Leaving during contract term

mgfvvc

My mother in law's Plusnet connection has been flaky for a while and now it seems to have collapsed into a heap. The Openreach engineer who visited a week ago said the line was fine.

She only has 4 months left on the contract and I think she should get FTTP when the contract is up. To me it would make more sense to move now and not waste effort troubleshooting a line we'll replace anyway, but obviously there is a cost to getting out of the contract.
If it's just a case of paying the last 4 months regardless, it might be worthwhile, but I seem to recall that if you exit a broadband contract early then you forfeit all your discounts and have to pay the full rate, not the contracted rate for the whole 18 months, which would make leaving too expensive. Does anyone know Plusnet would charge?

DoaM

It depends on how the contract is worded. If the contract is for £XX.XX per month then that's what the ETC would be based on. If it's £XXX.XX over 18 months with a discount of XX% then the ETC may be based on the non-discounted price. Any prior months' discounts would not be chargeable though (IMHO).

The Broadband & Internet Access board is probably a better place for this question.

MinuteNoodles

I recently dumped Plusnet mid-contract when KCOM put FTTP in my area and were doing 200mbit for £32. You won't pay the full monthly price, you'll pay less per month depending on when the contract was taken out. Mine was a pre-December 2019 so it worked out at roughly £11/month I'd have to pay for the remainder of the contract which given I had 9 months left was just over £100.

unforeseen

I thought if you were in a KCOM area I. E. Hull, your only choice was KCOM but you said you had Plusnet. 

stragglebod

Before you commit to leaving make sure she can keep her landline number when she moves to FTTP, if that's important to her.

JJ_Egan

FTTP  is it available at the MIL address ??

If so limited number of suppliers .

The_Fat_Controller

Further to the comment from @stragglebod , be aware that at least one FTTP offering DOES NOT include any landline service, TalkTalk is the culprit.

mgfvvc

BT seems the most likely option for FTTP. There is no way I'm going to suggest Talk Talk.

MinuteNoodles

The_Fat_Controller said:

Further to the comment from @stragglebod , be aware that at least one FTTP offering DOES NOT include any landline service, TalkTalk is the culprit.

Good. With the number of people who have mobile phones it's not needed anymore in the vast majority of cases where someone will want FTTP. As for "being able to still use the phone if there's a power outage" you won't with FTTP as it uses VOIP to provide the telephony service so if the power is out then unlike a traditional landline where the power can be drawn from the telephone line you're not going to be making any landline calls so would have to use a mobile anyway.

MinuteNoodles

unforeseen said:

I thought if you were in a KCOM area I. E. Hull, your only choice was KCOM but you said you had Plusnet. 

KCOM doesn't just cover Hull, they cover the majority of the East Riding too so outside of Hull and Beverley you have the choice of being with a provider via Openreach or KCOM. KCOM actually have their own physically separate network not only with their own exchanges but with their own wires too and all of them underground. The advantages of this are that KCOM tend to introduce new technologies like ADSL originally and now FTTP at least 2 years prior to BT/Openreach rolling it out in our town. So what you do if you want the faster speeds is go with KCOM until BT/Openreach catch up and roll it out then switch to a BT/Openreach supplier as they're usually a fair bit cheaper. However I have to admit that I may not be changing this time as KCOM finally seem to have realised how uncompetitive they were in places where people had an alternative option and have discount plans available for residents outside areas where they've got a monopoly. It cost me just £4 a month more for 200mbit FTTP than it was for 72mbit from Plusnet via VDSL which I'd only got after doing the whole end of contract leaving dance. I have to say as well that so far a few months in KCOMs speeds during peak demand have managed to maintain 200mbit even during lockdown whereas Plusnet would drop by as much as 40% which became problematic in our house.

mgfvvc

It seems that BT will refund early termination charges for leaving another supplier, so she will probably migrate to FTTP on BT, as long as early termination charges includes the balance of the contract.