Router return when originally with Post Office Fibre that transferred over to Shell Broadband ?

CFELH

Under the T&Cs of my Post Office broadband, I had no need to return the router if I passed the one-year contract period. The returns label attached to the router box was addressed back to the Post Office.

I renewed with the PO for second year, after which I was transferred over to Shell Energy. I am planning on leaving Shell Energy at the end of the combined two years with both providers.

As I’d been with the PO for over a year, I dumped all the packing for the router on the understanding they no longer required it. However, Shell is unclear if they want the router back or not?

Has anyone else been in this situation: Signed up to The Post Office and then been transferred over to Shell Broadband. Whose T&Cs do I abide by?

SSmith99

Same here. I was with Post Office for about 7 years. Constantly renewing my 18 and 12 month contract, and they never sent me a new router in that time. It even says Post Office on the router, and it's falling apart. I would have been due a new router anyway. Then Shell took over, and I kept the same Post Office router.
Then I moved house and didn't want to stay with Shell, so paid my bill and closed the account.
Now they're harassing me to send them back the router, when I never had a router from Shell, and BT said I could keep the router after my contract ended.
I tried to contact Shell, but with the cost of living crisis most of their staff are dealing with that and I haven't heard back.
I have enough stress from moving house, without their letters asking me to post a router back that they didn't give me.
I don't see how Shell can legally ask for a router given to me many years ago from Post Office that should have been renewed before anyway, as the law can't be retrospective.

400ixl

They are asking to meet their recycling targets.

It will depend on the terms of the contract you signed (which can get refreshed when you sign up for a new deal). Most older contracts don't have an an obligation to return the router, some of the newer ones do.

If Shell took over the contract from the Post Office then all of the assets will have also transferred. But they are unlikely to take it further than letters.

Saying that, if you have the router (which will be replaced by the new supplier) then just ask Shell to send you the paid for return packaging and throw it in the bag and send it off. For the effort it will take it is better than it going into landfill, do your part for the environment.