UK Broadband Customers Set To Receive Millions In Compensation For Bad Service

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.

Re:

[MightyMartian]

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!

Re:

[kronix1986]

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

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[AHuxley]

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?

Sigh

[drinkypoo]

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.

About time

[MPBoulton]

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.