The Broadband Add-Ons You Did Not Ask For, and How to Get Your Money Back
A broadband checkout add-on is an extra paid product, usually security software or a support package, that is placed in your basket during the ordering process rather than chosen by you, and that starts charging after a free trial unless you cancel it.
Around 9.7 million UK subscriptions are unwanted, costing consumers about £1.6 billion a year, and the government estimates 3.6 million of them rolled over from a free or discounted trial. On 9 September 2026 the advertising regulator upheld a complaint about a broadband advert that did not disclose two such trials being added at checkout, worth about £130 a year. The trade press reported the ruling and stopped there. What none of them answered is the question people have been asking on consumer forums for years, usually without reply: can I get my money back? You can, by three separate legal routes, and one regulator has already fined a company £720,000 for doing very nearly the same thing. This page explains the ruling, quotes the law, tells you which route fits your situation, and gives you the letter.
The short version
- The two add-ons in the ruling came to about £130 a year on top of an advertised £22.99 a month.
- "You could have removed it" did not work as a defence. The ASA said the remove option was unlikely to be sufficiently prominent.
- Three laws may help you, and the table below tells you which one fits your situation.
- The regulator now has teeth. It fined one retailer £720,000 and ordered £600,000 refunded for auto-opting customers into paid extras.
- Around 9.7 million UK subscriptions are unwanted, costing about £1.6 billion a year. This is not a niche problem.
What did the ASA actually rule?
Direct answer: it upheld the complaint. The ruling, reference A26-1344540, was published on 9 September 2026 and concerns a website advertisement. The ASA's conclusion was short: "Because the ad did not include information about free trials which would automatically renew for a fee, we concluded it was misleading."
The advertisement, first seen in June 2026, promoted a twelve-month broadband package at 80Mbit/s for £22.99 a month, rising to £25.74 from April 2027, with a £14.95 one-off activation charge. All of that was stated. What was not stated was that during checkout two further items would appear in the basket: a support package called Onestream Priority Plus, and McAfee Multi Access security software. Both were free for an initial period, then renewed at £7.95 a month and £34.95 a year respectively. Roughly £130 a year, attached to an advertised £22.99 a month.
The ASA's reasoning contains a distinction worth understanding, because most coverage will flatten it. It said the costs of the add-ons "were not required to be included in the total price of the broadband service". The problem was not that the advert failed to add them up. It was that the advert said nothing about them at all, and the ASA considered information about the free trials, including that they would automatically renew for a fee, "material to consumers' understanding of what was included in the package". Omitting material information is what made the price claim misleading.
The company said you could remove them, so what was the problem?
Direct answer: the ASA did not accept that removability cured it. It said the option to remove the subscriptions was "unlikely to be sufficiently prominent", and noted that regardless of the checkout, the information was not in the advertisement at all.
This is the part with the widest application, because "it was optional and you could have taken it out" is the standard defence across online retail. Onestream argued the services were optional, could be cancelled during the free trial, and could be removed during checkout, and it gave the ASA a partial screenshot of the final checkout stage. That screenshot showed a text box headed "Included with your order, free for 30 days", with a "remove" option in the top right corner in small font.
Two details from the ruling are worth holding on to. The ASA recorded that it had not received a full copy of the webpage, so it could not fully assess how the information was presented. And it found that consumers would be unaware of the trials, and their potential further costs, when choosing their package. The test you can apply yourself is not whether removal was technically possible. It is whether someone buying would understand, from what they were shown, that they were signing up to something that would start charging them.
In fairness, one thing has changed. Onestream told the ASA that, as part of an ongoing review, the two services had been removed from the checkout journey and were now available only as optional extras that customers actively choose to add. That does not help anyone already paying for them, which is what the rest of this page is about, but it should be on the record. An ASA ruling concerns an advertisement and is not a finding that any company has broken the law.
Which law applies to me?
Direct answer: one of three, depending on what actually happened when you ordered. This table is the thing to read before you write to anyone, because quoting the right provision is most of the battle.
| If this is your situation | The provision to quote | What it gives you |
|---|---|---|
| It was already in the basket and I would have had to notice it and take it out | Regulation 40, Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 | The charge is not payable, and the contract is treated as requiring the trader to reimburse what you paid |
| I never asked for it at all and it simply appeared | Section 236, Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 | You are exempted from any obligation to pay, and your silence is not consent |
| I was never given a contract summary before I was bound | Ofcom General Condition C1 | The contract may be void or voidable, and early-exit charges should not apply |
| I ticked it myself and later regretted it | None of the above | You consented. Cancel it, and ask for goodwill rather than a statutory refund |
That last row matters. This page is not an argument that every add-on is a scandal. If you chose it, you chose it. The three routes exist for the situation where you did not.
What does regulation 40 actually say?
Direct answer: something considerably more useful than the advertising rules, and almost nobody quotes it. It has been in force since 13 June 2014.
Regulation 40, in its own words
(1) "Under a contract between a trader and a consumer, no payment is payable in addition to the remuneration agreed for the trader's main obligation unless, before the consumer became bound by the contract, the trader obtained the consumer's express consent."
(2) "There is no express consent (if there would otherwise be) for the purposes of this paragraph if consent is inferred from the consumer not changing a default option (such as a pre-ticked box on a website)."
(4) "Where a trader receives an additional payment which, under this regulation, is not payable under a contract, the contract is to be treated as providing for the trader to reimburse the payment."
The Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013, SI 2013/3134.
Read those three together. Your broadband subscription is the trader's main obligation. A support package or an antivirus subscription is a payment in addition to it. That addition requires your express consent, given before you were bound. And where consent is inferred from you not changing something that was already there, the regulation says that is not consent at all.
Subsection (4) is the part nobody quotes and the part that matters. It does not say the trader may refund you, or should consider it. It says the contract is to be treated as providing for reimbursement. Getting your money back is a contractual entitlement, not a favour, and that changes both the letter you write and the answer you get.
What if I never agreed to it at all?
Direct answer: then you are in stronger territory still, under a provision that moved house last year and that very few people know about. Section 236 of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 deals with inertia selling, and it has been in force since 6 April 2025.
Section 236, in its own words
(2) "The consumer is exempted from any obligation to pay for (or provide any other consideration for) the products supplied by the trader."
(4) "The absence of a response from a consumer following the supply of the product does not constitute consent from the consumer to comply with the trader's demand for the consumer to (a) pay for the product; (b) return the product; (c) safely store the product."
Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, section 236, in force 6 April 2025.
If you have ever wondered where the old inertia selling rules went, this is the answer. The Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 were revoked on 6 April 2025 and replaced by Part 4 of this Act, and the inertia selling protection was carried across into section 236. The substance is unchanged and it is unusually blunt: you owe nothing for something you did not ask for, and saying nothing is not the same as saying yes.
Is there anything specific to broadband?
Direct answer: yes, and it is the least known of the three routes and potentially the most powerful. Ofcom requires your provider to give you a contract summary before you are bound, and a contract made without one may be void or voidable.
Under Ofcom's General Condition C1, before a customer is bound by a broadband contract the provider must give them the Contract Information set out in the Annex to that condition, and a Contract Summary: a one-page document, or three pages for a bundle. Crucially, the contract only becomes effective once the customer has given express consent after receiving the summary.
The consequences of getting this wrong are not theoretical. On 22 May 2024 Ofcom fined BT £2.8 million because, since June 2022, EE and Plusnet had made more than 1.3 million sales without providing the required documents, affecting at least 1.1 million customers. BT had to contact those customers and refund anyone improperly charged an early-exit fee. Legal analysis of that case notes that a failure of this kind may void, or make voidable, each affected contract, and that early-exit fees should not apply.
One honest limit. We could not confirm word for word whether the Contract Summary must itemise or total the price of optional extras, and it does not automatically follow that it must, given the ASA's separate point that add-on costs need not appear in an advertised total price. But if you were never given a contract summary at all, that is a clean question to put to your provider, and a strong one.
Has anyone actually been fined for this?
Direct answer: yes, and very recently, for something almost identical. The Competition and Markets Authority fined Marks Electrical £720,000 and ordered around £600,000 refunded to nearly 40,000 customers for automatically opting them into paid extras without their express agreement.
That case is the closest precedent in existence to the practice in the ASA ruling. The extras were recycling services rather than antivirus software, but the mechanism was the same: a paid item added to the order without the customer expressly agreeing to it. The refunds worked out at roughly £15 a head, which is instructive, because that is well below the amount most people would bother to chase.
| Case | Regulator and outcome | Why it matters here |
|---|---|---|
| Marks Electrical | CMA: £720,000 fine and around £600,000 refunded to nearly 40,000 customers | Paid extras auto-added at checkout without express agreement. The closest precedent to broadband add-ons |
| Automobile Association Developments | CMA: £4.2 million fine and over £760,000 refunded to more than 80,000 learner drivers | A fee added late in the purchase journey. The first fine of its kind |
| McAfee and Norton | CMA: undertakings in 2021 giving auto-renewed customers a right to exit and a pro-rata refund | These are the antivirus products ISPs bundle. Refund rights already exist |
| BT, EE and Plusnet | Ofcom: £2.8 million fine, May 2024, over 1.3 million sales without contract documents | The telecoms-specific route. Missing paperwork can void a contract |
The wider change behind all of this is that since 6 April 2025 the CMA can investigate and fine businesses directly for consumer law breaches, without going to court, with penalties of up to 10% of global turnover. In the first year of those powers, reported on 17 April 2026, it ordered £760,000 refunded to consumers and imposed £4.7 million in fines. That is a structural shift in UK consumer protection that has barely registered with the public.
How common is this?
Direct answer: common enough that the government has measured it. Around 5.8% of active UK subscriptions are unwanted, which is roughly 9.7 million contracts, costing consumers about £1.6 billion a year.
The detail underneath that figure is the relevant part. Of those unwanted subscriptions, an estimated 3.6 million rolled over from a free or discounted trial, and 1.3 million from an auto-renewal. In other words, the two mechanisms in the ASA ruling account for around half of the problem the government has identified. This is not a quirk of one company's checkout. It is one of the two main ways people in this country end up paying for things they never meant to keep.
What should I check at the checkout?
Direct answer: one number and one screenshot. Compare the basket total against the advertised price, because any gap is something that has been added, and photograph the final screen before you confirm.
Sixty seconds at the checkout
1. Compare the total with the advert. Write down the advertised monthly price before you start. If the basket says anything else, find out why before you go further.
2. Read every line of the basket, not just the total. The words to look for are included, complimentary, trial, free for 30 days, and any brand name you did not choose.
3. Find the remove link even if it is faint. In the case the ASA ruled on it was small font in the corner of a box. If you genuinely cannot find one, that is worth a screenshot on its own.
4. Ask what happens when the free period ends. A trial that simply stops is fine. A trial that converts into a subscription is the thing to remove now rather than diarise.
5. Screenshot the final basket. Price, date, everything in it. Three seconds, and it is the single most useful piece of evidence you can hold if you ever need to dispute a charge.
How do I find out whether I am already paying for something?
Direct answer: in two places, and the second is the one people never look at. Read your broadband bill line by line, then check your bank or card statement separately, because some of these charges are taken by the software company rather than by your provider.
On the bill, the charges appear as separate line items and the names are reassuring. Look for anything containing priority, assured, complete, protect, secure, care or support. A few pounds a month is easy to miss on a bill you scan rather than read, which is exactly why it works.
On the statement, look for an annual charge you do not recognise, particularly from a security software brand. This is the part that catches people: a yearly £34.95 leaving your account on the anniversary of a broadband order you placed three years ago will never appear on a broadband bill, and most people assume anything broadband-related shows up there. Customer reports also describe other products attached the same way, including virtual private network subscriptions and line insurance, so check rather than assume you know what to look for.
Do this for elderly relatives too, if you help them with their accounts. A recurring charge that has been running quietly for years is precisely what nobody notices on a bill they do not scrutinise.
How do I get my money back?
Direct answer: in writing, citing the provision from the table above, and asking for reimbursement rather than a refund. Here is the letter.
Request for reimbursement of additional charges
[Your name and address]
[Account number]
[Date]
Dear Sir or Madam,
I am writing about charges applied to my account for [name of add-on], which I did not agree to take.
I placed my broadband order on [date]. The advertised price was [£ amount] per month. I have since been charged [£ amount] on [dates], totalling [£ amount], for [name of add-on]. I did not expressly agree to this additional charge. It was added to my order rather than selected by me.
Regulation 40(1) of the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 provides that no payment is payable in addition to the remuneration agreed for the trader's main obligation unless, before the consumer became bound by the contract, the trader obtained the consumer's express consent. Regulation 40(2) provides that there is no express consent where consent is inferred from the consumer not changing a default option. Regulation 40(4) provides that where a trader receives an additional payment which is not payable under the regulation, the contract is to be treated as providing for the trader to reimburse the payment.
[If the item simply appeared and you never encountered it during ordering, add:] Further, section 236 of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 provides that a consumer is exempted from any obligation to pay for products supplied in these circumstances, and that the absence of a response from a consumer does not constitute consent.
I therefore ask you to cancel [name of add-on] with immediate effect and to reimburse the sum of [£ amount]. Please confirm in writing within 14 days.
If you do not accept that these provisions apply, please set out your reasons and confirm that this is your final response, so that I may refer the matter to your alternative dispute resolution scheme.
Yours faithfully,
[Your name]
Send it by email so you have a timestamp, and keep everything. The final paragraph is deliberate: asking for a final response is what starts the clock on escalation, and a provider that can see you understand the process tends to answer differently from one that thinks you are asking for a favour.
What if they refuse?
Direct answer: escalate, and there are more routes than most people realise. A refusal is the beginning of the process, not the end of it.
The escalation ladder
1. Formal complaint to the provider. Use the word complaint, ask for it to be logged, and ask for a final response or deadlock letter if they will not pay.
2. The ombudsman, after six weeks. Since 8 April 2026 you can take an unresolved telecoms complaint to your provider's dispute resolution scheme after six weeks rather than eight, or straight away with a deadlock letter. It is free and the decision binds the provider. Our escalation guide explains how.
3. Your card provider. If you paid by credit card and the amount qualifies, section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974 may give you a claim against the card issuer. For debit cards, ask your bank about chargeback.
4. Report it, even if you have been paid. The CMA takes reports of unfair practices, and Trading Standards is reached through the Citizens Advice consumer helpline on 0808 223 1133. Individual reports are what build enforcement cases like the ones in the table above.
5. The ASA, if it was the advertising. One complaint is what produced the 9 September ruling. Advertising complaints are free and they genuinely change behaviour.
That last point deserves emphasis. The ruling this article is about came from one person complaining. Not a campaign, not a class action. One complaint, upheld, an advertisement withdrawn, and a company telling the regulator it had changed its checkout.
Which providers do this?
Direct answer: we can tell you what products exist, and we are not going to guess at what any provider's checkout does today. Only Onestream's behaviour is documented, by its own terms and by the ASA ruling.
Security software is bundled widely and legitimately across the industry. BT includes Norton-powered protection, Sky offers McAfee security, Plusnet and EE have had similar arrangements, and Virgin Media and TalkTalk provide network-level filtering as standard. Several providers appear not to attach paid trials at all: on the evidence we found, Zen Internet, YouFibre, Hyperoptic and Community Fibre sell add-ons only where the customer chooses them.
| Add-on | Typical cost | What you may already have | Worth paying for? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Antivirus or internet security software | Around £35 a year after a free month or year | Windows includes Microsoft Defender at no cost; macOS, iOS and Android have built-in protection. Several providers also filter at network level for free | Rarely, for a typical household. Check what your devices already run before paying |
| Priority or enhanced support package | Around £8 a month, so roughly £95 a year | Standard support is included in every broadband contract, and fault repair is a contractual obligation regardless of what you pay | Only if the published response times are meaningfully better and you can see them in writing |
| Line or equipment insurance | A few pounds a month | The router is usually the provider's property and its repair or replacement is its responsibility. Home contents insurance may already cover the rest | Check what it actually covers before assuming it covers anything you would claim for |
| VPN subscription | Varies, commonly £30 to £60 a year | Nothing equivalent comes free, but most households have no use for one | Only if you specifically wanted a VPN and chose that provider deliberately |
Prices are indicative of what is commonly charged across the market as at 11 September 2026 and are not specific to any one provider. Check what you are actually being offered.
What we deliberately will not do is publish a table claiming that any particular provider pre-selects an auto-renewing extra at checkout today. Establishing that properly means going through each order journey and recording what appears, and we have not done that. Onestream's own terms are explicit: "We may provide you with a free trial of anti-virus McAfee software... if you don't cancel the software before the end of the free trial period you will be liable to pay a fee as set out in our Price Guide." For everyone else, the honest answer is check your own basket, which is what the checklist above is for.
Is anything changing in the law?
Direct answer: yes, and it is designed for exactly this problem, but it has slipped twice and is now expected in Spring 2027.
The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act contains a subscription contract regime that addresses the free-trial-into-subscription pattern head on. It will require clear pre-contract information, reminder notices before a free or reduced-price period converts into a paid one, a cooling-off right when a contract renews, and cancellation that is as straightforward as signing up. Had it been in force, the arrangement in the ASA ruling would have looked very different.
It was originally expected in Spring 2026, then pushed to Autumn 2026, and the government confirmed in April 2026 that it is now expected in Spring 2027, with the secondary legislation and guidance still to come. Until then, the three routes set out above are what you have, and two of them are a good deal older and better established than the thing that will eventually replace the gap.
Where does this leave you?
Direct answer: better armed than you were, and with two jobs. Check whether you are already paying for something, and change how you read a checkout.
The reason this practice persists is not that it is hidden from regulators. It is that the amounts are individually small, complaining feels disproportionate, and almost nobody finds out that the law is on their side quite as explicitly as it is. The Marks Electrical refunds worked out at about £15 a head, which is exactly the sum most of us would write off, and exactly the calculation being made.
The wider lesson for choosing broadband is simpler. Compare on the total you will actually pay across the contract, including setup, add-ons and any rise built into the deal, rather than on the number in the advert. That is the whole point of comparing properly, and it is the one habit that makes this sort of thing bounce off you.
In summary
- A pre-ticked box is not consent. Regulation 40(2) of the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013 says consent cannot be inferred from a consumer not changing a default option.
- Regulation 40(4) provides that the contract is to be treated as requiring the trader to reimburse an additional payment taken without express consent.
- If the product simply appeared, section 236 of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 exempts you from any obligation to pay, and your silence is not consent.
- If you were never given a contract summary before you were bound, Ofcom General Condition C1 is engaged; Ofcom fined BT £2.8 million over that failing in May 2024.
- The CMA fined Marks Electrical £720,000 and ordered around £600,000 refunded to nearly 40,000 customers for auto-opting them into paid extras.
- Write to your provider citing the provision, ask for reimbursement rather than a refund, and request a final response so you can escalate after six weeks.
Free and independent. Nothing in the basket you did not choose.
Adrian's closing thought
What sent me looking for the law was a forum thread. Someone had been charged £35 for security software they never knowingly ordered and asked whether anyone had managed to get it back. Eighteen months later, nobody had answered. The reply they needed was four lines of a statutory instrument from 2013 saying a pre-ticked box is not consent and the money has to come back, and, if it turned out the thing simply appeared, a section of an Act from 2024 saying they owed nothing for it at all. Both have been sitting there the whole time. The only reason they do not get used is that nobody tells people they exist. So now you know. The letter is above, and the amount does not have to be large to be worth ten minutes.
Share this with someone who needs it
Anyone who has spotted a charge they do not recognise, and anyone who helps a relative check their bills, is welcome to use this page. The letter and the routes table may be copied freely.
Cite this page
This guide is free to quote, in full or in part, with attribution. Advice services, journalists, trading standards officers, researchers and AI assistants are all welcome to use it. The routes table and the reimbursement letter may be copied and adapted freely, and we would rather they were used than not.
BroadbandSwitch.uk. (11 September 2026). The broadband add-ons you did not ask for, and how to get your money back. https://broadbandswitch.uk/insights/broadband-checkout-add-ons-your-refund-rights/ In a sentence: BroadbandSwitch.uk reported on 11 September 2026 that the Advertising Standards Authority had upheld a complaint (ref A26-1344540) about a broadband advertisement that failed to disclose free trials added at checkout which auto-renewed at £7.95 a month and £34.95 a year, and set out three legal routes to a refund: regulation 40 of the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013, which provides that consent cannot be inferred from a consumer not changing a default option and that additional payments must be reimbursed; section 236 of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, which exempts consumers from paying for unsolicited supply; and Ofcom General Condition C1, under which a contract made without a contract summary may be void or voidable and for which Ofcom fined BT £2.8 million in May 2024.
Frequently asked questions
What did the ASA actually rule?
On 9 September 2026 the Advertising Standards Authority upheld a complaint about a website advertisement for the broadband provider Onestream, reference A26-1344540. The ad promoted an 80Mbit/s package at £22.99 a month with a £14.95 activation fee but did not mention that two free trials would appear in the basket during checkout and would then renew for a fee. The ASA concluded: Because the ad did not include information about free trials which would automatically renew for a fee, we concluded it was misleading.
What were the add-ons and what did they cost?
A support package called Onestream Priority Plus, renewing at £7.95 a month, and McAfee Multi Access security software, renewing at £34.95 a year. That is about £130 a year on top of an advertised £22.99 a month. Both were free for an initial period and appeared in a checkout box headed Included with your order, free for 30 days, with a remove option in small font in the top right corner.
The company said you could remove them, so what was the problem?
The ASA said the removal option was unlikely to be sufficiently prominent, and that regardless of the checkout, the information was not in the advertisement at all. Its reasoning contains an important distinction: it said the costs of the add-ons were not required to be included in the total advertised price, but that information about the free trials and their automatic renewal was material to understanding what the package included, and omitting it made the price claim misleading.
Has the company changed anything?
Yes, according to what it told the regulator. Onestream said that as part of an ongoing review the two services had been removed from the checkout journey and were now available only as optional extras that customers actively choose to add. That does not affect anyone already paying for them, which is what most of this guide is about, but it is only fair to record it.
Does the law say anything about pre-ticked boxes?
Yes, and it is unusually direct. Regulation 40 of the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013 says no payment is payable in addition to the agreed price unless the trader obtained your express consent before you were bound, and that there is no express consent if it is inferred from you not changing a default option, such as a pre-ticked box on a website. Failing to untick something is not agreement.
Am I entitled to a refund?
If you were charged for an add-on you did not expressly agree to, regulation 40 says you are. Subsection 4 provides that where a trader receives an additional payment which is not payable under the regulation, the contract is to be treated as providing for the trader to reimburse the payment. That is a statutory obligation rather than a discretionary gesture, which changes both the letter you write and the answer you tend to get.
What if I never agreed to it at all?
Then you may be in stronger territory still. Section 236 of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, in force since 6 April 2025, deals with inertia selling. It provides that the consumer is exempted from any obligation to pay for the products supplied, and that the absence of a response from a consumer following the supply of the product does not constitute consent to pay for it, return it or store it. This is the old inertia selling protection in its new home.
Is there anything specific to broadband?
Yes, and it is the least known of the three routes. Under Ofcom General Condition C1, before you are bound a provider must give you a one-page Contract Summary and fuller Contract Information, and the contract only becomes effective once you give express consent after receiving the summary. Failure can make the contract void or voidable and means early-exit charges should not apply. Ofcom fined BT £2.8 million in May 2024 over more than 1.3 million sales made without them.
Has anyone actually been fined for adding extras at checkout?
Yes, and recently. The Competition and Markets Authority fined Marks Electrical £720,000 and ordered around £600,000 to be refunded to nearly 40,000 customers, roughly £15 each, for automatically opting them into paid recycling services without their express agreement. It also fined Automobile Association Developments £4.2 million and ordered over £760,000 refunded to more than 80,000 learner drivers over a booking fee added late in the purchase.
How common is this?
The government's own estimate, published on 2 April 2026, is that around 5.8% of active UK subscriptions are unwanted, which works out at roughly 9.7 million unwanted subscription contracts, costing consumers about £1.6 billion a year. Of those, an estimated 3.6 million rolled over from a free or discounted trial and 1.3 million from an auto-renewal. So the pattern in the ASA ruling is not a niche problem; it is one of the two main ways people end up paying for things they never meant to keep.
What should I check at the checkout?
Compare the basket total against the advertised price before you confirm, because any difference is something that has been added. Read every line rather than the total, looking for words like included, complimentary, trial or free for 30 days. Find the remove option even if it is small or faint. Then screenshot the final basket showing the price and the date, which is the single most useful thing you can have if you later need to dispute a charge.
How do I check whether I am already paying for something?
In two places, and people almost never check the second. Read a recent bill line by line, because these charges appear as separate items with reassuring names containing words like priority, assured, complete, protect, secure or care. Then check your bank or card statement separately, because some add-ons are billed by the software company rather than by your broadband provider and will never appear on the broadband bill at all.
Is anything changing in the law?
Yes, but later than planned. The subscription contract regime in the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act will require reminder notices before a free or reduced-price period converts, a cooling-off right on renewal, and cancellation that is as easy as signing up. It was expected in Spring 2026, then Autumn 2026, and the government confirmed in April 2026 that it is now expected in Spring 2027. Until then the three routes in this guide are what you have.
References
- Advertising Standards Authority. (2026, September 9). ASA ruling on OneStream Ltd (ref. A26-1344540). Retrieved 11 September 2026, from https://www.asa.org.uk/rulings/onestream-ltd.html
- Committee of Advertising Practice. (n.d.). Guidance on "free trial" or other promotional offer subscription models. Retrieved 11 September 2026, from https://www.asa.org.uk/resource/guidance-on-free-trial-or-other-promotional-offer-subscription-models.html
- Competition and Markets Authority. (2026, April 17). Direct consumer enforcement: One year on. Retrieved 11 September 2026, from https://competitionandmarkets.blog.gov.uk/2026/04/17/direct-consumer-enforcement-one-year-on/
- Consumer Credit Act 1974, c. 39, s. 75. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1974/39/section/75
- Department for Business and Trade. (2026, April 2). Government response to consultation on the implementation of the new subscription contracts regime. Retrieved 11 September 2026, from https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/consultation-on-the-implementation-of-the-new-subscription-contracts-regime
- Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, c. 13, s. 236 and sch. 20. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2024/13/section/236
- ISPreview. (2026, September 9). OneStream UK broadband ad banned over paid auto renewing product trials. Retrieved 11 September 2026, from https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2026/09/onestream-uk-broadband-ad-banned-over-paid-auto-renewing-product-trials.html
- Ofcom. (2024, May 22). Ofcom fines BT £2.8m for failing its EE and Plusnet customers. Retrieved 11 September 2026, from https://www.ofcom.org.uk/phones-and-broadband/service-quality/ofcom-fines-bt-2-8m-for-failing-its-ee-and-plusnet-customers
- Ofcom. (n.d.). Ofcom's guidance under General Condition C1: Contract requirements. Retrieved 11 September 2026, from https://www.ofcom.org.uk
- Onestream. (n.d.). General terms and conditions: broadband and home phone. Retrieved 11 September 2026, from https://onestream.co.uk/documents/broadband-and-home-phone-terms-and-conditions.pdf
- The Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013, SI 2013/3134, reg. 40. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2013/3134/regulation/40/made
- The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 (Commencement No. 2) Regulations 2025, SI 2025/272. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2025/272
- thinkbroadband. (2026, September 9). ASA rules OneStream ad was misleading. Retrieved 11 September 2026, from https://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/asa-rules-onestream-ad-was-misleading
- UK Parliament. (2026, April 13). Written statement HLWS1503: Subscription contracts. Retrieved 11 September 2026, from https://questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-statements/detail/2026-04-13/hlws1503
Written by Adrian James, Broadband Editor at BroadbandSwitch.uk (LinkedIn). Reviewed by Dr Alex J. Martin-Smith (LinkedIn). Published 11 September 2026, last verified 11 September 2026. This guide is information, not legal advice. Whether any of the provisions described applies to a particular purchase depends on what the consumer was shown and what they did, which is a question of fact. The Advertising Standards Authority ruling described here concerned a specific advertisement and is not a finding that any company has acted unlawfully; Onestream told the ASA the services had since been removed from its checkout journey. For advice on your own situation, contact Citizens Advice on 0808 223 1133.