Cancelling a BT contract

ukrunner

My son has a BT contract that runs until June 2022. He rents an apartment but has had to move to a new apartment, due to Covid. The new place already has a broadband service, as he is now renting a room in someone's house, as opposed to renting an apartment. BT have stated that they will charge him £150 to cancel his contract. They offered to put a new line into the house that he is moving into, at no charge, but he said that the owners will not allow this. So, do BT have the legal right to charge him this cancellation fee? Are they expecting him to not move house until his contract runs out? How come this does not happen with the other utilities with whom he had contracts, gas and electric etc? If he does not cancel the contract, he will be paying BT a monthly fee and receiving no service. How is this legal? Any help would be much appreciated.

Neil_Jones

ukrunner said:

My son has a BT contract that runs until June 2022. He rents an apartment but has had to move to a new apartment, due to Covid. The new place already has a broadband service, as he is now renting a room in someone's house, as opposed to renting an apartment. BT have stated that they will charge him £150 to cancel his contract. They offered to put a new line into the house that he is moving into, at no charge, but he said that the owners will not allow this. So, do BT have the legal right to charge him this cancellation fee? Are they expecting him to not move house until his contract runs out? How come this does not happen with the other utilities with whom he had contracts, gas and electric etc? If he does not cancel the contract, he will be paying BT a monthly fee and receiving no service. How is this legal? Any help would be much appreciated.

This comes up quite regularly.

In a nutshell, your contract is for services as a specific address.  If you then move for whatever reason and the service cannot be transferred to the new address, then you are terminating the agreement.  Basically, it's not BT's fault your son is moving.  One of the advantages of 12/18/24 month contracts is better prices, but you have to be sure you think you're secure there for those 12/18/24 months.  If the house blows up because you left the gas on and you can't move back because its now a pile of rubble, that's one thing.  But getting handed a Section 21 notice or whatever is another.

Gas and electric is an entirely different thing, as coverage (particularly for electric) is uniform and you can get them anywhere, plus they're requirements for other parts of life.  You don't "need" a phone line to live as such, but you need electricity at a minimum to keep food cold, to cook food, to have hot water to wash with, etc.