This is utterly ridiculous

[vivski]

My contract for broadband ends on 27 January next year. I am required to give 30 days notice. I have just rung up to inform BT that I want my contract to end of 27 January and have been informed that I will have to pay a penalty fee of £7.50 for giving more than 30 days notice.

I had expected that I would be penalised if giving less than 30 days notice but this is absolutely outrageous.

Apparently if I ring on Christmas Day to cancel that will be acceptable, as will ringing on 27 December.

I do not know who decided to impose penalties on customers who give more than the minimum notice, as well as on those who give less than the 30 days, but that person is an imbecile.

[chrisjp]

I suspect that the requirement is to give notice WITHIN the 30 day period up to the end of the contract. So giving notice at any time within this 30 day period should be acceptable and not incur any penalties.
I can't be sure about this though, and maybe the BT contract wording is ambiguous. It does seem that quite a bit of what BT puts out is ambiguous!

[gg30340]

Are you moving to a new Internet Provider because if you are you should contact your new provider and set the date you want to have them take over your broadband and they contact BT and do the move for you. 

If you cancel your broadband it may cause a problem for the new provider being able to take over the line.

See links about cancelling

Leaving BT | BT Help

How to switch broadband - a guide to changing your provider (uswitch.com)

[vivski · Accepted solution]

Thanks, Virgin have just completed installing their line to my house and I am up and running with them now.

I did manage to contact someone else in BT who thought that being charged for giving more than the minimum notice was bizarre.

Fortunately that person was able to handle my cancellation, but apparently as 27 January is a Saturday my service will have to continue until the Monday as there will be no one in to terminate the contract at a weekend. I could have the service terminated a day early, but then I would be charged extra, but no charge if the service is terminated two days late.

How ridiculous.

[gg30340]

I should have mentioned that the above way of moving did not apply to Virgin so you were correct in wanting to cancell your BT Broadband by informing BT.

I would agree that it is odd that you are potentially being charged for to wanting inform BT to cancel your broadband. There is nothing in BT's contract stating that you can not give more than 30 days notice. If BT are unable to cancel it on your requested date, which is the contract end date, that is their problem, not yours.

[Keith_Beddoe]

Its odd that the £7.50 is the same as the cost of BT Premium mail for those wanting full access to their old email account.

[rbz5416]

I would strongly suspect that the "advice" you were given originally was **bleep**.

[vivski]

Thank you, I agree.

[vivski]

It does seem as if the person I originally spoke to was misinformed about what should happen when someone terminates their contract.

[Jane2018]

This is a massive problem for many people with other types of contracts in business where they are given an exact period of notice to be given sometimes only once every 2 years and if you miss the one day you are locked in for 2 years. This is not what BT does. If the buyer is a business, not a consumer, they they do not even have consumer law to protect them against unfair terms in the same way either.  It is much kinder to state "at least 30 days' notice" ie could be 35 days or 100 days as long as notice is given or to say people have 30 days before end of contract ie on any of 30 days to terminate.