Original article ISPreview UK:Read More
Several newspaper reports over the weekend have claimed that UK ISP POP Telecom has been adding a “sneaky hidden broadband charge” to customers’ bills for “Router Assurance“, which can add an extra cost of £2.50 per month to the bill. But that’s not the only extra charge to consider, so ISPreview decided to dig a bit deeper.
According to reports in The Sun and others (here and here), which quote several customer complaints from other sources (e.g. TrustPilot and Money Saving Expert), the seemingly unexpected charge(s) suddenly appeared after several months of using the service. Some customers also complained about a similar charge for something called “Hybrid Assurance” and some other things, but we’ll come back to those later.
The issue isn’t a new one for POP Telecom and has cropped up several times before over the years (they’ve been offering such services for a while). A quick look at the provider’s website shows that the ISP does list Router Assurance as a feature on their residential broadband packages, but you have to click the small (!) icon to read its description, which makes no mention of what happens after the first two months of free service are up.
However, for those who dig a bit deeper, the provider’s T&Cs do provide the details: “Router Assurance – POP telecom provides an optional service to protect your router from breakdown. The service is provided FREE for the first two months and is charged at £2.50 per month thereafter. In the situation that your router fails for any reason contact us and we will arrange a replacement unit to be sent only charging the delivery cost. This can be cancelled at anytime as long as you have not benefited from the service.”
In the UK, telecoms providers generally cannot just opt residential consumers into an extra service at a cost without your explicit consent (note: the rules for business services are different / more flexible). Doing so could potentially violate consumer protection laws, which specify that any additional charges must be clearly communicated and agreed upon by the customer.
If you find that you’ve been opted into a service without your consent, you have the right to dispute the charge and request a refund. Should the provider decline, then the case can be elevated to their Ofcom approved Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) provider (i.e. it’s CISAS for POP Telecom). Sending a complaint to Trading Standards is another option.
The catch here, which The Sun seems to have missed, is that POP Telecom do in fact reference Router Assurance during the order process (we checked) and on the final confirmation page it’s clearly listed as: “Router Assurance (Free for 2 months then £2.50 per month)“.
In addition, if you have enough presence of mind to click the + icon next to the information box on their order page, it gives you the option to opt-out (see below for an example). But we should caveat that this was our finding from today, and we don’t know if POP Telecom have always done exactly this.
Overall, POP Telecom does not appear to be breaking the rules, although at the same time they should ideally be including a clear mention of this charge on their product summary pages – before you even enter the order process (and without needing to click a small info. icon first to see a pop-up), particularly as it’s applied by default. Room for some improvement.
The eagle eyed among you will have also noticed that mention of Landline Assurance earlier (only relevant on certain packages), which gets a similar treatment. In the T&C’s this is described as follows: “Landline Assurance – POP telecom offers a service to protect you from any unexpected charges for faults on your line. This is provided for the period of 2 months for free and is then charged at £3.00 per month thereafter. If you have a fault and have completed the required diagnostic tests then you will be covered against all costs from Openreach. The service can be removed at anytime as long as you have not benefited from the service.”
POP’s full fibre (FTTP) packages similarly include mention of something called Full Fibre Assurance (confusingly also referenced as Ultrafast Fibre Assurance on the order page above). We could not find this feature mentioned in their T&Cs, but they do clearly mention the £5 per month charge on the final order page and its described on the public product page as follows: “FREE for 2 months – Full Fibre Assurance to protect you from repair charges from Openreach when it is not an issue with the Full Fibre network.”
However, there is a big caveat with this Fibre Assurance feature, because unlike the others you cannot remove it. In fact, if you try to do so on their order page, a pop-up displays as follows: “Product is mandatory hence cannot be removed.” This is much more contentious because any mandatory charge really must be reflected on their main public product prices and summaries too, outside the order system.
Finally, some customers also made reference to another add-on called Hybrid Assurance, but we struggled to find any descriptions of this (even doing a Google search of POP’s website didn’t help). The catch, which The Sun failed to spot, is that this feature, so far as we can tell, only gets seems to get added to their business broadband packages and the rules for businesses are very different (i.e. the user can either complain to the ISP to dispute it or take the issue to court, but hopefully no complaints go that far).
We have reached out to POP Telecom for a comment on their approach and await their response. But suffice to say, the issue is a bit more complex than The Sun reported.