When your broadband has been dead for days, the natural response is to wait, phone support and pay the full bill anyway. Yet every day offline can be worth money back. Under Ofcom's automatic compensation scheme your provider owes a fixed amount for each day of lost service, and you should not have to beg for it. The step almost everyone skips is the one that makes it work: putting the fault on record from day one.
What Ofcom's scheme actually pays
The rules sit in Ofcom's automatic compensation scheme, which sets the minimum a provider must pay when things go wrong on home broadband or a landline. These are floors the provider cannot talk you below, not a goodwill gesture, and they are counted day by day from the moment the fault is on record.
The scheme covers three situations: a total loss of service, a missed engineer appointment, and a delay to the start of a new line. From 1 April 2026 the amounts are these.
For a total loss, the count does not start the instant the line drops: compensation only begins once the fault is still unfixed after two full working days from the day you report it. The figures rise every April in line with inflation, so they nudge up year on year.
Good to know: most homes are covered, because BT, EE, Sky, TalkTalk, Virgin Media, Vodafone, Plusnet, Hyperoptic, Utility Warehouse and Zen have all signed up and together carry more than 90% of UK connections. If your provider has not joined, you can still claim, but the payment will not be automatic.
To see the sum at stake, multiply the days you were offline by the daily rate for your case.
Report the fault first, keep the record second
The report date is what starts the clock, so pin it down precisely. On that first contact, gather the things that will give your claim weight.
- Ask for the fault reference number and note it with the day and time of the call.
- Confirm everything in writing from your online account or by email, so each call leaves a dated trail.
- Record the state of the line with hard evidence, not impressions: a screenshot or a test beats a memory.
A quick broadband speed test with the date on it is exactly the kind of proof that settles a dispute later. The single most useful habit is this: turn every phone call into a dated document. A message with a date on it is worth far more than a promise made over the phone, which no provider is bound to honour.
The fault log that makes the difference
Keeping a small fault log changes the outcome when you move to a formal claim. It is the proof no provider can argue with, and it is what makes the compensation genuinely enforceable.
- Log every contact with support, with the adviser's name, the date and the fault reference.
- Save proof of the line's state, such as dated speed tests or router error screens.
- Keep every engineer appointment booked or missed, together with the confirmation texts.
- Do not rely on promises made over the phone: without a written trail they count for nothing.
- Do not let it drift: chase the credit on your next bill rather than assuming it will appear.
What to do if the credit never arrives
Automatic does not always mean reliable, so check your next two or three bills. If the credit is missing or the amount looks wrong, raise a formal complaint with your provider, quoting the fault reference and the dates, and set out exactly how many days you were offline and the figure you expect.
If the provider still will not budge after eight weeks, or sooner if it sends a deadlock letter, you can take the case for free to an Ofcom-approved ombudsman, whose decision is binding on the company. Where faults keep coming back, it may be worth switching to another provider or using our tools to compare broadband deals. The message is the same either way: the compensation is a right, not a favour, and a clear record is what turns it into cash.