Daisy Comms Adds Paid SafeWeb Service to UK Accounts Without Asking
Business broadband ISP, cloud and technology provider Daisy Communications has managed to irritate some of their UK customers after the provider automatically added a new internet security feature – ‘SafeWeb Plus’ – to their accounts, at a cost of £11.99 ex. VAT per month, without first getting consent.
It seems like only last week that we were reporting on how Onestream had attracted the ire from some of their customers for doing something similar with NordVPN (side note: it was literally last week). But while consumers have plenty of laws to defend them against such practices, it can be a bit more of a grey area when it comes to businesses (they don’t enjoy as many protections).
Nevertheless, there is usually a little something called business ethics, even in B2B transactions, which in most cases helps to ensure that companies play fair with each other. However, in this case, the concept of such ethics appears as if it could have been placed under some strain. This occurred after Daisy Communications added the paid SafeWeb Plus add-on to customer bills without first getting their express consent.
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In fairness, Daisy did give a fair bit of notice (emails were recieved at the end of July) and they included a link to an opt-out form, but this isn’t a simple ‘click to decline‘ style affair. Instead, you have to actually waste time filling in the full form, and that’s just so you can avoid being billed for something that you probably didn’t ask for in the first place. This is of course assuming you didn’t a) accidentally overlook the email (easily done in today’s land of daily promotional spam), or b) fail to read much further down to where it mentions the service charge, as well as the opt-out.
Extract from Daisy Communications’ Customer Email
Subject: Protect your business with Daisy Communications
That’s why we’re adding SafeWeb Plus, one of our cyber security solutions, designed to help to keep your business data safe and protected, to your account.
… (then much further down the email) …
From 1 September 2024, you will have SafeWeb Plus added to your account. So, you will see a monthly fee of £11.99 (excluding VAT) added to your bill.
To opt out of SafeWeb Plus please fill in the form here: https://daisycomms.co.uk/h2-safeweb-plus-opt-out
None of this is to say that SafeWeb Plus is a bad service, in fact it could be a very useful feature to have. But is it so hard to simply get the customer’s consent first, before adding it to their bills? According to some of the feedback we’ve seen, this might not be the first time that Daisy has done something like this, although that requires further investigation.
We have contacted Daisy Communications for a comment.
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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This just sounds like a setup for lawsuits, especially B2B where I won’t be surprised if it isn’t caught soon and the costs adds up.
Why do companies do this (other than to make money)?
Surely they must realise it will annoy customers, cause bad feeling and damage their reputation.
The % of customers who will keep paying either because they think they need it now and are scared of the supposed risk it saves them from, or, nobody notices as accounts team and those in the know are separated and ongoing bills often just get paid…
…is far far far less than the ones who would moan, and even less than those who could even leave the supplier given the horrendous contracts they have.
It’s a net win for the suppliers every time. Business agreements are rough.
Follow the company ownership of all these outfits up the chain on Companies House – in Daisy’s case it’s owned by Robinson Capital. The MO of all these companies is to increase the value of the company so they can make money when they sell it to someone else – in the world of telcos this means taking more money off current customers by adding services they didn’t expressly ask for, dodgy selling techniques where you put people into long-term contracts without specifically mentioning it (“please sign this to say you approve us moving your PSTN service to VoIP to get ready for the shutdown, we won’t mention it’s a five year agreement”). Customer satisfaction isn’t relevant if they’ve got 40 months of a contract left to run.
Im not 100% sure, but some years ago this type of practice was illegal. Fraudulent invoicing, iirc. Unless the T&Cs of the included a line to effect “if you do not agree you do not need to pay this invoice”
The law may have changed in the intervening years, of course.
Hard to say, for a consumer 100% illegal but for business it depends what’s written in the small print.
Oh hardly the first thing Daisy has done (along with many of these telcos)
Many of them added these ‘anti-fraud protection’ measures (eg a sort of insurance against calls made on your lines – PSTN, ISDN or VOIP, they don’t care) – 99p, £3, whatever they can get away with.
It’s a lot of money in total…
Traditional telco companies are all bad news, leaches and rip people off – and now they can’t stitch people into phone systems on crazy long expensive lease deals, they’re finding new ways to keep the money coming in – it’s one of my personal annoyances every time I do a review of someone’s setup to find how badly the telco stitched them up.
There *are* good companies around, even in the business telephony market (which has had a huge surplus of rip-off merchants since forever), but most “normal” (non IT) businesses seem to end up with the worst of them. Presumably they also have quite efficient steals, er, sales departments.
Annoyingly, it’s usually pretty clear to me within about 30 seconds of looking at a supplier’s website if they’re one of the bad ones…
Gradwell did the same recently.
Yes, Gradwell did this to a random array of my customers…not all of them though.
Luckily I monitor some of my customer’s monthly bills but one still slipped through for a few months.
I’ve been migrating customers off them the past few years anyway, only a couple left to move off.
Shame really as when Peter started the business in the 90’s it was great and the initial VoIP in the early 2000’s.
Then he sold it and it’s been downhill mostly ever since and cost just keeps rising.
There were some good people there that got stuff done but they seemed to have all left now…wonder why?!
I have also been caught up in this scam to allow Daisy Communications to “print money”.
Original email (30 days ago?) was not received and the most recent to advise it was being implemented was marked by Outlook as probable phishing/malicious content.
Daisy Communications are, so far, unable to advise where, in my original agreement, it states that this unsolicited charge is allowable. They have tried to fob me off with a forced, additional, “Opt Out” agreement that I have simply not agreed to nor signed.
Fraudulent activity by Daisy? I will be seeking legal advice.
I actually bothered to opt out but had been charged anyway!
Well in the past 9 months they have added the below services to my account:
Safeweb £11.99
Business assurance £7.50
F2C bundle £13.35
Complete care £5.00
All added on without my permission and advised I should have opted out from them via email. Can’t make this up. Shambles.
I’ve been one of the ones that have been subscribed to Safe Web without my consent. The original email went into junk mail and then when I talked to them and they provided me with the link it didn’t work. Beyond that, the emails they send look like spam!