would leave them without broadband for at least a day, but in fact 72% of households saw little or no loss of connection as they switched providers.
— 36% found switching between providers on the same network (e.g. Openreach’s platform) lost their connection for any period of time. Meanwhile 51% of consumers who changed broadband networks, such as when moving between Openreach, Virgin Media, Gigaclear or Hyperoptic, suffered a loss of internet during the switch, making them 42% more likely to lose connection.
On the issue of “overpaying,” it’s important to remember that price alone isn’t the only deciding factor and consumers also tend to consider other aspects, such as service and support quality or value-added extras (some features may not be found on rival ISPs), which isn’t reflected in this survey. Suffice to say, if your current provider has continued to deliver a good service then you’re far less likely to consider switching away.
Equally the survey fails to establish how many consumers may have alternatively haggled for a lower price, or even been offered a lower price automayically, to stay with their existing provider (Retentions – Tips for Cutting Your Broadband Bill). Ofcom’s new system of end-of-contract notifications arguably makes existing customers much more likely to try this approach, rather than switch, unless they’re unhappy with their ISP for other reasons.
In any case, the good news is that Ofcom are already preparing to unveil an improved switching process (here), which among other things will aim to make it both quicker and easier to migrate between UK ISPs on physically separate network platforms (e.g. Openreach based FTTC to Cityfibre based FTTP etc.). The rapid rise in coverage by alternative networks (altnets) makes this change essential for the market.
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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Most consumers are just lazy.
If they wanted to save money or have a better / faster service they would renew, upgrade or shop around. It’s really no trouble moving home Broadband providers. They do the work for us.
Also, every customer should know their end of contract date or just ask. It’s basic information.
Absolutely Michael, case in point I recently had a 2 year mobile phone contract end, but the carrier was more than happy for me to continue paying £20 a month if I did nothing about it.
One web-chat later, £5 per month.
That was me, carried on paying for internet from BT for ages out of contract at a hiked price, never really noticed…until i did. When i called them to cancel they were quite happy to offer me a much better deal than the out of contract cost they’d happily been taking for months, needless to say i just moved provider anyway.
YES its the consumers responsibility to monitor and be aware of their own contracts and outgoings, BUT in my example nothing material changed from me being ‘in contract’ to out of contract to warrant an increase in charges, same service same cost for them to provide that service. Others will have a differing opinion but IN and OUT of contract pricing changes are profiteering in my opinion. For me the impact was nothing more than annoyance at not noticing earlier and a fair amount of ill will to a company who had been my provider for many years.
So yes they made a few quid extra out of me until i noticed but now theyve lost a customer entirely, doesnt seem like the best best business model.
100%.
I really do hate these loaded (and in fact false) premises that these think tanks come up with in their reports, when they declare that consumers are being cheated somehow or forced to “overpay” for services – which they willingly signed up to in the first place and consistenly demonstrate complete indifference to when it comes to continuing “overpayments”?
The cost of a good or service is the price that is agreed upon by the two parties when they enter into the agreement, not what some arbitrary third party believes is the “fair” price.
Of course the way the researchers get around this fact is by asking people whether they would like to pay less for the service they receive – and surprise, surprise, all of the respondents say yes!
Michael V is it not your place to Tut Tut what other people do in their own home with their own money when it’s none of your business. No wonder the Nanny state is getting out of hand.
Oh Nicole, the reality of it is that people don’t make the effort to find out the process which is more simple then ever.
I’m only saying what we all know.
Here is a place of conversation about the article. It’s everyone’s business when surveys like this are published. It can help people have conversation with others about how they can save money & if they are wasting it.
I wasn’t rude in my post. I was being blunt.
If you don’t like posts like that then why are you even here…
Looking at the state the UK’s broadband is in I’d say that number is closer to 40 million. The problem we have is people aren’t bothered and are to apathetic to do anything about changing suppliers because they get so caught up in the initial “great” deal.
When they’re contracts lapse they just accept paying through the nose for a substandard service. This is why the likes of Virgin just love throwing 3 or 4 price rises a year into the mix, because they know they’ll get away with it.
What do we change too? Talk Talk and sky are the only ones at my exchange unbundled,BT roughly about same speed, same as others its only a name no FTTP some FTTC. What exactly do we shop around to get?
Honestly I don’t know, the level and quality of choice in the UK broadband market makes it very difficult. Guess the providers know this too.
Personnel experience Mark, Vodafone FTTC has been great over the last few years.
It’s only the last few years where we’ve had more options than like 4 now FTTC is here.
They don’t charge that xtra £18-ish for the phone line.
I’ve changed ISPs several times over the years, going between about 3 that I’ve preferred (one no longer exists). I keep looking at going back to one I was with previously, but my biggest fear is that there may be a problem, a degradation in speed or quality/service, even though it’s a good provider (to Zen, from Plusnet business). I’m not convinced I really get much if anything more out of paying Plusnet something like £150+ year more than I could get a similar offering from Zen (and considerably cheaper at other options which I’m not even considering)
When I was with Zen on ADSL I often had a “stale session” issue, which they could never fix and it wasn’t ever an issue on the other providers, and touch wood since I’ve been on FTTC for about the last six years – which seems a long time to have been with an ISP, far longer than I have been previously, and that followed about a year on ADSL before the FTTC cabinet became live.
My Sky contract ended and the price has jumped to £47.99.
The terms of that package is a minimum of 35Mbps.
I tried to renew yesterday but they said the minimum would be 23Mbps and the max being 34Mbps.
I’ve refused outright due to that.
It’s 7Mb below the Openreach handback value.
I have a feeling the Sky of old is now gone and is all but Comcast in name.
£48 a month for that must be acceptable to sky then?
If I recontracted it would be £30 including line rental and evening calls…
They suggested it could be a line fault reporting the wrong figures and so an Openreach engineer arrived.
One that doesn’t know anything about interleaving, jitter or even how the DSLAM works.
They just performed a profile reset.
No investigation as to why the line attenuation is fluctuating nor the noise margin… just the standard “my machine says the line is good”.
(The line attenuation reported by a sky q router is the value from the DSLAM… it’s not supposed to change unless the lines attributes do ie conductivity etc).
I have no faith in the monopoly I have to use.
Without line rental, which i presume means no landline isn’t an option, need a landline, poor mobile coverage. all the isp speeds from neighbors are around 25mb no matter who you go with.
VM Just emailed me and said Bill going up £3-50 from March but I’ll get “up to” 100Mbps. Suppose to have had that earlier in the year. I have FTTP but they cannot achieve 100Mbps 29Mbps is the highest I’ve got. What all ISP’s should say is “from ” not up to. It could be 1mbps to 100Mbps. I’ve downgraded before to achieve the speed I’m suppose to get,so I might downgrade again as I’m not receiving what ISP charges me for.
You probably didn’t have FTTP if you were getting 29Mbps; that sounds more like FTTC, which is limited by line quality.
(You might be able to do a bit better by removing the bell wire in your master socket, but if you have a dedicated broadband faceplate on the socket, that does it for you already.)
On FTTP your limit is generally what your provider advertises at your service level – if not more. Of course, individual sites or services may not be able to provide that, and FTTP is still not available in that many areas (other than the expensive “on Demand” option).
David mentioned he was on Virgin Media – so its FTTN. Unlikely to be an issue with his OR Master Socket…
David; have you tried replacing the coax cable used to connect your VM Router to your inline filter?
I am thinking of using an approach towards virgin media that might work, “bt has installed full fibre to my area and I believe that I can get 900mbps for cheaper than your 1gig package and I see no point in sticking around when I could save more”.