Leaving, how to avoid early cancellation fee?

[#1]

Our contract is due to end on 19 Nov 2021, and we've decided to move to another supplier (BT).

1. How do we avoid the early cancellation fee that you seem to have added. BT set the activation date to 2 Nov 2021. We do not want to be without a service due to my wife's health conditions.

2. We were offered a "goodwill gesture" in an email dated 24 Nov 2020. This was never paid. Can you please pay this forthwith.

Regards

[#2]

Thanks for your post @Animal88

@Animal88 wrote:

Our contract is due to end on 19 Nov 2021, and we've decided to move to another supplier (BT).

1. How do we avoid the early cancellation fee that you seem to have added. BT set the activation date to 2 Nov 2021. We do not want to be without a service due to my wife's health conditions.

If your contract with us ends on 19th November, then to avoid a cancellation fee you'll have to ask your new provider to takeover your services after this date, for example the 20th November although that's a non-working day so it's likely that's not possible in which case I'd recommend going for the 22nd November. 

@Animal88 wrote:

2. We were offered a "goodwill gesture" in an email dated 24 Nov 2020. This was never paid. Can you please pay this forthwith.

I'm really sorry about this. I had personal ownership of your ticket 207500803 Here and I made you an offer for a goodwill gesture then from what I can see the ticket expired after 14 days of inactivity so technically you shouldn't have been able to reply afterwards due to the way our systems work.

It's very odd you had been able to as this sort of behaviour in our systems is something I've never seen before, but as a result of this, the notification of your reply never came through to me. 

I've added the goodwill credit onto your account now which will go towards your next bill or final bill with us.

If your final bill's in credit then we'll refund this either to your bank account or by cheque depending on if your direct debit remains active when the final bill is produced, this is normally within 20 days after an account's cancelled. 

If there's anything else you'd need help with or anything we can do to keep you as a customer, please let me know. 

[#3]

@Gandalf I hope that you can clarify point one as I see it often and I’m confused. 
The OP’s contract ends on the 19th November. The contract is paid monthly in advance. Therefore the OP will have made the final contracted payment on the 19th October.

Seeing as the contract is fully paid up for the contracted period then why are cancellation charges payable?
I can quite understand that the OP might not get a refund for the days  left up to the 19th November, but cancellation charge suggests having to pay extra to leave. Why, and how can this possibly be justified?

[#4]

@Baldrick1

They’ll get cancellation charges based on the profit forgone fees explained Here but if we owe money for unused subscription fees then we’ll credit this back in the final bill. Generally speaking termination fees per day is less than the subscription fees.

Let me know if you’ve got further queries.

[#5]

@Anoush / @Gandalf 

I didn’t want to disturb your private time.

What I think that you are saying is that if you leave part way through the final month then the days remaining in your contract will be subject to the daily cancellation fee, so you will not be refunded in full for the remaining days? So providing there are no other fees to pay your refund will be reduced? 
If so, I agree that it is a cancellation fee, but in effect it is not an actual bill that has to be paid but reduced credit that Plusnet will refund?

Assuming that this is correct it is perfectly reasonable. The natural interpretation that somehow an extra fee has to be paid shows Plusnet in a far more negative light.

[#6]

No problem @Baldrick1 

Yeah if you leave before your contract ends you’ll be subject to a cancellation fee for the days remaining and as you pay for the service in advance, if you’ve paid us for something you’ve not had we’ll add a credit to your final bill which will be deducted from the cancellation fees.

[#7]

That's not what's happened.

We are being charged  approx £14 more than our normal monthly fee. How have you lost any profit whatsoever?

[#8]

Thanks for getting back to me @Animal88

Profit foregone is just another term for cancellation fees. Apologies for the confusion.

The extra amount looks to be a missing discount so I've added an additional credit towards your next bill to cover this.

Really sorry for the inconvenience.

[#9]

Looking at the link Anoush provided, we should be charged less for the final month as BT is taking over provision for the last 17 days, thus reducing your costs... I'll get busy with the spreadsheet later...

[#10]

@Animal88

Your final bill hasn't generated yet though. I appreciate that your existing bill will likely cover for a time we won't be providing you with a service but we'll account for this automatically in your final bill by calculating what we owe you back.

[#11]

It gets worse.

From July we've been charged 27.98 instead of the agreed 25.99.

[#12]

Hi @Animal88

In June we increased our prices in line with the Consumer Price Index (CPI) explained Here.

I can see we made you aware of this by email in advance and this is logged on your account Here.

[#13]

We did not receive that email.

In any case we were on a fixed price contract for 12 months. To quote from the email dated 21 Sept 2020 " Your broadband and line rental price will not change during the fixed price contract."

[#14]

Thanks for getting back to me @Animal88

I've dug into this and it looks like due to the issues we had getting you onto fibre from the legacy account type last year, the contract wasn't properly applied as fixed price so I've arranged a refund now.

I've added more specific details onto the support ticket logged via your account Here.

Let me know if there are any further issues but hopefully this should be sorted now.

[#15]

OK, the adjustments you have made brings the bill dated 10 Oct 2021 down to 25.99.

However, in accordance with the link Anoush provided, the final month should be charged daily on a pro rata basis.

13 days, 20 Oct to 2 Nov pro rata comes to 12.00
17 days 3 Nov to 19 Nov pro rata comes to 4.32 in accordance with the calculation in the link Anoush provided.

Total 16.32