On 10 February we let you know we’d made some further changes to our cancellation charging policy related to bitstream products to address your most recent feedback.We’ve had a chance to consider your feedback and taken it on board in finalising the cancellation charging policy.

What’s happening?

Consultation on the latest changes to the Cancellation Charging Policy closed on Wednesday 19 February. Most of the concerns raised did not relate to the most recent changes on which we’d sought feedback. They were restatements of earlier feedback which we’ve addressed in previous Customer Updates on the policy.

For example, some of you remain concerned about evidence of appropriate categorisation of qualifying cancellations and issues relating to any potential pass-through of cancellation charges to consumers. We’ve addressed these concerns in our previous customer updates and – in some cases - directly with the relevant RSPs. 

What are the details?

You can check out the final cancellation charging policy here  and a more detailed explanation of the methodology we’ll use to calculate cancellation charges and how we’ll report to you on these cancellation charges. 

Some of you asked us to provide data to help you verify the rationale for our revised Cancellation Thresholds. You wanted to understand the industry average for the previous 13 months and your individual Monthly Cancellation Rate over the same period.

We’ve provided the industry view of the previous 12-month period to help you do this.  You can see what your individual Monthly Cancellation Rate was across the same period by contacting your Account Manager or Service Delivery Manager.

The charging relief threshold under the policy is designed to encourage you to focus on tackling overall cancellation rate reductions rather than on charging to consumers. As a result, we haven’t amended the policy further to address any residual pass-through concerns noted in your feedback (i.e. related to the request for real time evidence).

We expect any charges levied under the cancellation charging policy will be relatively low based on:

• the cancellation implementation plans we’ve agreed with many of you (which aim proactively to reduce overall cancellation rates); and
• the amendments to the policy itself having lowered the effective rate charged per Qualifying Cancellation due to the threshold approach.

We’ve monitored the reports on cancellation charging since November 2019 to test this baseline assumption. The result was as expected – the charges which would have been levied were relatively low. On this basis, we consider it is disproportionate to introduce an audit process or other form of validation of our calculation of the Qualifying Cancellations in this context. 

Given the feedback from some of you regarding evidence, we’ll revisit whether this approach remains appropriate in September 2020 (i.e. 6 months), in addition to this being considered as part of the annual policy review.

Next steps

Updated cancellation dashboard

An updated cancellations dashboard will be available to you from 1 March 2020 by request to your Account Lead or Service Delivery Manager. The dashboard will show your monthly cancellation rate as calculated in accordance with the cancellation charging policy. It will show also a breakdown of the cancellation reasons to help you identify improvement opportunities to reduce overall cancellations.

Cancellation charging from 1 March 2020

We’ll start to charge for cancellations under the cancellation charging policy from 1 March 2020. The first invoice for cancellation charges (if any) will show up in your April invoice.

Annual policy review

We’ll review the cancellation charging policy to coincide with each anniversary of its implementation (i.e. on a 12-month basis) to check in and ensure it remains fit for purpose in its current form. At the same time, we’ll seek your feedback on the current policy.

Contact

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