We’re having a battle with a fibre broadband provider!
a house in France with a contract for broadband
the contract was signed in 2014 and ran until 2017
it was signed by previous employee at property, who departed years ago
a condition in this contract is that it renewed annually, and needs 3 months notification of cancellation, in advance of renewal date!
no one was aware of this contract, and a copy did not appear in the online account with the provider
in recent years, we have never received an email, call or letter telling us the yearly contract was being renewed, and so did not know of its existence or of the renewal date
the renewal date was October 2022
This all arose when we tried to cancel the service. They’re now trying to hold us to the contact and making us pay all the way until October 2023. We last used the service in summer 2022, and have been trying to cancel since September 2022.
Do we have any way to stop this? We’re looking at paying a one whole year for a service we do not use.
Gotta love French service providers (of all sorts) and the persistence of their contracts.
I am intrigued by the use of “employee” rather than occupant - presumably said employee signed on behalf of a business (you ?) so the contract is between the business and the broadband provider, given that it is a business I’m not sure you have much excuse for not knowing that the contract was in place.
On the bright side you have plenty of time to issue notice of cancellation ahead of October this year
but don’t in any way be tempted to try to frustrate any DD arrangement you have in place to pay the account because that will place you very much in the wrong…
I too am intrigued by the use of “employee” in this context - a company signing a deal would be expected to understand the legal ramifications of any contract and to hold reviews on what payments are being made and what they are for (as indeed any private user would).
As a matter of interest, who is the provider and why have you not been using the service?
yes there was a house-keeper who signed it. I’m just curious if there is an obligation on the company to have the contract on the website in the documents related to the account?
And why we didn’t get a renewal notice each year- by email or letter? Could that be good grounds to get out of the contract?
I doubt it - you admit that you used the service in September 2022, so there was an awareness that the property had a broadband connection.
I completely agree with Graham, as you might guess from my post, the onus was on you to know what was going on. The presence of payments for a BB connection and no matching contract should have come up in your book keeping.
The service was with a phone company called Celeste who seem to be a third party who sell on lines from other providers. We did use the service up to about July, but then disconnected it and moved to Orange due to a far faster speed at a much lower price.
We had assumed it was a monthly type of contract and went to cancel it after we were happy that the Orange line was working well.
There was just no knowledge of any contract (it was apparently signed back in 2013). The assumption would be that an email would come or a letter would be sent saying you are about to renew for another year on x date. But none of this was provided.
Who actually paid for the BB, and when did you acquire the property.
As you now know, this was not the case.
French service contracts can be difficult to cancel, need specific written notification and even then (see other poster’s woes) don’t always get termnated. In principle this is to prevent “accidental” cancelling of contracts leaving people without important services - it takes some getting used to if you aren’t French (maybe even if you are) judging by the fact that it is a perennial topic on the forum.
yes I had just expected to see the contract somewhere or have some annual notification.
The housekeeper was employed by us and moved on, but the contract was probably forgotten as so many years had passed. Without that document, we took over the online account after they left and took and look, and no contract was in the history. As the couple of years went by we had no notice of the annual renewals, until we went to cancel. Then all of this came up…
All very unfortunate and costly.
Thank you for the advice.
