Broadband automatic compensation

What the Automatic Compensation Scheme actually is

Ofcom’s Automatic Compensation Scheme is an industry scheme for participating residential fixed broadband and landline providers. It is not a court damages tariff and it does not apply to every communications provider. Where the conditions are met, compensation should normally be paid automatically without the customer having to prove financial loss.

Use the right trigger

Total loss of service: calculate from the chronology, not guesswork

Record when you first reported the fault, the working days that followed, when the provider says the fault was cleared and when service actually returned. A provider’s ticket-closure time is not necessarily the same thing as full restoration if the service remained unusable.

If broadband and landline both fail at the same time, Ofcom says the scheme normally produces one compensation payment rather than two separate daily payments.

Missed appointments

Keep the booking confirmation, appointment window and any cancellation message. The key issue is not simply whether an engineer eventually attended on another day. A qualifying missed appointment can trigger its own fixed payment.

Delayed activation

Use the promised start date shown in the order confirmation or contract material. If the provider later moves the date, retain both versions. The scheme is concerned with the promised start of a new service, so a vague estimated date and a firm committed activation date should not be treated as though they are identical.

Automatic compensation is not a universal cap

A provider may compare a complaint with the scheme rates. That does not automatically decide unrelated issues such as an incorrect bill, an unnecessary add-on, a contractual right to a refund, inaccurate credit reporting or a separate ADR award for complaint handling. Identify which failure each remedy is meant to address.

Audit the bill after the fault

• Check the compensation amount and the dates used.
• Check whether a missed appointment was included separately.
• Check whether delayed activation and later service failure are being conflated.
• Check whether the payment appears as bill credit and whether that matches the scheme.
• Keep a screenshot or PDF of the bill showing the credit.

If no payment appears, ask the provider to state whether it accepts that the event falls within the scheme, which exclusion it relies on if not, and the dates used in its calculation.

Provider participation matters

Do not write to a non-participating provider demanding payment as though the Ofcom scheme automatically binds it. Check Ofcom’s current participant list first. Even where the automatic scheme does not apply, the underlying service problem may still engage the contract, Consumer Rights Act principles, the provider’s complaints code and ADR.

When should the credit arrive?

Ofcom says that, unless you agree otherwise, compensation should be credited no later than 30 calendar days after the relevant event is resolved: restoration or termination after a loss of service, the date of the missed appointment, or resolution/cancellation of a delayed start. The account credit can therefore be posted within the required period even if the next formal bill is generated later.

A provider may offer another form of compensation of the same or higher value, but Ofcom says it should make you aware of the amount you could receive as bill credit. Keep the settlement wording if the provider proposes vouchers, cash or another alternative.

Exclusions: ask the provider to identify the one it relies on

The scheme has exclusions. Ofcom gives examples including a failure caused by equipment or activity inside the home, breach of contract by the customer, the customer causing the failure, or the customer preventing a timely repair, for example by choosing a substantially later engineer appointment than the one offered.

Do not let “an exclusion applies” remain unexplained. Ask which exclusion, what facts support it and how those facts affected the repair. Ofcom says that where a signatory relies on a legitimate exception, it should explain the reason clearly and continue to act in the customer’s best interests.

Long-running failures and cease notifications

The scheme is not necessarily an endless daily payment with no further process. Ofcom says that after 30 days of an automatic-compensation event, a provider can notify the customer that payments will stop after a further 30 days. It must then take reasonable steps to provide a suitable alternative service. If it cannot provide a suitable alternative, the automatic compensation entitlement can continue.

If a very long outage reaches this stage, preserve the cease notification and any alternative-service proposal. The dispute may no longer be simply “how many days?”; it can also become a question about whether the alternative was suitable and whether the provider followed the scheme process.

Who is currently signed up?

Ofcom’s current participant list includes BT, EE, Hyperoptic, Plusnet, Sky (including NOW Broadband), TalkTalk subject to stated restrictions, Utility Warehouse, Virgin Media, Vodafone and Zen Internet. Participation can change, and network-specific restrictions can matter, so use Ofcom’s live list rather than copying an old list into a complaint.