A Sobering Reminder that Ofcom’s Auto Compensation System has Limits UPDATE2

The case of a pregnant UK mother who, while living in a house with no mobile signal and a 3-week-long outage of Openreach’s broadband and phone services, ended up giving birth on the kitchen floor due to an inability to call 999 – is today also highlighting a key caveat in Ofcom’s system of Automatic Compensation.

The compensation scheme, which is supported by most of the major broadband ISPs, requires service providers to compensate customers (cash or bill credits) for internet and phone connectivity mishaps (e.g. total losses of service that last longer than 2 working days) and other delivery delays.

In the case mentioned earlier, residents in the rural Wiltshire (England) village of Little Cheverell were in the process of suffering from a protracted outage of broadband and phone services – after a tree fell on one of Openreach’s overhead cables. Indoor mobile reception in this area can be very patchy and, in the case of Rosanna Watson’s property, it appeared to be unusable (we don’t know her exact address and the area is quite wide).

Suffice to say that this situation presented somewhat of a problem for heavily pregnant Rosanna when she suddenly went into labour and found herself unable to call for help via either her mobile or landline. Eventually, her husband arrived and was able to seek help, albeit with Rosanna ultimately giving birth on the kitchen floor some 15 minutes after paramedics arrived.

As well as highlighting the challenges of keeping people in remote areas connected, particularly those in a temporarily vulnerable state, the case also raises the odd question over how automatic compensation works in such situations.

According to Gazette & Herald, BT reportedly declined to compensate the customer as she did not report the connectivity loss herself – even though it was a general issue that Openreach, and thus the ISP, would have been aware was occurring across the community. Not to mention the challenge of reporting a total loss of service in a location with no viable alternative method of calling the provider, which is a particular issue for those who are unable to travel.

What does the regulator say?

Generally speaking, Ofcom requires members of their automatic compensation scheme to pay out to a customer in this sort of situation if:

a. a customer reports a Total Loss of Service in relation to their fixed line or broadband service to their Communications Provider; and

b. following an engineer visit or remote testing and diagnosis, a Total Loss of Service is identified and a fault is (or should have been) recorded on that line or service; and

c. such fault is not resolved by 11.59pm on the day two working days after the fault is reported by a customer (the “Payment Trigger Time”), unless the customer has requested a later date for repair. For example, if a fault is reported on a Monday, compensation will become payable if the fault has not been fixed by the Payment Trigger Time of 11.59pm on Wednesday.

The key point above is that a, b and c are all part of one linked requirement (i.e. you can’t take b as being separate from a). In other words, it doesn’t seem to matter if BT and Openreach knew there was a protracted service outage and had verified that, since in the above case the customer must still report the loss of service in order to stand any chance of compensation. Not very “automatic” and kind of tricky to do if you have no working communication to report it in the first place.

The key takeaway above is that customers need to report the fault as soon as they can while the issue is still active, otherwise the provider will not be under an obligation to compensate you. This is perhaps not something that many consumers would expect, although most of the ISPs do have FAQ pages that reflect the caveats – even if some are clearer than others.

However, none of this stops an ISP from choosing to pay out compensation, on its own initiative, and it’s thus still disappointing to see BT take such a hard line on what was a major service outage for the area. Additionally, in instances where automatic compensation is not being paid, Ofcom states that customers should not be charged by a provider for a service that they are not receiving (i.e. if BT charges the full monthly fee then you can dispute).

The original article didn’t include a comment from BT and we have similarly requested one ourselves. We’ve also asked Ofcom to confirm their position on the reporting requirement in such cases and await their reply.

UPDATE 31st Oct 2023 @ 12:31pm

In the original article we made a mistake by stating that the rules “do respect the reality that it may not be possible for everybody to report such a fault during an outage“, thus Ofcom states: “If the customer reports a persisting Total Loss of Service, relating to the same underlying fault, within 48 hours of resolution of the initial fault, then automatic compensation will apply as if the first fault had continued without resolution.”

However, Ofcom informs us that this is the wrong interpretation. What the regulator means here is that if a customer reports a fault in a broadband connection, and the same fault re-occurs within 48 hours of the initial fault being fixed, automatic compensation should be paid continuously (from 11.59pm on the day two working days after the fault was first reported by the customer) until the persisting fault is resolved. See the related Code of Practice.

UPDATE 3rd Nov 2023

Ofcom has also highlighted that those eligible for priority fault repair shall have their fault start time measured from when the provider first becomes aware of it, rather than when the customer reports the fault. But this would only reflect those who have previously identified themselves as “vulnerable” – women who are pregnant often don’t identify themselves to ISPs as being vulnerable, particularly if they aren’t the bill payer.

However, it is worth noting that consumers can also report a fault to their provider via snail mail (postal address) – assuming you can find the correct address while offline, as well as the usual online methods. But the very notion of a situation being so bad that you actually have to write an old-fashioned letter to an ISP – during a known outage, in order to stand any chance of getting proper compensation, is bordering on the ridiculous.