topic Re: Broadband Compensation in My Account/Billing

Broadband Compensation

Eyebrow — Wed, 28 May 2025 17:48:31 GMT

BB went down for 3 days last week. How/when does compensation get paid?

Re: Broadband Compensation

lahbrannan1 — Thu, 29 May 2025 08:08:50 GMT

Thank you for your recent message.

I am sorry to hear you had issues with your service. Automatic compensation is paid out for a total loss of service after the first 2 working days of being disconnected. Please find below the criteria for the automatic compensation

Automatic compensation: What you need to know - Ofcom

Should you have any further queries then please do not hesitate to get in touch.

Thanks

Lee

Re: Broadband Compensation

Eyebrow — Wed, 04 Jun 2025 12:08:51 GMT

Thanks Lee,

When can I expect to see the compensation amount hit my account - it has been 3 weeks?

Re: Broadband Compensation

corringham — Wed, 04 Jun 2025 13:42:44 GMT

I wouldn't get too excited, the compensation may not be much if any at all - the day you report the fault doesn't count, then 2 full days don't count, and only full days after that count. So for example if you reported a failure on Monday morning and it was fixed anytime Thursday there would be £9.76 credit to your account 30 days after the fix.

Re: Broadband Compensation

Townman — Wed, 04 Jun 2025 23:47:36 GMT

@corringham wrote:

... So for example if you reported a failure on Monday morning and it was fixed anytime Thursday there would be £9.76 credit to your account 30 days after the fix.

Errr, may be not, see here - Automatic Compensation | Help | Plusnet

Here's an example:

If you report a fault on a Monday, you'll get compensation if the fault hasn't been fixed by 11.59pm on Wednesday.

You won't get compensation:

For the day the fault was fixed

I read the "get compensation" as "become eligible for compensation" AND no compensation is payable for the day of the fix. I therefore suspect that in the scenario of a fault reported on Monday, not fixed by 23:59 on the Wednesday will only receive compensation is not fixed until after 23:59 on Thursday.

Also on checking the Ofcom detail in the Code of Practice (updated 4th June 2025) there is a requirement that the level of compensation be increased each 1st April. Ofcom's guide states that is now £9.98 per day.

Re: Broadband Compensation

corringham — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 09:01:17 GMT

The full Plusnet wording is slightly different than the Ofcom wording that I checked against - see industry-code-of-practice-for-automatic-compensation-2024-v1.pdf (updated 7 March 2025)

That states

"For example, if a fault is reported on a Monday, compensation will become payable if the fault has not been fixed by the Payment Trigger Time of 11.59pm on Wednesday."

and

"the amount of automatic compensation payable shall be a minimum of:
a. £8 for the Payment Trigger Time; and
b. £8 for each full calendar day the Total Loss of Service continues for after the Payment Trigger Time."

so I think "get compensation" really does mean that a payment will be made rather than just gating subsequent days payments.

The compensation amounts did apparently increase in line with inflation from 1 April, so £9.98 should be payable in the example scenario.

Re: Broadband Compensation

dvorak — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 09:13:45 GMT

Moderators Note

This topic has been moved from Broadband to My Account / Billing

Re: Broadband Compensation

Eyebrow — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 10:57:26 GMT

Still waiting for a response on this directly from Plusnet.

Re: Broadband Compensation

Eyebrow — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 10:58:33 GMT

Thanks Lee, so when will a payment be made?

Re: Broadband Compensation

Townman — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 11:32:06 GMT

@Eyebrow wrote:
BB went down for 3 days last week. How/when does compensation get paid?

Can you detail "for three days"?

What day did it go down
What day did you report it
What day was it restored

The day you reported the fault and the day it was restored do not count in the compensation consideration. Compensation is only a consideration if the service was TOTALLY non-functional; performance deterioration (so as for a user to consider it unusable) does not count.

Re: Broadband Compensation

Eyebrow — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 11:40:25 GMT

Mon - BB stopped working & reported

Wed - Openreach investigated, identified issue with Router

Sat - New Router activated, BB active

...actually 4 days.

So as originally requested, when will the compensation, or even an acknowledgement, appear in my account?

Re: Broadband Compensation

Townman — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 11:53:28 GMT

Oh!! That is a whole different ball game.

Ofcom automatic compensation scheme does not cover situations where the issue is related to equipment beyond the ONT or NTE. See Ofcom code of practice...

Exceptions to obligation to pay compensation
39. A Communications Provider is not required to pay compensation to a customer if:

g. the fault is not in respect of the service provided or it is caused by equipment or activity within the customer’s home;

The automatic compensation scheme is not predicated on the effects (the service is down) but rather the cause of the fault. It is a mechanism to drive proficiency into BT Openreach. If BTOR do not accept applicability of automatic compensation, then there is no reimbursement to the ISP.

This all pivots what what is the "service provided"; in the Ofcom context it is probably the connection to the BTOR demarcation point: NTE5 for ADSL / FTTC / SoGEA or ONT for FTTP. Some consideration might be offered, but in this case I doubt it will be under the terms of the Ofcom scheme.

Re: Broadband Compensation

Eyebrow — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 12:05:04 GMT

So in other words, they do not have to payout if their equipment breaks down?

Time to change to supplier.

Re: Broadband Compensation

Townman — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 12:21:27 GMT

I have raised an escalation.

Changing supplier (ISP) would not change the OBLIGATION as defined under Ofcom's AUTOMATIC compensation scheme. The scheme's code of practice was not written by ISPs or BT Openreach but by a government quango, who typically do not know what they are dealing with. If the cause of your fault was entirely related to the BTOR part of the service, then the scheme would certainly apply, the amount being related to the number of applicable days.

However in your case, given the AUTOMATIC scheme is related to an ill defined "service" which is not defined within the code, the applicability is not a black and white matter. There are inferred boundaries which as here are not helpful.

Whatever, it has only been three weeks; if the automatic scheme does apply here, it will be another week before you receive notification (30 days after restoration). An ineligibility under the automatic compensation scheme does not preclude other considerations which might be considered by an ISP.

I hope the escalation will deliver clarity for this case which has a deal of twilight zone around it in the context of the AUTOMATIC Ofcom scheme.

You might obtain a clearer position by calling the support centre.

Re: Broadband Compensation

Eyebrow — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 12:40:51 GMT

Will wait to hear the result of your escalation.

Would expect any 'customer focused' provider to not relay standard OFCOM verbage but instead to acknowledge the serious effect no BB has on someone who works from home - and the financial consequences of such.

Thanks for your help

Re: Broadband Compensation

Townman — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 13:03:16 GMT

For clarity, community members are customers like yourself, not 'providers'.

It is not verbiage as such, but the rules which govern the industry scheme(s) and one needs to understand what the rules are and their conditions to know what one might (or might not) be entitled to.

As to working from home and the consequences of the failure of a single point of connection (with no resilience), one needs to be aware that Plusnet's (and other ISPs) residential T&Cs prohibit WFH use of the service. See...

Terms and conditions for Plusnet residential services | Help | Plusnet

2. Your use of the services

2.1. You must:

2.1.3. use the services for personal use in the UK (so don't use the services to run your own business, but a couple of work emails or occasional home working are okay) and in accordance with our Acceptable Use Policy;

12. Our responsibility to you

12.1. If something goes wrong we'll always look to put things right but, except as set out in paragraph 12.3, we'll never be responsible for:

12.1.1. financial loss;

12.1.3. losses that you may suffer if you have used the service or equipment we provide for business purposes (for example due to not being able to carrying out remote working or being able to run a home business);

12.1.5. losses caused by your breach of our agreement.

You might get something, but not to the extent of the financial loss connected with not being able to work from home on a residential grade service. Many people do have such needs and other providers do cater for this, for example EE offer a broadband connection service with 4G fall back ... but that does come with a very different price tag.

Where this consideration has arisen before, users once-bitten explore the acquisition of some form of 4G fallback / resilience option. For example, see https://community.plus.net/t5/Tech-Help-Software-Hardware-etc/Advice-on-buying-a-pay-monthly-dongle-or-MIFI-any-experiences/m-p/2008648#M97866

Re: Broadband Compensation

corringham — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 18:05:29 GMT

@Townman wrote:

39. A Communications Provider is not required to pay compensation to a customer if:

g. the fault is not in respect of the service provided or it is caused by equipment or activity within the customer’s home;

I don't believe the equipment within the customer's home exclusion is intended to include the ISP provided router (although it would include a third party router).

Section 22 appears to explicitly include an ISP provided router as cause of failure qualifying for compensation:

22. For the purposes of this Code, “Total Loss of Service” means:

b. in relation to a broadband service where the customer is unable to access the public internet, in each case as a result of an unplanned change in the operation of the electronic communications network (and/or elements of that network) provided by the customer’s Communications Provider or used by it to provide its services.

The ISP provided router is an element of the network that the ISP uses to provide its service so surely must qualify.

Whether the ISP can in turn claim compensation from Openreach is a separate matter.

Re: Broadband Compensation

Eyebrow — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 18:17:01 GMT

Thank you & appreciated.

Hopefully common sense will prevail.

Re: Broadband Compensation

RealAleMadrid — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 19:03:53 GMT

@Eyebrow I wouldn't assume that if Openreach are involved. I am still waiting for them to repair a blocked pavement duct stopping my full fibre order that they first discovered on the 9th of April. They may come and fix it tomorrow. who knows.