BT 'Cease Charge'?

SteveJC_2

Just a word of warning.
Having been disappointed with BT Broadband after 18 months I cancelled the amount and was swiftly billed £20 + VAT for a 'Cease Charge'?
Apparently this is a charge to flick a switch to turn off the broad band access from my home phone line?
What a rip, I've contested the charge but BT are firm that the charge is resonable and fair? What, this is akin to those unfair bank charges, yes Im sure the 'cease charge' is buried in the terms and conditions but its hardly right!

macman

If you cancelled while in contract then an early termination fee is payable.
If you are out of contract then you have to give a month's notice, if you just cancelled your DD (which is how I read your post) then that does not end your contract.
Did you not use a MAC code to migrate your broadband elsewhere?

iniltous

If you just 'cease' your broadband ( not use a mac to migrate to another ISP ) then you are charged a fee, as an engineer visits the exchange to disconnect your line from the ISP's kit, if you move ISP using the mac process then the disconection from the old ISP is done at the same time as the connection to the new ISP so no disconnect fee is charged.(but the new ISP 'pays' for the new connection)
It costs BT time & money to send an engineer to the exchange to do the work so a fee is raised , in the past the ISP would have payed for the disconnect, now they can pass on the fee to the end user

olgadapolga

They've just tried this one with me. I'm cancelling ALL of my services with BT (at the end of my contract) as the service is appalling. I was informed that there would be a cessation charge, and the reasons for it (quite spurious and unfair as far as I could see; if they want to send an engineer to the exchange to disconnect the broadband then that's up to them; the line will no longer be in use (I've cancelled telephony as well) so I couldn't care less what they do/don't do to the line).

I sent them a letter of complaint (posted and emailed) stating that I would NOT, under any circumstances, be paying the charge. I had a phone call last week to say that they are unable to cancel the charge but will offset it with a credit for the same amount. That suits me fine!

Might be worth a letter; you never know.

spark_deals

iniltous wrote: »

in the past the ISP would have payed for the disconnect, now they can pass on the fee to the end user

HI
Just wondering.....
If you paid the activation/ connection charges in the first place, do you still have to pay disconnection charges!
Moreover, read the contract carefully. If there is no clause mentioning disconnection/ cease charges, you must no pay any.
Hope this helps.
Thanks

deklan99

Old news, cease fee was first announced in 2006 - http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/2873-bt-wholesale-price-changes.html , amount has varied since then but will be in the Ts & Cs. Ofcom's take on it is that "if a company makes a cease charge, it should closely reflect the charge they have to pay BT Openreach".

iniltous

I think the probem here is ISP's relationship with BT Wholesale and Openreach, BT originally said the connection charge (what they charged the ISP for connecting the ISP customer to broadband in the exchange ) is in effect an install and disconnect fee, The ISP's complained to OFCOM claiming they are being charged for something that may never happen (the disconnect bit), ISP's wanted the lowest possible connection charge from BT, so OFCOM insist the connection fee is reduced, the ISP's pay BT less when they sign up a customer,...but that means if an ISP asks BT to cease a connection from their kit who should pay for that ?, BT got paid a reduced fee for the connection , BT should be paid for the work involved to disconnect an ex customer on behalf of the ISP, so BT now charge the ISP for the disconnection ( the amount is based on BT's actual costs ) after all BT isnt there to work for free on behalf of ISP's.... its then upto the ISP to either pass on the fee ar absorb it, so the reason for a disconnect fee is because ISP wanted a reduced connection fee, and OFCOM made BT do what the ISP's wanted.

smoky

This totally unfair charge has also hit my 79 year old mother who does not use the computer at all and hence has cancelled her broadband. She accepts the 12 month minimum contract period and the arbitrary 14 day notice period but is astounded by the additional charge of £25 from BT for NOT being a customer.

I have complained to BT and followed all their escalation routes but they will not waive the charge. I have attempted to complain to Otelo (the body that handles complaints about BT) but they will not accept the complaint as the charge was agreed by OfCom. It is not possible to complain to Ofcom about any of their decisions. Therefore the cosy Ofcom/BT Wholesale/ISP relationship continues and the customer suffers.

This charge was not in the original contract but a clause to allow new clauses to be added was. Every time a change to the contract is made the customer has to be given a period to cancel the contract. Once this period is over then it becomes part of the contract.

This type of charge should be a "cost of doing business" to be included by the supplier in their fixed charges and used to set appropriate monthly fees and minimum contract periods. An analogy to this charge would be having to pay extra to leave a hotel at the end of your holiday as they have to wash the towels.

twobeercans

hmm i just had a run in with BT on this issue myself, i asked about the charge which was made. they duely informed me of what mostly is mentioned above about mac codes ect ect.
I mentioned to them that no such charge existed when i sign the contract for services, i added that in my opinion the service we had recieved was of generally poor qaulity from the very start. we deemed it an unfair variation or amendment to our contract to alter by adding such a charging structure without giving us the ability to simply not agree and them remove services forthwith as they were clearly unable to supply the services in the way and substance of the original contract. we considered this change a substantial change which was detrimental to us and would therefore have required our agreement and us signing an updated/amended contract.
Furthermore we did infact transfer our service to a cable supplier of SUBSTANTIALLY higher qaulity with true unlimited transfers and not some shady nonsense hiding behind a FAIR USE POLICY and UPTO whateverMB based on line qaulity with no bearing on what we actually paid for!!.
Finally as far as we were concerned we signed an agrement for 18mths of service with FREE setup (part of those setup costs should reasonably have been the cost of there removal from the exchange) We honoured our agreement made evry payment on time by DD and gave notice we would not seek to continue after the expiry of said contract due to general rubbish service and rubbish equipment supplied to us. If they didn't return the money they took from us we would have no recourse but to take action against them. After our solemn dressing down they said they would send out a cheque imediately.
Do not let these corporate thieves pull the wool over your eyes, if they think they can change a contract between us and them by adding whatever adhoc charges they see fit then they are very much mistaken. If someone wants to change a binding agreement so as to cause financial detriment then they better be very lear that they need to offer you a choice. 1.keep the service or 2.do not keep the service.
in the case of 2 in my opinion it is they who have been unable to sustain the original service contract by virtue of there own terms changing and not us - therefore they either lose our business without our early termination charge and without cease charge or they drop this stupid cease charge. This only applies if it was not apparent there was such a charge when the contract was signed or the charge has change SUBSTANTIALLY.

So i would look at your agreements if i where you and if it isn't in there then they aint getting it simple as that, cos you can't change or add a detrimental charge without affording us the right to cancel without penalty at the time it is introduced or raised substantially. i tke substantially as anything above a rate of normal inflation. BUT i am no expert, what i am is someone who is not going to suffer disgraceful levels of sevice, rubbish out line qaulity and then more rubbish about FAIR use!! and to add insult to injury some fool telling me if i swicth to cable services they are going to charge me an out of contract adhoc fee.. NOT in this life BT

tbc

mrJ_5

twobeercans wrote: »

So i would look at your agreements if i where you and if it isn't in there then they aint getting it simple as that, cos you can't change or add a detrimental charge without affording us the right to cancel without penalty at the time it is introduced or raised substantially

The charge has existed since around 2007 (possibly early 2008, I've forgotten exactly).

ISPs do give you the option to cancel after the change has been made, during a period of about 30 days. The ISP should inform you of any changes either by letter, email, or via it's website.

If the charge was in the terms when you joined (it started out being about £6), then it changed to say £20 - you would still be liable to pay the original £6 during the (about) 30 day period.

twobeercans

to be honest i would not have been at all concerned about a £6 cease charge - in my own accounting it would have passed unnoticed by us however when that charge becomes £25.00 it leaps out at you.
Again i would mention that we were never informed and goven the right to cancel without penalty and i suspect no one else was either.
I would add they tried a similar con trick with the phone line - sent us a letter saying they had inadvertantly automatically signed up our telephone services for another 12 months so they could apply the friends and family offering "despite there never having been a single call made on the phone line!! They said in the letter we had a right to annul that by replying within 30days and if we did not reply and then decided to cancel the contract we would then be liable to payments of line rental for the full 12 months even though we still had the line!!
Of course we telephoned them immediately to annul this newly created contract in th knowledge we would be getting a far away frmo BT as possible as soon as the BB contract also expired. Guess what? they billed us by DD for the entire contract anyway. We phoned them they suggested it was too late for them to stop the DD but they would refund it. It had happned to the call centre respondent himself, he personally suggested if we were not happy we should cancel the DD to stop them taking monies that were not due, we did as suggested. i certainly wasn't giving them 90 pounds of my money to look after until they get around to returning it.
For the remaining 6 months they sent us a bill for the telephone, we paid the bill on the 8th calender day of receipt on every occasion after that, using there online bill payment facility. Every single bill following had a £7.50 late payment charge added despite evidence of payment being made prior to this charging deadline and everytime we rang them they credited this back to the next bill at it all started again. Every single telephone bill for 6 months.
In the end we switched to Virgin media for our phone and BB we also got tv thrown in (more than freeview channels) - 2 months totally free, true speed as advertised on BB transparent billing, no setup fee, only 12 month contract. My only regret is having to cancel the sky tv service becuase it became almost redundant when we decided to contract our services to virginmedia. BT totally destroyed our confident in ADSL broadband services due to poor BB performance and a range of excuses.
I would assert that all customers of BT challenge any added contract terms and use them as possible escape routes from there contracts - at the very least you should be able to get this cease charge reduced to your contracted level or even discarded completely.
I encourage everyone to give these virginmedia people a chance, when they say 10meg,20meg,50meg from my own experience and other they mean it. when they say free install - they mean FREE and they have no disconnect/cease charge. Lets face it logic tells us if the ISP is operating a cease charge then they are having customers leaving in droves no the odd few!! Also they don't want to lose custom to cable suppliers - this charge UNFAIRLY targets customers wishing to do this since you cannot swicth using the MAC process to a cable line from ADSL. The so called cease charge can and should 100% be factored into the services paid for over the enitire minimum contract term - making it a non transparent one off charge applied adhoc in the case of a transfer from adsl to cable is unfair and singles out that particular services changeover as attracting additional costs thereby placing an unfair barrier or cost accounting to those people looking for better deals on services in my opinion.