G77

Does anyone know which utilities require you to give them 30 days notice of cancellation? i.e. in terms of BT, Gas, Elec, Water etc etc?

I'm not tied into any contracts with any of them as far as I know.....

Tangram

None. The only one we had issue with was Sky and our internet provider who required 28 days for each.

G77

OK, so you ring them up a week or so in advance and tell them you're doing one and then send them the meter readings the day you leave?

Broadband I've already sent them notice that we're leaving - we're in a 1 year contract that fortunately runs out 4 days after we leave!

stepnek

Agreed. I had a torrid time with Sky so watch out for them and also our internet provider Onetel (assuming they still exist).

Getting There

Sky were our only pitfall on giving notice too, tho' if we had investigated it properly beforehand, we could have given notice in appropriate time.

All other utilities handled the account closure well, bar my employer of 19 years, BT :embaressed_smile: who made a bit of a hash of the whole thing. After they failed to finalise the account properly, I had to call from Cananda to sort it out, which required selecting from a myriad of menu options before my call was trmomboned out to India where my troubles really began! After an hour, I gave up and emailed one of my old colleagues who got it sorted for me...not an option that the average customer has and something that I fed back to the appropriate senior folk.

Eamonn

Silverdragon102

We didn't do too bad even with Sky, gave them just over 30 days notice, had to do final reading of meter ourselves for Npower and ended up paying their bill twice but somehow don't expect to see the money returned as had no end of problems with Npower over the years

Grah

Just told them all the week before I was leaving and told them to cut if all off from that Date.
When they said I needed to give them X days notice I said I don't care how long your going to take to do it I'm not paying after that date you can try getting me in court for the difference if you like. But they didn't so..

G77

Who was it that said you needed to give notice?

Cookie

BT were the worst for us. I gave just over 4 weeks notice but apparently the computer only reads the day and not the month so we were cut off 1 month early. Fantastic - no phone, no internet!!!!! Surprisingly enough, they could not simply reconnect us, instead had to give us a new account

In the end it was a nightmare which led to a bill coming in after we had stopped all our direct debits (we left UK in Jan, cancelled DD for Feb). Roll on 6 months later - a red letter drops into our mailbox in Canada from a debt collecting agency acting on behalf of BT. After lots of phoning, got it sorted out without having to pay any fees to the 'bailiffs'.

I shudder to think what all that has done to our previously perfect UK credit rating

Just as well we are planning to live here forever

terese677

We cancelled water/gas/electric/phone when we gave them final meter readings, as mentioned by others the only problem was sky/setanta needing a month then saying we didn't give a month and trying to charge extra. We also gave broadband and mobile phones a month.
Terese

danfolkestone

We found BT awkward too, although not as bad as you have. They told us we had to give 14 days notice, and wouldn't accept advance notice 17 days before we are due to move!

We had varying experiences with mobile phones too. O2 sorted a switch to PAYG over the phone. Vodafone required me to write to their disconnections department, from whom I have yet to hear.

ecepaul

Been reading these posts and had to laugh...BT, what a pain, had the same problem, disconnected a month early and then had to get a new account for a month, then the red letter 6 months later telling me I owed several 100 pounds. Then today I have received a red letter from a debt collection company for Vodafone, despite writing to their disconnection department 8 months ago, no wonder UK is in such an awful state, I can't believe that these big companies can be so disorganised. I hope I never have to go back, I guess my perfect credit rating will be a little tarnished.:curse:

deenailz

dont know about any others but i know adt alarms require 3 months bloody notice and you have to put it in writing

gibsonslanding

i've had no trouble what-so-ever, with any of the utilities; did it there and then over the phone......

only one that is a challenge to me is our mobile company, 3, who do require a thirty day notice.......so i sent it off, only to get a snotty letter back saying 'that as i have given a notice to quit outside of the 30days ie: 45 days notice, i had to continue with them'.....they only accept notice WITHIN the 30 days notice........my reaction, via a phone call to them began with f and ended in f.....i just cancelled the direct debit with the bank!!!! they can chase me if they like.......lol