Moving Home - Vodafone forcing New 24 Month Contract

plh56

I'm currently a Vodafone broadband customer and moving home in August. My current address is served via Cityfibre and I have the 500MB/500MB service. I'm 18 months into my 2 year contract.

I've just called them to move my service to new new address but the new address doesn't have Cityfibre. It does however have Openreach FTTC, with Openreach FTTP being built now, to be available by end of the year.
The Vodafone agent advised they can only offer me up to 74mbps (which makes sense given only Openreach FTTC right now). I said I'd be happy to take a slower service temporarily until Openreach FTTP is ready at some point later this year.

She said that is not an option, and that I'd have to commit to a new 24 month contract on the much slower FTTC service or pay early termination fees as they do provide service at my new address.

This seems extremely unfair - I don't want to be locked into 2 years of slow service when FTTP is going to be ready in a few months and my current contract ends in 6 months. Why won't they just let me move to the slower service and keep my current contract end date. Then when it ends FTTP will be ready and I can upgrade?

I read my contract and it's vague using words like "may" so doesn't seem that helpful:

"

If you are moving house.
a) Please let us know at least 30 days in advance of your moving date. If you wish to transfer your Home
Broadband and Phone Services to your new addressin the UK, we will conduct a service availability check.
If we are able to provide the services at your new address, we will arrange the transfer. Connection charges
may be applicable for connecting the Home Broadband and Phone Services to your new home (for
example if a new phone line or fibre connection is required).
b) If you wish to transfer your Home Broadband and Phone Services to your new home, you may become
subject to a new agreement with us and a new minimum period may be applicable from the service
activation date at your new home. If you choose to terminate the new agreement within the first 14 days
of your service activation date and were within your minimum term of your previous agreement a
termination fee may be payable.
c) If we are unable, for any reason, to provide a Home Broadband and Phone Services to your new address
in the UK then you will be entitled to end this Agreement subject to provision by you of reasonable
evidence of your change of address and payment by you of all charges owing up to the date that we
disconnect your service. We reserve the right to apply any termination fees and charges."



Is there anything I can do? What are my options? I don't think it is unreasonable for them to let me keep my current contract end date given they are providing a far worse service for the money, or else let me out of the contract as they are unable to provide the same service.

flaneurs_lobster

Ask (eg) Sky if they would handle things the same way. They offer up to £200 towards Early Termination Fees that would apply if you were to can Vodafone before your min term ended.

Are you sure about the FTTP live date?

Round these parts it took the thick end of a year after the digging was complete before the service was offered to punters.

southsidergs

They'd still let you uograde to FTTP if in a 24m contract anyway

plh56

That's a good point. I'm just going by the dates Openreach said in their Full fibre update for my new postcode, they're working in the area right now and estimated "December 2026" but I have no idea if that can be relied on for actual service go live or not? I do recall Cityfibre took another year after all the work was done before selling services at my current address…
I can get up to 1GB via Virgin Media at the new address, so that is another option but if Vodafone won't be resonable and insist on a new 24 month contract I'd have to pay early termination fees

littleboo

Well to be fair to Vodafone, you have contracted for a service at your current address,not any address you may move to. They can quite happily supply the service you and they have agreed to for contracted period. So the choice is, pay the ETC to end the contract early, or accept whatever terms they offer as an alternative to paying the ETC

JSmithy45AD

Would ETC's be payable by other companies given that the OP is going to have to pay off Vodafone at the old address and move to a new one? I can see problems doing that.

iniltous

TBH , this really is just another moving expense that can be eliminated by agreeing to take service (whatever is available) from the same ISP at the new address ( sometimes that means a new minimum term , sometimes just completing the existing minimum term ) ,in this case it’s only agreeing to FTTC for 24 months that is an issue because of the probability of FTTP becoming available at the new address in the near future and the OP assumes they won’t be able to switch without penalty even if staying with VF and just moving to FTTP , because they will be inside a minimum term with potentially 18+ months left .

I’d not be too sure about that ….Openreach incentivises ISP to move customers onto FTTP once it’s available so it’s likely that VF will not object to moving to FTTP from FTTC a few months into a 24 month deal ,because Openreach sweetens the deal for Vodafone, Vodafone will likely want the 24 months minimum restarting , and you will pay the list price (rather that any discount new customers may get ) but that upgrade path (without early termination charges ) should be available….obviously if VF are not wanted and keeping options open is the preference , then some early termination charges are inevitable

plh56

Hi all, thanks for the advice so far. I totally forgot that my wife often does media authoring for her work (she's a permanent home worker) and so uses a specialist piece of software that stores huge files in the cloud. As such the upload speed is essential. She reminded me last night it already takes about 10 minutes to save files on our current service (with 500MB upload) which she finds annoying.
So a FTTC service with a slow upload just won't be viable even short term.
As such I will tell Vodafone it's just not a viable alternaitve to the current 500MB upload service we have. Even if we switch to Virgin Media with 100MB upload which seems to be faster option until Openreach FTTP is ready, it will be 5x slower.

flaneurs_lobster

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82076180#Comment_82076180

Might have an issue with Openreach FTTP, their standard consumer product maxes out at 100-200Mbps upload.

There are some exceptions on new builds, and maybe if you move to a business tariff but otherwise, to be aware.

iniltous

If VF upload speed on FTTC is unacceptable , then you will have to accept the early termination charges, but as stated , 5 to 6 months of ETC , is likely to be relatively insignificant compared to the other house moving costs .

If Virgin offer the best upload available at the new address and that’s essential , then your choice is pretty clear.

FWIW , it’s quite likely that when FTTP from Openreach is available it will be asymmetric (slower upload than download ) for a while (OR are trialling XGSPON , and new headends are combined GPON/XGSPON so capable of symmetric speeds ) , but you probably will be near the end of any Virgin minimum term before it’s offered to the public, so no real concerns that you picked the wrong option in the short term and in a year or two chances are if you still need faster upload you will have choices

plh56

Thanks everyone, I had a chat with an escalation team at Vodafone now and explained the issue. They agreed as they are unable to offer anywhere near the speeds we need at the new address to waive the early termination charges as they can't offer comparable service. So I'm going to order Virgin Media for the interim, and hope that once that contract is up Openreach FTTP is ready and they've sorted out their limited upload speeds (interesting to read about that, was not aware it was so limited vs cityfibre and others, naively I assumed as it's full fibre it would be symmetrical)