Breaking a broadband contract

minniemouse226

Gaah! I've just had a huge bill for over £200 from my old broadband company for breaking my contract with them. Basically we moved recently and I was fed up with their poor service all round so decided to move to BT. I realised I might have to pay a fee but not that much!

Without any previous warning letters they have sent me a final demand for the money. It wasn't even a signed contract, just a verbal one by one of their customer advisors over the phone - surely they should tell you the cancellation cost beforehand?

Is there anything I can do to dispute this or will I have to pay? They said they'd send debt collectors round if I didn't pay immediately!

macman

The minimum terms are clearly outlined in the T&C's when you sign up. Normally when you move house the change is done FOC, but it starts you on a new 12m contract.
No 'signed contract' ever exists with telcoms, a verbal contract has exactly the same validity. The ETC is normally the full value remaining on the minimum term, except for a few of the larger ISP's who have reduced this.
So you don't really have any option but to pay up. Who is the ISP and how many months in were you to your new mimimum term?

david39

Presumably the £200 is the money that you would have paid them in monthly fees from the time you left your old address until the time that the contract ended.

They will have sent you a final demand because, presumably, you have stopped paying them but not told them why and have, therefore, defaulted on the contract.

A contract entered into on the phone is normally quite binding - you can buy insurance over the phone. That is a contract and is binding on both parties - otherwise insurance companies could just refuse to pay out on claims on the grounds that it was only a telephone contract.

The T&Cs will no doubt be published on their web site and will include their cancellation terms.

minniemouse226

It's Talk Talk and I was under contract until April 2013, so that would make sense. Looks like I will have to pay then - I did explain to them that I would have to cancel the contract when I moved - their service has been awful, nevermind customer relations!

Thanks for your replies, looks like I may have to cough up then.

macman

This may help:
http://help.talktalk.co.uk/app/answers/detail/a_id/1617/~/is-there-a-charge-for-terminating-my-contract-early%3F
It's not just a broadband ETC, are you not paying an ETC charge for line rental and call as well?

minniemouse226

No, just the broadband. Bizarrely one of the TalkTalk call centre advisors told me I couldn't possibly have broadband with them as I had BT as my line provider!

macman

Must be an old legacy tariff then. In which case it'll probably be the full value owing on the minimum term. Around £15pm x 13m.
PS: you were paying far too much. TT is only good value on an LLU connection, very expensive on non-LLU.

minniemouse226

macman, thank you for posting Talk Talks's cancellation fees page, I had a feeling the charge was far too high so I called them and after 40 minutes and being passed to three different call centres, they finally agreed that the charge had been miscalculated - at almost £100 more than it should've been! :mad:

The bill they sent me was not itemised in any way, when I requested an explanation of how they came to that figure, one adviser told me to just divide the bill by 12!?? Seriously, I don't know how they get away with these things - I am considering making an official complaint and I'm worried about other people who may be in the same situation, who receive a threatening letter and just pay the bill out of fear.