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UK Broadband Customers Set To Receive Millions In Compensation For Bad Service (thestack.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the payments-for-problems dept.

An anonymous reader quotes The Stack: British telecoms regulator Ofcom has revealed new plans which would see consumers who experience poor service automatically compensated, in cash or credit, by their landline or broadband providers. As part of the scheme, customers who have had to put up with delayed repairs, missed installation or engineer appointments, will be paid up to £30 in compensation, depending on the issue. According to Ofcom, 6 million landline and broadband customers could receive a total of around £185 million (approximately $230 million) in compensatory payments each year as a result of the policy. The regulator says every year U.K. repair technicians failed to show up for 250,000 repair appointments.

17 comments

  1. Wow... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    When you offer such a terrible service to your customers that you are made to THEM back because of it... Maybe that will be a wake-up call for them to change how they do things. Or, you know, raise prices to cover the losses because screw changing for the better.

    1. Re:Wow... by MightyMartian · · Score: 1

      Clearly this is Communism. In a proper God-fearing capitalist country, you would have the option of quitting your broadband service and selecting from the wide array of broadband choices!

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    2. Re:Wow... by kronix1986 · · Score: 1

      Putting aside your rhetorical sarcasm, we have a huge number of ISPs (several dozen) who provide ADSL...but the majority of customers are on 12/18 month contracts and *can't* switch if they're merely dissatisfied with the service on offer.

      If I pay for a service and it's unavailable to me for 3 days in a month, I'd expect to be automatically refunded for those 3 days. That's precisely what the new laws will guarantee.

      This is the state ensuring capitalism works correctly. What this effectively means is a loss of service is breach of contract, and the legislation introduces a statutory compensation clause which can result in a refund of up to £30. Most people pay anywhere from nothing (12-month £0/mo offers) to £45 (Virgin's 200Mbps) so it'll cover the vast majority of outages.

    3. Re:Wow... by AHuxley · · Score: 1

      The UK can offer an huge selection of different ISP.
      The problem is the network, all the POTS, coax, fibre. What to do with the network and how to keep it funded and working?
      Make every ISP virtual on hardware that is kept away from the role of an ISP?
      Allow one telco to be the hardware network owner and offer their own ISP?

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    4. Re:Wow... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually, you would want the critical infrastructure in the hands of the government (like gas pipes, electricity lines, water, etc..) and have a fixed cost per user for said infrastructure. Then ISPs can compete on services they provide (speed, (web)space, email addresses, etc...).
      This would also open up the market on, for example coax.

  2. comcast would go broke by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    if they had to do this.... hell, any u.s. cable / satellite / wireless / telephone company would.

  3. Sigh by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

    When are we going to get back the money we gave to telcos to build out DSL? They gave it away to executives as bonuses.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    1. Re:Sigh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That bonus money kept their valuable skills and insight within the company. If we hadn't paid that they would have left and we'd be on the hook to come up with our own DSL rollout strategy. Thankfully they saw that there wasn't really a need for any major upgrades or overhauls and they saved us billions in lost productivity from the roadworks, traffic jams and failed upgrades that come with major infrastructure change.

      Also: You're getting that money as it trickles back down into the economy so you're already seeing the benefits of it.

    2. Re:Sigh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That never happened. Telcos invested their own money to build DSL because they figured it would return a profit.

    3. Re: Sigh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      LOL you're fuckin full of shit.

    4. Re: Sigh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ex Telco here....there is a permanent replacement of senior tech stuff by juniors (half or less salaries) with almost no knowledge. When things get hot, they hire an external consultant (i.e.: an old senior tech) by the hour to fix the mess.

    5. Re:Sigh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The only economy that money's trickling down into is the Cayman Islands'.

  4. Yay by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    With the amount of failures my connection has without engineers turning up I'll basically be getting free broadband...for the 10 or so days a year it works correctly!

  5. Competition: Who can be the most abusive? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Comcast would go broke."

    One of the Consumerist stories about Comcast: Comcast: 2014 worst company in America.

    This is serious. Don't let the UK get ahead. The US must dominate in abusiveness!

  6. About time by MPBoulton · · Score: 1

    Regulators only do this when they get sick of having to act as ombudsman on the same thousnads of identical cases of unfair treatment by ISPs to their customers. This is a positive step, but the regulator should go further.

    For example, the fact only 10% of an ISP's customers have to get the advertised speed they plaster all over bus stops, buses and on TV is a ridiculously unfair industry practice.

  7. uk repair technicians by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    All the problems here are with Openreach.

    Openreach are fraudulent crooks that charge service providers fines for faults when they aren't faults. They are completely useless when they actually turn up!