Community Fibre: 60 days Satisfaction Guarantee and other ways to cancel

Ulrich

Hi All,

I'm thinking about switching from Virgin Media to CF as my VM contract is about to end in February and they're not offering anything enticing to stay with them.

CF have some interesting offers - for the price I pay VM for M125 (130Mbps) I can get 500Mbps (but it's a 24 months contract instead of 18).

However, CF is definitely a smaller and less known provider.
Here's some important points about them:
1. They constantly run promotions offline and online, MSE Broadband tool features them as well with generous gift card offers - obvious sign they're trying to attract as many other providers' customers as possible.
2. They only offer for purchase few of their contracts on their website - 150 Mbps and 1Gbps, while 350Mbps and 500Mbps are only available via comparison websites like MSE, uSwitch, broadband.co.uk etc.
3. Unlike VM and 9 other big providers, they did not sign up for the Ofcom’s Broadband Speeds Code of Practice .
4. Their customers on TrustPilot complain a lot about lack of technical support if something goes wrong, general slowness and inaccuracy of customer support etc.
5. They charge £10 admin fee for any change to your DD (clause 6.4 of T&Cs).
6. They have a 60 Day Satisfaction Guarantee, but the wording is tricky: "If at any time during that period you are not happy, and we've not been able to fix any issues you have had, then you can leave with no cancellation fees." but they omit that second part about fixing it on a confirmation email.
7. "6.13 Customers who cancel due to the 60 Day Satisfaction Guarantee will not receive any money back for any services they’ve paid for already."
7. Their T&Cs state that "5.1 The Contract between you and us will commence on the date of your successful broadband installation."
8. They confirm I have a right to cancel (cooling-off period) and write it begins from the date of the confirmation email. However, later on in contract summary its "date of this email or your installation date, whichever is the latter".
9. Their cancellation policy is "If you cancel your service agreement during your contract term (subject to the right to cancel below) we will charge you a Cancellation Fee. The Cancellation Fee is the full amount of Charges you would have paid to us for the Services up to the end of the Minimum Period, if the Services were not cancelled before the end of your 60 Day Satisfaction guarantee. You should provide us with 30 days’ notice."
10. Their 3.2(a) reads "For your Broadband Service, we will provide you with at least the minimum upload and download speeds set out in your Confirmation which will be the minimum level of service advertised for the Services on our Website."
11. "7.7    Where we have breached these Terms & Conditions in a significant way, you are free to cancel the Contract between us at any time." and they give an example of internet speed being significantly lower than the minimum speed.
12. Their equipment return policy is a bit funny: "7.15   On cancellation of the Contract or the Services you must promptly return to us or make available for removal any Equipment by us that we ask you to. We will send you a pre-paid envelope for this purpose and will let you know the details of return. If you do not comply with this clause and return the Equipment to us, you must pay our direct charges for replacement and recovery of the Equipment which will be no more than the amount stated in clause 7.19. You are responsible for the safekeeping of the equipment until it is received by Community Fibre."
13. "7.18 Once we receive notice of cancellation, an equipment charge will be added to your next bill. Once we received return of the equipment we will credit this back which will trigger a new invoice (including for customers who have already cancelled and have received their final bill.) "

So basically looking at the points above I'm a bit concerned:
1. P3, 10 and 11 - does that mean that it would be very difficult to leave CF without paying a cancellation fee if they provide me with less than the minimum speed for 30 days and are unable to fix it?
2. When the cool-off period actually ends?
3. Am I wrong that CF won't allow me to leave using P6 for whatever reason because of that "and" bit? And what impact P7 would make?

I think it's important to know answers to these questions as otherwise one would be locked into a 24 months contract while receiving inferior or no service without ability to leave and not to pay for the rest of the contract duration.

littleboo

Also  consider that they use CGNAT on the lower tiers,which or may not be an issue for you 

Ulrich

littleboo said:

Also  consider that they use CGNAT on the lower tiers,which or may not be an issue for you 

Do you know what tiers are affected?

littleboo

"For all our home broadband services below 3000Mbps speed we use Carrier Grade Nat (CGN)"

Ulrich

littleboo said:

"For all our home broadband services below 3000Mbps speed we use Carrier Grade Nat (CGN)"

So basically ANY package apart from their top one works through CGN and therefore does not support port forwarding.
That's a nasty surprise.