EE has cut its broadband contract buyout to £200
EE has cut the amount it will put towards leaving your current broadband provider. New customers taking broadband on its own now get up to £200 as a switching credit, down from up to £300. Take broadband and TV together and the £300 stays. The change was reported by ISPreview, and EE’s own switching credit page now lists the two figures the same way.
A contract buyout is not cash and it is not a discount. It is account credit set against the early termination charge your old provider bills you for leaving before your term is up, capped at whichever is lower, the buyout or the fee you actually paid. So the cut only bites if your exit fee is more than £200. Below that, nothing has changed for you. Above it, you are covering the difference yourself.
The part people miss is that a buyout has to be claimed. Nobody applies it for you. EE says you need to send the final bill from your old provider to its switching team within four months of your EE service going live, and that it begins processing 14 days after activation, once the cooling off period ends. Miss that window and the credit is gone, whatever the headline offer said when you signed.
The market is not all moving the same way, which is the useful bit. Virgin Media went in the opposite direction in July and lifted its own buyout to up to £300. Buyout values are promotional, they move without notice, and they are one of the few parts of a broadband deal genuinely worth reading before you commit rather than after.
If you are thinking about moving, the order of things matters more than the buyout does. Find out what is actually built to your address first, because a buyout is worth nothing on a network that does not reach you: start with the availability checker. Then ask your current provider for your exact exit fee, in writing. That is the number that tells you whether £200 still covers you. Our guide on how to switch to an altnet sets out the sequence, and if you are leaving partly to avoid being locked in again, no contract broadband explains what a rolling deal costs you instead.
The honest gap: EE has not said why it made the change, and nobody outside the company knows whether this is a permanent repositioning or a summer trim. A buyout is a marketing lever, so it can move back. What it does not do is change anything for existing EE customers, whose bills and terms are untouched by it.