The UK telecoms regulator, Ofcom, has today increased the payment amounts issued to consumers under their automatic compensation system, which requires some home broadband ISPs to compensate customers (cash or bill credits) for internet connectivity mishaps and delivery delays.
The voluntary system, which first launched on 1st April 2019 (full summary here), was until today designed to compensate consumers by £8.40 per day for delayed repairs following a loss of broadband (assuming it isn’t fixed within 2 working days). Missed appointments could also attract compensation of £26.24 and a delay to the start of a new service would be £5.25 per day.
However, the compensation payment amounts are designed to increase annually in line with inflation from 1st April each year, which is based on the Consumer Price Index (CPI) as of 31st October in the previous year (this was around 11%). As a result, member ISPs will now need to pay out £9.33 per day for delayed repairs, £29.15 for missed appointments and £5.83 per day for a delay to the start of a new service.
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At present this scheme is supported by most of the major ISPs including BT, Hyperoptic, Sky Broadband (inc. NOW Broadband), TalkTalk, Utility Warehouse, Virgin Media, Vodafone (only on Openreach’s network), EE, Plusnet and Zen Internet.
One catch here is that higher payments also contribute to general bill hikes and will only discourage more ISPs from joining – especially smaller providers – given the high cost and technical requirements (new systems needed etc.) of supporting such a scheme. We should point that some of those self-excluded providers already have their own approaches to compensation.
Of course, it’s not inflation plus an extra 3.9%, because that would benefit the consumer, not the provider.
Yes! Ofcom should raise it by whatever % they raise their prices by.
I booked an appointment with Virgin Media to collect old kit, made sure I was home, and they didn’t even turn up. They’re trying to argue the missed appointment fee doesn’t apply.
A few days later they announced, at 10:20 am, after I’d gone to work, they would come and collect my kit.
The other day they did it again at 9am, this time I was able to stay home and wait for them. They didn’t turn up.
had similar woes to this.
Service offline for 3 days, issue with feed to the local cab, reported it and on the next bill my auto comp did not show, so contacted them and the agent confirmed auto comp was eligible and would be applied to the next bill, next bill came and no auto comp, chased them again only to be told by agent my outage was not eligible and could not find any record of the previous agent agreeing to the auto comp payment.
https://www.virginmedia.com/help/billing-and-payments/automatic-compensation
£9.33 per day for a total loss of service after 2 full working days from registering the loss of service to us.
When did you report the outage?
Judging by their own help forum, Virgin Media have a bit of a track record of trying to dodge their obligations under the automatic compensation scheme rules. I’d recommend anybody who feels they’re not getting what they’re entitled to should take the matter to Ombudsman Services. That’ll be slow, but usually effective.
Once again, it is clear to see that OFCOM works to protect the industry and the suppliers, and definitely not the poor consumers.
What possible justification can there be for OFCOM not ensuring the rise in auto-compensation payments maintains parity with the outrageous prices rises the industry has just seen from the suppliers.
Look close, for all the justification provided, of increasing wholesale and running costs, the big companies are pretty much all making bumper profits, just like the other utility companies.
The current compensation scheme doesn’t seem to incentivise Openreach to fix repairs promptly. Since we had FTTP installed 4 years ago we have had one break of service of 5 weeks and another recently of 3 weeks. The delays seem to be a combination of
a) Openreach’s view that it is still 2003 and internet access is an optional extra and not an essential utility that needs fixing as quickly as possible
b) Their believe in the infallibility of their records however much of a nonsense they may actually be.
The latest delay was caused by Openreach insisting they needed to replace a pole, denying my and my ISPs assertions that it had already been done, until I sent them photographic proof showing the sticker on the pole with the date it was replaced and the job reference. Even then it took them 3 to 4 days to accept this evidence, presumably debating whether or not I had photoshopped the image, and 3 days to organise a “24 hour” traffic survey.
I would suggest the scheme would work better if when the delay was down to Openreach the compensation was paid by Openreach to the end user, via the ISP, and that the daily compensation increased as the delay got longer. Something along the lines of £25 a day after a week, £50 a day after 2 weeks, £100 a day 3 weeks etc would be a much more realistic reimbursement of the costs involved in for example having to travel for meetings instead of doing them online or having to commute to the office every day, and would also not penalise ISPs for Openreach’s failings.