Cooling-off period: is it ever after service has started?

SouthLondonUser

Is there any (fibre) broadband provider whose cooling off period includes some time after service has started? Being able to cancel without penalty before the service starts, ie before you have had the chance to verify if it's any good, is basically useless!

iniltous

Cooling off periods are really to offer protection to people who may have been coerced into signing up to a service they didn't want, so after the 'salesman' has left, and the 'customer' has time to reflect and think they were 'bullied' into signing up, they can cancel within the 'cooling off' period...ISP's probably don't even progress the 'order' until after this period has expired, to remove the risk of cancellation.
What you want is a 'try before you buy' and I doubt there are any ISP's who will offer this, after all, setting you up to try is the majority of their costs ( router, postage, payments to their supplier, etc) they are not going to take all the financial risk, and then allow you to say after a period of time, 'No, take it out, it's not for me', penalty free...once you are setup, the ongoing costs to the ISP are small in comparison to the set up costs, the balance is, they should say what the performance should be, and if it doesn't come up to standard they may consider a penalty free cancellation, after they are given time to get service to that minimum performance standard

SouthLondonUser

Well, if an engineer's visit is not required, and if I use my own router, I don't really see what the huge upfront cost for the provider would be, but of course I appreciate it's not in their interest to let you try before you buy!

iniltous

Although on a self install FTTC connection, you don't get an engineer to visit your home, usually an engineer is required to visit the cabinet to hook up your line, and should you decide not to keep FTTC, a visit to remove that connection may be needed, so that's a cost to the ISP, plus the admin to set up an account, it may not be a huge amount possibly £30-£50, but a whole year profit should you not cancel is probably in the same range, and after a year you could change provider penalty free.
If you want to know real world performance you could get, enquire if a neighbour already has FTTC and ask them