BT has been fined £2.8m by Ofcom after failing to provide more than a million customers with enough contract information before signing up to a new deal.

The group broke Ofcom’s consumer protection rules designed to ensure that telecoms customers get clear, comparable information about the services they are considering buying.

Since June 2022, phone and broadband companies have been required to give consumers and small businesses the details of a contract, as well as a short summary of its key terms, before they sign up. This should include information such as the price and length of the contract, the speed of the service as well as any early exit fees.

Ofcom opened an investigation into BT having received information that two of its wholly-owned subsidiaries, EE and Plusnet, may have failed to provide these documents to some customers.

Ofcom enforcement director, Ian Strawhorne, said: “For people to take advantage of the competitive telecoms market here in the UK, they must be able to shop around with confidence.

“When we strengthened our rules to make it easier for consumers to compare deals, we gave providers a strict timeline by which to implement them. It’s unacceptable that BT couldn’t get its act together in time, and the company must now pay a penalty for its failings.”

The investigation found that since June 2022, EE and Plusnet had made more than 1.3 million sales without providing customers with the required contract summary and information documents. The evidence revealed there were at least 1.1 million customers affected by this.

Ofcom engaged with providers during the period before the new rules came into force in June 2022, to ensure they were on track to meet the deadline. BT told the regulator in February 2022 that it was confident the deadline would be met.

However, Ofcom’s evidence indicated that BT was aware from as early as January 2022 that some of its sales channels would not meet the deadline, while in some cases, the telecoms group deliberately chose not to comply with the rules on time. Other providers dedicated the resource required to meet the implementation deadline for these new rules, and BT is likely to have saved costs by not doing so.

Following engagement with Ofcom, BT contacted 1.1 million customers – the majority of those affected – between June and September 2023, explaining that it had not provided them with the information to which they were entitled.

However, before these communications were sent, some customers left BT before the end of their contract and may have been charged an early exit fee, which under Ofcom rules should not have happened.

“We won’t hesitate to step in on behalf of phone and broadband customers when our rules to protect them are broken,” Strawhorne added.

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