This should be enshrined in law as it is in other countries. "Guidance" has and never will work.

I think ofcom may need a re-vamp, they don't seem to be serving the public too well lately.

What I would like to see is an end to any Telco's ability to change terms and conditions. When you sign up to a contract, the T&Cs should stick for the length of that contract - and if you want to renew the contract afterward, then the T&Cs apply.

Giving the Telco an ability to change a contract with as little as 30 days notice, yet force the consumer to be locked into their contract - like it or not - is absurd. If the Telco is not willing to keep to the original T&Cs that were in place when the consumer signed up, they should offer an immediate termination without any extra fees.

Oliver.

What about all the other scamming charges from BT? E.g. £70 to "connect" a phone line unless you take out a 12 month contract with BT and then it's magically zero.

The alien 'cos we're more likely to be visited by one before Ofcom does anything serious.

I've never understood why Telcos (and others) charge "Extra" for paying by methods other than Direct Debit. Of course that is going to get people's backs up.

On the other hand, if you simply offer a "discount" of, say, £5 to Direct Debit customers to reflect the savings to the Telco then I can't see the argument (though people will. That's the nature of people!).

As mentioned above, it isn't just bt doing this, most companies are doing it. Lets be honest here, Direct Debit sucks eggs, it supposedly has guarantees for us, but lets face it, they take first then you have to ask questions, far too many times I have had bank charges due to companies having total control over your bank account(lets be honest this is what Direct Debit is).

Thery have taken cash on the wrong date, leaving me with a bank charge, they have taken too much money (virgin media you are guilty of this on far too many occasions) and another payment has then become rejected leading to a bank charge. I don;t mind but £39 a pop is a lot of money for me.

I hate direct debit and I'm sure many others do, lets not turn this into a "yuou should manage your finances better" argument when we have rogue companies (who are supposedly the big guns) taking whatever amount of money they like.

I'd like to see direct debit reformed not just companies charging you to pay by alternative methods.

Saving trees? Dont think so, just handing control over to whoever wants your cash and whenever they like.

Spot on mate. Contractual terms should only be able to be changed bu MUTUAL AGREEMENT.

Mind you, until OFCOM are issued with decent regulatory teeth, and are actually prepared to use them...

Joke Alert?

OFCOM, they're the joke!

A lot of good comments, mostly about what OfCom should be doing instead...

>@Oliver Jones - "What I would like to see is an end to any Telco's ability to change terms and conditions."

-Agree entirely. You sign a contract. If the terms change, the previous contract should become null and void.

>@Tim Spence - "I'm not sure I agree with being able to pay myself out of a contract for less than the rest of the contract would have cost. Surely that's the point of a contract? As in, you are contracted to pay x number of payments at £x per month? If I was a business dealing with contracts with consumers, I'd be a bit pissed if that became the case."

- Agreed. As above, a contract involves mutual obligations.

>@ Bruce - "What about all the other scamming charges from BT? E.g. £70 to "connect" a phone line unless you take out a 12 month contract with BT and then it's magically zero."

- Indeed. Transparency please.

>@ James Bassett - "if you simply offer a "discount" of, say, £5 to Direct Debit customers to reflect the savings to the Telco then I can't see the argument (though people will. That's the nature of people!)"

- Exactly. The charges will be applied via pricing somehow. I don't want to be paying for difficulties arising from other folks non-payments.

>@ DR - "I absolutely refuse to believe that in BT's case the cost to them to end a contract early will be all of the remaining contracts fee's + £70... that's utter bull... having said that I'm currently signed up with Virgin, their contract exit fees are just finish paying your contract, since I sign a contract and essentially promised in that contract to stick with them for a year I don't see this as being too bad."

- As per Tim Spence's point. You commit to 12 months subscription. You pay for 12 months subscription. If you don't like those reasonable terms, don't sign.

...so OfCom should stop faffing around debating a £2.50 charge that applies to a demographic that causes proportionately more havoc for the comms companies. Then it can pick up a dictionary and open it at the page containing the entry for "Unlimited" and get cracking with court proceedings in order to draft a definition for "Fair Use".

In the United States, every dollar bill carries the statement "legal tender for all debts, public and private." Here in Canada it's "this note is legal tender."

IANAL, but I'm pretty sure that the effect of such statements is that cash MUST be accepted for payment of debts.

I'm not 100% sure of my facts, but United Parcel Service drivers used to refuse to accept cash for COD charges, but now they do. I suspect someone got after them and pointed out that they were required by law to accept cash if offered. [Their justification was that it made the drivers subject to robbery.] [I may be wrong in saying they now accept cash.]

The conclusion seems inescapable that British telcos are doing this kind of thing merely to charge more money, whatever way they can. They have captive customers so they see no problem with sucking blood out of them at every opportunity. They can -- and do -- get away with it because the government is too supine to bother with legal fundamentals like "the law governing the payment of debts."

There remains the simple fact that certain types of business are public utilities: water, sewer, electricity, and, yes, internet connections, and whether they are monopolies or not it is simply damned Thatcherite foolishness not to regulate their rates and charges: dictate what they can charge under what circumstances, and that only after public hearings: just like any of the gazillions of "Public Utility Commissions" in the US and Canada.

They should come out and BAN rolling 12 month contracts altogether.

There's (possibly) some justification in having a minimum contract term when a person first signs up -- though only if hardware or work on the customer's site is needed, and even then the penalty should be no more than actual cost minus half existing payments.

However, there's absolutely NOTHING that happens to cost the telco an unexpected lump sum on every 12th anniversary of the user first joining, and therefore absolutely no justification in having any penalty beyond the 12th month of service.

Apparenty my credit card company and my bank also have a lot of customers with very rude online names not dissimilar to theirs, I discovered. In fact they seemed to have customers with similar names for every rude word I could think of, no matter how it was composed.

Perhaps El Reg might offer a little prize for copies of the look-up dictionary that these cloven-hoofed racketeers are using to spare their management blushes? And a special award to the racketeer with the biggest blush.

Were it that they took such care over their customers interests.

ianal either, but I know here in the uk, retailers are legally allowed to levy additional charges for certain payment types. Check out the pages on wikipedia for visa and mastercard for some references (wiki isnt my reference, its where my references are).

-- Apparenty my credit card company and my bank also have a lot of customers with very rude online names not dissimilar to theirs, I discovered. In fact they seemed to have customers with similar names for every rude word I could think of, no matter how it was composed.

Those user accounts are the ones administrators use for internal testing. Who hates an online bill payment system more than the ones that designed and implemented it, after all?