We recently asked you to give us feedback on our plans to reduce cancellations and, in particular, our plan to implement cancellation charges from 1 November 2019 based on our draft Cancellation Charging Policy. The rationale for this charging regime was to encourage service providers to focus pro-actively on initiatives within their control to drive reduced cancellations.  Feedback closed on 30 September 2019.

What’s happening

We’ve now had an opportunity to review the feedback we received from you.  Service providers raised a number of concerns.  Two key concerns came through from your feedback:

• Pass through considerations – given the level of the charges proposed, service providers are interested in potentially passing through any cancellation charge to consumers. Service providers noted pass-through would require the availability of real time and not delayed data and evidence to robustly support cancellation categorisation (i.e. to effectively manage customer expectations and the risk of consumer disputes). 
• 1 November implementation – service providers felt there had not been sufficient notice given the pass through issue and the need for implementation of changes to service provider internal processes to allow for these types of charges.

Some service providers were concerned there was no recognition under the cancellation policy for those who had already done significant work to reduce cancellation rates to date or for those who – once implemented – reduced cancellation rates (other than paying less charges).

In addition, service providers indicated there were opportunities to reduce cancellations to a greater extent through other initiatives and acknowledged the need for initiatives to be targeted based on the cancellation issues experienced by individual service providers.

The feedback was clear that our ambition to reduce cancellations overall is shared by service providers.  It also indicated a strong desire from service providers to work with us strategically to best reduce cancellations.  We welcome this approach.

What’s the detail

We need some more time to consider these concerns in greater detail.  We’d also like to work with service providers to better understand the nature of these other cancellation opportunities with a view to implementing agreed changes as a result. 

Based on your feedback, we’ve decided to delay charging for cancellations until 1 March 2020.  Our intention is to engage with you over the next few months to address your concerns and work together to reduce cancellations by other means over that period.  We are also thinking about introducing a target cancellation rate (measured on a monthly basis) that if achieved by a service provider would result in no charging for the relevant month. 

From November 2019, we’ll start to provide you with monthly reporting as to the cancellation volumes and potential charges which may be levied.  This will help to give you some insights into how the policy would be applied in practice and facilitate our further discussions on the charging matter.

Next steps

We’ve already started work on developing individual cancellation improvement plans with some service providers and are keen to start this process with others as soon as possible.  We’d like to finalise these improvement plans by 15 November 2019.  That will give us a few months before 1 March 2020 over which to measure the impact of our joint initiatives on cancellations, with a view to achieving reductions.

We’re aiming to release an amended cancellation policy by 15 November 2019 which takes into account your feedback and refocuses this initiative on overall cancellation reduction.

Contact

For any queries please contact your Account Lead or Service Delivery Manager at first instance.

You’ll find full details on our updates page OR you’ll find a copy of this update on the service provider website [Insert link to copy below].