Ombudsman Services
As we are sure you are aware, Ofcom has announced changes to the General Conditions set to take place on 17th June 2022.
One of the biggest changes is the requirement for communications providers to send customers a short summary of the main contract terms and a more detailed set of contract information, in writing – before the customer becomes bound by the contract. This change affects all consumers, micro and small enterprise customers, and not-for-profit customers. We think this is likely to mean an extra step or two in telephone sales practices for communications providers.
We know this will take some time to implement, and that different providers will take different approaches to comply with the change in regulations.
We’re really interested to know about the changes each of our providers is making prior to 17th June 2022.
Being more informed about practices should help us get complaint decisions right more often. We’d really appreciate it if our providers could let us know what steps they have taken to make necessary amendments, or if this is still in the planning process, what their plans are. Get in touch with us at partners@ombudsman-services.org
We’re also happy to talk to our providers if they’re unsure about the new regulations and what they mean for them. We can give our understanding and point towards Ofcom’s guidance on the upcoming changes. Once we’ve got a better understanding of how communications providers are approaching this change – we’ll look at next steps.
We will also cover this subject at our next sector liaison panel (scheduled for 22nd June 2022) (link to the SLP page once done).