Broadband cooling off period: the 14 days that start early

You ordered on Tuesday, told someone about it on Wednesday, and by Thursday you have found something better or gone off the whole idea. The broadband cooling off period exists for exactly that. It is fourteen days in which you can walk away from a deal you have just agreed, and it is a legal right rather than a favour anyone grants you. What trips people up is almost never whether it exists. It is when the clock starts, what you can still be billed for, and what to do when the person on the phone tells you it is too late.

When does the broadband cooling off period start?

The day after you agree the contract, not the day your broadband goes live. That is the whole of the confusion. Almost everyone has it the other way round, and the assumption costs them the window.

The right comes from the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013, which set fourteen days as the minimum for a service bought at a distance, counted from the day after the contract is made. Your order confirmation email is therefore the document that matters, not your activation date.

Full fibre orders are where this bites. Sign up on the first, take an install slot for the twenty second, and the window has closed a week before anyone knocks on the door. Nobody has misled you. The clock was running from a date you were not watching, which is a very different problem and a much easier one to avoid: put the last day in your phone when the confirmation email arrives.

Does it apply however you signed up?

Mostly, but not quite always. The regulations cover sales made at a distance or away from a trader's premises, which in practice means online, over the phone, and on your own doorstep. Buy in a shop, sitting in front of the person selling it to you, and the automatic right is not there in the same way.

The doorstep case is the one worth flagging on a site about smaller networks. A good deal of altnet selling still happens by knocking on doors while the cabling crews are in the street, and a deal agreed on your doorstep carries the same fourteen days as one agreed on a website. If someone gives you the impression that signing on their tablet is final, that impression is wrong.

What can you still be charged for?

A proportionate amount for whatever you actually received, where you asked for the service to start inside the fourteen days. Cancelling is your right; the service you used in the meantime is not automatically free.

Nobody explains that trade-off at the point of sale. Ask for a quick install, get your broadband sooner, and you hand over part of the clean break you would otherwise have had. Wait until the window closes and you keep the free exit at the cost of a fortnight offline. Neither choice is wrong. Making it on purpose is the point.

If a figure does land, ask for it in writing with the workings shown, exactly as you would with an early exit charge on an established contract. The two are different charges arrived at in different ways, and a provider quoting the second when it means the first is worth challenging.

The fourteen days that can turn into twelve months

There is a version of this where the window is much longer, and it is the one providers rarely mention. If you were never told about your cancellation right in the way the regulations require, the period does not simply expire. It is extended, and the extension commonly quoted is up to a further twelve months.

So before you accept that you are out of time, go back through what you were actually sent when you ordered. Citizens Advice sets out what should have reached you and what to do when it did not.

How to cancel so that it counts

• Put it in writing. A phone call can be denied later. An email, a webform confirmation or a letter gives you a date you can point at.
• Say the words plainly. "I am cancelling this contract within the cancellation period" leaves nothing to interpret. Do not open with a request to be talked into staying.
• Send it before the fourteenth day, not on it. The notice has to be sent inside the window, so a day in hand costs nothing and removes an argument.
• Ask what happens to the equipment. A router that arrived early usually has to go back, often within a set window, and providers do charge for kit that never returns. Keep the proof of postage.
• Get written confirmation the contract has ended. Then check the next bill and the one after it, because a cancelled order that keeps billing is a common enough fault.

If your provider says no

It happens, and it is not the end of the matter. Providers occasionally refuse a cancellation that was properly made, or bill for a full month when only a few days were supplied. Keep the paper trail and escalate it rather than paying to make it stop.

Every provider has to belong to a free, independent complaints scheme, and how to get a broadband complaint taken seriously goes through the route and the timings. A cancellation refused inside the window is exactly the kind of dispute those schemes exist for.

Our view

The fourteen days are real and they are useful, and they are shorter than they look because they run from your order rather than your install. That is the honest summary. Treat the window as starting the moment you click, diarise the last day, and the right does what it was written to do.

The cheapest version of all this is to not need it. Check what your street can actually get before you commit to anything, and if the appeal of the deal is the freedom to leave rather than the price, rolling monthly broadband gives you that every month instead of once, in the first fortnight, in writing.

Frequently asked questions

How long is the broadband cooling off period?

Fourteen days is the minimum a provider has to give you when you sign up online, over the phone or on your doorstep. Some give longer as a selling point, and where they do it is written into their own terms rather than the law. The figure that matters is the one in the contract information you were sent when you ordered, so that is the document worth finding before you ring anyone.

Does the cooling off period start when my broadband is installed?

No, and this is the part that catches people out. The clock normally starts the day after you agree the contract, not the day the service goes live. Order in the first week of the month with an install date three weeks out and your window can close before an engineer has been anywhere near the house. Work from your order confirmation, not your activation date.

Can I cancel for free if the engineer has already been?

You can still cancel, but free is not guaranteed. Where you asked for the service to start inside the fourteen days, you can be charged a proportionate amount for what was actually supplied to you by the time you cancelled. What that comes to depends on the package and how much of it you had, so ask for the figure in writing and ask how it was worked out.

What if my provider never told me I could cancel?

The window does not simply close. Where a provider fails to tell you about the cancellation right in the way the regulations require, the period is extended, and the extension commonly quoted is up to a further twelve months. It is worth checking your order paperwork before you accept that you have run out of time.

Is cancelling in the cooling off period the same as switching?

No. Cancelling inside the window ends a contract that has barely started, and you are back where you were. Switching moves you from one live service to another and brings your old contract to an end on the terms you agreed to, which is where an early exit charge can appear. They feel similar from the sofa and they are not the same transaction at all.