Cancelling contract after 30 days

CheckDigit

Hi everyone,

I was with Virgin for broadband, but after a big price increase, I decided to switch to Plusnet. My switch date was 21st February, and Plusnet gave me an activation date of 11th March.

When the engineer arrived, he said he couldn’t complete the installation because Openreach needed to do some work outside my home. That work still hasn’t been done.

Since it’s now been over 30 days since the switch date, am I still able to cancel and go with another provider? Or is it too late? In the meantime, I’m still using Virgin at the higher price.

Would really appreciate any advice.

Thanks in advance

DullGreyGuy

Who are you proposing to move to? Its likely it will require the same open reach work but you'd go back to the back of the queue for it were you to switch.

CheckDigit

I was thinking about moving to Sky. Do they use Openreach also?

CheckDigit

What I moved back to Virgin?

littleboo

You will be getting automatic compensation from Plusnet at the rate of £6.24 per day for the delayed install, so that should more than cover any increase costs with VM in the meantime

MeteredOut

littleboo said:

You will be getting automatic compensation from Plusnet at the rate of £6.24 per day for the delayed install, so that should more than cover any increase costs with VM in the meantime

Came here to say this. I switched from Sky to Talk Talk last year and the activation was delayed as a neighbour had installed a fence post that had partially blocked the conduit running from the cabinet, through their garden, to my house, so the first OpenReach team could not pull through the FTTP cable. I had to wait for the OpenReach "Civils" team to fix the issue.

I stayed with Sky in the meantime and, once activated, got an automatic £220 credit from TalkTalk for the delay.

phillw

MeteredOut said: 

Came here to say this. I switched from Sky to Talk Talk last year and the activation was delayed as a neighbour had installed a fence post that had partially blocked the conduit running from the cabinet, through their garden, to my house, so the first OpenReach team could not pull through the FTTP cable. I had to wait for the OpenReach "Civils" team to fix the issue.

I stayed with Sky in the meantime and, once activated, got an automatic £220 credit from TalkTalk for the delay.

I think I've been on mse too long, as the first question that comes to mind is. How do you find the conduit and block it, to delay the installation and get £220.

DullGreyGuy

CheckDigit said:

I was thinking about moving to Sky. Do they use Openreach also?

Yes, at least in areas I've lived and a google shows plenty of recent posts of people complaining about Openreach when awaiting a Sky install. 

Need to remember that historically Kingston upon Hull was the only part of mainland Britain which the General Post Office didnt provide telephony for. The GPO was split in the 80s between post and telecoms and the telecoms part renamed itself BT. 

Early 2000s BT was forced to restructure and create a wholesale division, OpenReach, which enabled other telecoms companies to enter the market without having to install their own hardware anywhere. As time has gone on BT/OpenReach have been required to open up their hardware etc more to others wanting to do more than just sales. 

For a long list of broadband providers it will be going via the same OpenReach hardware irrespective of which company you are paying. That said the sellers can choose how to run their customers through the hardware and what prices are paid etc. OpenReach are not allowed to prioritise BT customers over Sky or Plus.Net or others despite being part of the same group etc.