Broadband down for a week: what the provider must pay you automatically

The internet died on Monday, the engineer never came on Thursday, the new line was promised for the 1st and went live on the 10th. In the UK the provider has to pay for each of those by itself — no complaint, no claim form, no argument. The scheme is called automatic compensation, and most customers have never heard of it.

What is paid, and how much?

Three situations, each with its own rate. The figures below are the ones Ofcom publishes on its consumer page.

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£10.34 per calendar day where the service is completely lost and is not fixed two full working days after you report the fault.

£32.31 per missed engineer appointment, including an appointment cancelled with less than 24 hours' notice.

£6.46 per calendar day of delay where a new service does not start on the promised date.

The rates rise every 1 April in line with inflation, which is why older articles quote lower numbers.

Which providers are in the scheme?

BT, EE, Hyperoptic, Plusnet, Sky (including NOW Broadband), TalkTalk, Utility Warehouse, Virgin Media, Vodafone and Zen Internet. TalkTalk carries a caveat: restrictions apply to customers not on the Openreach network.

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The scheme covers residential fixed broadband and landline products.

Do you have to ask?

Almost never, which is the point. For a missed appointment and a delayed start the provider pays automatically. For an outage you do one thing: report the fault. After that, if the repair drags on, the compensation accrues by itself.

How is the money paid?

Normally as a credit on your bill, unless you agree otherwise. The credit may appear on the bill later than it appears on the account. A provider may offer another form of compensation of equal or greater value, but it must tell you the value of the credit you are giving up.

How long does it take?

The credit should arrive within 30 calendar days of the outage being resolved or the service terminated, of the missed appointment date, or of the delayed start being resolved or cancelled.

There is a catch worth knowing in advance: after 30 days of automatic payments a provider may send a cease notification, and payments stop after a further 30 days.

What if they do not pay?

Complain to the provider first. If it is unresolved after eight weeks, or you receive a deadlock letter, the dispute goes to an independent alternative dispute resolution scheme — the provider must tell you which one it belongs to.

One practical habit: write down the date and time you reported the fault and the date of the appointment. The two-working-day clock runs from your report, and without that date there is nothing to argue from.