Why did the firm face such a hefty fine?
Plusnet, the internet service provider owned by BT has been fined £880,000 for wrongly billing former customers.
Ofcom found that the ISP broke a fundamental billing rule after the firm continued to bill a group of customers who had cancelled their broadband and landline services with Plusnet.
Customers were overcharged in total more than £500,000.
Hannah Maundrell, editor in chief of money.co.uk said: “This is really naughty of Plusnet; it’s hard to understand how an extra £500,000 of income went unnoticed, with customers paying £487 extra on average. “
“This is a massive wake up call to check your bank statements for unwanted transactions and querying anything that seems out of place. Don’t let mistakes like this damage your confidence in switching supplier. Issues tend to be few and far between and if you stay loyal you will pay loads more than you need to.”
Plusnet has apologised for the incident.
A spokeswoman for Plusnet said: “We are very sorry and would like to apologise to the 1,025 customers affected. We reported this ourselves to Ofcom and made every effort to contact these customers to arrange a full refund before the investigation started.”
“We would also like to reassure all customers this was an isolated historic issue and we have implemented a number of new robust measures to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”
Leave a Comment