BT charging me £30 to move broadband to Virgin

Bern58

I ve come to the end of my 18 month broadband contract with BT and have decided to move To Virgin. bt say they are going to charge me £30 because I am moving to Virgin and it "involves us in a bit of work"! Has anyone else come across this?

Retrogamer

Yes, it's stated in their T&C's that if you leave their service without a MAC code you will be charged.
When you cancel your services with BT, an engineer will disconnect your line somewhere (usually the exchange)
The £30 charge goes towards the fee that Openreach charge BT to do this.

If you used a MAC code (transferring from one ADSL provider to another) then the new ISP pays Openreach to connect you and the connect is done the same time as the disconnect (i.e line swapped to new equipment) so no charges.

eamon

Are you in a Virgin cabled area and getting your broadband through their network? If yes then no MAC code required. However if you are getting Virgin National (unlikely as Virgin have stopped selling this service) then you need a MAC code.

kwikbreaks

Retrogamer's answer is the correct one.

VM no longer supply ADSL so you have to be moving to cable. BT don't supply cable so you have to be moving from ADSL/FTTC to cable and that involves Openreach in a bit of work disconnecting the tie pair from the phone line for which they charge and BT pass that charge on.

Bern58

Thank you for the much clearer explanation than I got from BT. Still seems a bit of a rip off and is yet another reason I'll never use BT again.

kwikbreaks

Well it's an Openreach charge and just about all ISPs will pass it on. It pretty much only applies if you are completely stopping a BT phone line based BB service.

If you use a MAC to switch suppliers there is a different Openreach fee and that is normally absorbed by the new ISP as there will be a minimum term contract involved.

If you move house and stick with the same ISP they'll absorb charges.

However if you cease the broadband (which moving to cable effectively does too) then there is this fee and the ISPs will have it covered in your contract and pass on the charge.