Broadband Early Termination Fee-Does It Affect Our Consumer Rights

WhatRecovery

For example if someone signed up with TT and found the broadband was rubbish, kept dropping,going down for days and obviously changed their mind and had to terminate - this is a consumer quality product issue surely - so they should be able to get refund/terminate like any other product?

Just wondered who is the 'watchdog' for these things? Is there an ombudsman or regulator in case we get charged 100 pounds to terminate. What happened to things like the 'cooling off period?'

mije1983

WhatRecovery wrote: »

For example if someone signed up with TT and found the broadband was rubbish, kept dropping,going down for days and obviously changed their mind and had to terminate - this is a consumer quality product issue surely - so they should be able to get refund/terminate like any other product?

Just wondered who is the 'watchdog' for these things? Is there an ombudsman or regulator in case we get charged 100 pounds to terminate. What happened to things like the 'cooling off period?'

It's just like any other contract. If you break it, there are fees to pay if you just change your mind.

Quality wise, it depends what you mean by 'rubbish'? Do you mean just not up to your standards, or were you referring to the fact it keeps dropping out? You would need to give the supplier a chance to resolve the problem before you have a chance to terminate.

Any cooling off period would be specified when you took out the contract.

talktalktobt

You can break the contract with no charge IF you are not supplied with estimated speed upon signing up.

I think that the issue here is that people don't understand what mbps is and what it equates to.

System

talktalktobt wrote: »

You can break the contract with no charge IF you are not supplied with estimated speed upon signing up..

It is only estimated and the service you buy is an UP TO a specific speed. The estimate does not take into account the quality of the line but only the length so can not be a contractual amount

WhatRecovery

MMMnnn sounds like a handy loophole for them to me. We ve been quoted it 18 at the moment but could go up to 19 or as low as 13!!

Cover all? I might stay where I am! When I say 'rubbish' I mean unreliable. Not unreasonable I think?

kwikbreaks

Unreliable broadband these days is almost always down to line problems or the customers own wiring/equipment. If there is anything else it normally gets fixed within a reasonable timescale for a consumer product. If the fault turns out to be the phone line itself you'll find that the contract for that service offers remarkably little in the way of guarantees for broadband delivery.

macman

The cooling-off period starts at sign up, and ends either at or before the actual service provision-after which the provider has already incurred all the set up costs.