Here is a sentence most broadband customers never hear from their provider: when things go wrong, you may be owed money without having to ask for it. Broadband automatic compensation is an Ofcom-backed scheme under which the biggest UK providers pay set amounts, as bill credit, when they keep you waiting for a repair, miss an appointment, or start a new service late. No claim form, no haggling, no “goodwill gesture”: if your situation fits the scheme, the payment should simply arrive. This page sets out the current rates, the conditions people trip over, and what to do if the credit never shows. If your connection is down right now, start with the SpeedTestUK homepage tools to work out whether the problem is your line or something wider.
The rates, from 1 April 2026
| What went wrong | Payment | Key condition |
|---|---|---|
| Total loss of broadband or landline service, not repaired in time | £10.34 per day | Fault reported to the provider; payment builds once the fault is still unfixed after two full working days |
| Missed engineer appointment | £32.31 per appointment | The engineer does not turn up, or cancels with less than 24 hours’ notice |
| New service starts later than the confirmed date | £6.46 per day | Paid for each day of delay until the service goes live |
These amounts are uprated in line with inflation each April; the figures above apply from 1 April 2026. Payments are normally made as a credit on your bill within 30 calendar days of the problem being resolved. The scheme is voluntary, but the providers signed up (BT, EE, Plusnet, Sky, NOW Broadband, TalkTalk, Virgin Media, Vodafone, Zen Internet, Hyperoptic and Utility Warehouse) cover the overwhelming majority of UK homes: Ofcom puts it at around 91% of broadband customers.
Scenario one: your broadband dies on a Monday
Consider an illustrative example. Your connection fails completely on Monday morning. You report it to your provider that day, which matters, because the repair clock starts when you report the fault, not when the line failed. The provider has two full working days to fix it. If you are still without service after that, compensation builds at £10.34 for each further day until the service is restored. A fault reported on Monday and fixed the following Monday could therefore generate several days of payments, credited to your account automatically. One hard rule sits underneath: if a total loss of service drags on for 60 days, you also gain the right to leave your contract penalty-free.
The most expensive mistake in the whole scheme is failing to report. A line that is down for a week but only reported on day five has a clock that starts on day five. If your broadband fails, report it the same day, by app, phone or web chat, and note the time and any fault reference you are given.
Scenario two: the engineer who never arrived
You take a day off work, the appointment window comes and goes, and nobody knocks. That is a missed appointment, and it pays £32.31. The same payment applies if the provider cancels with less than 24 hours’ notice, because rearranging your life at short notice is treated the same as a no-show. What does not count: an appointment you missed yourself, or one rearranged with proper notice. Keep the appointment confirmation (usually a text or email) until your next bill, because it is your proof of the slot you were promised. If you suspect a wider problem is behind the chaos, our broadband outage checker helps you work out whether your street or your provider has a known incident running.
Scenario three: switch day comes and goes
You switched providers, the confirmation said Tuesday, and Tuesday passes with no connection. Delayed starts pay £6.46 per day of delay. This applies whether the delay is an engineer problem, an activation problem or an administrative muddle at the new provider. The payment runs from the confirmed start date until the service actually goes live, and again it should arrive as credit without you chasing it. It is one of several reasons switching under One Touch Switch is safer than the old process: the dates are committed in writing by both providers.
While you wait: staying connected, and priority repair
Compensation softens the blow, but it does not get a household back online, and for some homes being offline is more than an inconvenience. Three practical points while a fault runs. First, ask your provider about a backup: several providers will send a mobile broadband device or add extra mobile data to a linked mobile account while a fixed-line fault is open, and tethering a phone covers email and calls in the meantime. Second, if anyone in the household depends on the line for health or safety reasons, such as a telecare alarm, a medical monitoring service or simply being a lifeline for someone who lives alone, tell the provider and ask about Priority Fault Repair. Providers run priority schemes for vulnerable customers that aim to restore service faster than the standard timescale, and registering costs nothing. Third, keep using the connection normally once it returns and watch it for a few days. A fault that “clears” and then fails again within a short period is often the same underlying problem, and your existing fault history strengthens both a fresh report and any complaint about how the original was handled.
What automatic compensation does not cover
The scheme is deliberately narrow, and knowing its edges saves wasted arguments. It covers total loss of service, not slow service. A connection that crawls at half its usual speed is miserable, but it is not a scheme event; your remedy there is the minimum guaranteed speed process, which has its own 30-day fix-or-leave structure. Problems caused by your own equipment, a router you supplied yourself, faulty internal wiring or a digger through your own garden cable are not the provider’s bill either. Nor are delays you caused, such as missed access for an engineer you agreed to meet.
Intermittent faults sit in a grey zone. A line that drops twenty times a day is not a “total loss” on paper, however unusable it feels. Log the dropouts (our internet stability test keeps a record you can show the provider), report the pattern as a fault, and if the line then fails completely, the clock starts from your earliest report. Providers also have a general duty to treat customers fairly, and repeated intermittent faults are exactly the kind of case that succeeds on complaint even where the automatic scheme does not bite.
If the credit never arrives
Automatic does not always mean accurate. Credits are applied by systems, and systems miss cases, particularly where a fault was reported but logged under the wrong category. Work through it in this order:
- Check the bill properly. Compensation appears as a credit line, sometimes on the second bill after the fix rather than the first. Give it the 30 days the scheme allows.
- Reconstruct the timeline. When the fault started, when you reported it (your call log or chat transcript will show this), when it was fixed. The payment follows from those dates and the rates table above.
- Ask, with the timeline in front of you. A short message saying “fault reported 4 May, fixed 11 May, no compensation credit received” gets resolved far faster than a general complaint about service.
- Escalate if refused. A refusal is a complaint outcome. If it stays unresolved, you can take it to the ombudsman scheme your provider belongs to after six weeks, or sooner if they issue a deadlock letter. Our complaints article walks through that process step by step.
Ofcom’s own guide to automatic compensation is the definitive reference, including the full list of signatory providers, and its announcement of the April 2026 rates explains the inflation uprating and the faster complaints timetable that arrived at the same time.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need to claim automatic compensation?
No. With a signed-up provider, the payment should be applied automatically as bill credit once your situation qualifies. In practice it is worth checking your bill, because credits are occasionally missed, and a polite query with dates usually produces the payment without a fight.
Is the compensation paid in cash?
Normally it is a credit against your bill, applied within 30 calendar days of the problem being fixed or the service starting. If you are leaving the provider, the credit should be reflected in your final bill instead.
My broadband is slow but not down. Do I get anything?
Not under this scheme: it covers total loss of service only. Slow speeds are handled through your minimum guaranteed speed. If your provider cannot restore speeds above your guarantee within 30 days of you reporting it, you can leave penalty-free, which is often worth more than compensation would have been.
Does the scheme cover faults I have not reported yet?
No, and this is the trap. For delayed repairs, the clock starts when you report the fault. An unreported fault earns nothing no matter how long it lasts, so report problems the day they appear and keep a note of the reference number.
What if my provider is not in the scheme?
The scheme is voluntary, so a small provider may not be signed up. You are not without options: complain formally, because providers outside the scheme still have obligations to treat you fairly and fix faults in reasonable time, and persistent failures can be taken to their ombudsman scheme. When choosing your next provider, scheme membership is a reasonable tiebreaker. If you are simply not sure whether you have a fault at all, our guide is my internet working runs through the basic checks before you pick up the phone.
Keep the reference number, always
Almost every compensation story that ends well has one thing in common: the customer reported the fault promptly and kept the details. It takes thirty seconds to note a fault reference and the date in your phone, and it converts a vague sense of being owed something into an arithmetic question the provider has to answer. If your service is currently misbehaving, run our broadband outage checker to see whether it is just you, report anything real to your provider today, and let the clock, and the scheme, do the rest.
