UK Phone & Internet Customers to get End of Contract Notices

New Contract Laws Come To The UK

One of the biggest difficulties in home management these days is ensuring that you are on the best possible tariff for all of your services. This goes well beyond the remit of gas and electricity with many homes now having mobile phones, TV subscription packages, broadband and much more!

In a report via the BBC, however, new regulations put forward by Ofcom will look to give us at least a little breathing room as contract-based media suppliers will now be required to notify their customers when their ‘fixed-term’ deals are coming to an end.

It’s About Time Too!

I think many people out there have more than a couple horror stories of how a contracts expiration led to them being charged a huge amount for a ‘standard rate’ package. I can personally attest to this for both my broadband and TV service. The latter of which (without any warning to me) went from £25 a month to a whopping £85!

The new rules will require mobile phone, broadband and subscription TV providers to contact all users in advance of the contract expiration. In addition, they will be obliged to offer them the best deal currently available to continue the service.

The new regulations will require supplies to contact you within 10-40 days of the contract expiration with the following information;

• The date their contract can be terminated without a penalty
• The price they have been paying
• Any changes to the price or service that automatically come into effect after the date
• How much notice they need to give to cancel the deal
• The best alternative subscriptions on offer, including the prices charged to new customers

When Will This Start?

All providers will be required to start observing the new rules by no later than February 15th 2020. With around 20 million people in the UK currently on a rolling contract, it’s clearly both important and in our interests to push suppliers to give us the best deals possible.

As far as I’m concerned, however, I openly welcome these changes and February 2020 can’t come soon enough!

What do you think? Do you know when your contracts expire? Will these new rules help you manage them better? – Let us know in the comments!