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Vulnerable Customer Policy

Last updated: 29th September 2023

 

Supporting disabled and vulnerable customers

Here at Voneus Broadband we welcome all customers to our network, including those who might need additional support due to accessibility requirements or circumstances making them vulnerable. 

If you have accessibility needs or consider yourself to be a vulnerable customer, please get in contact with us so we can discuss the available support for you.

 

What is a vulnerable customer?

There are many factors which might mean a customer is in a vulnerable situation. These include but are not limited to:

  • disability (physical or learning);

  •  illness (physical or mental);

  •  age;

  •  communication difficulties;

  • a change in circumstances (e.g. bereavement, job loss, divorce);

  • living in an isolated rural area; and

  • financial difficulty due to low income or a sudden reduction in regular income

 

How does Voneus Broadband support our vulnerable customers?

Protecting the interests of our vulnerable customers is very important to us, and we offer several services to support you.

  • Free battery back-up unit (BBU) for Digital phone customers: A BBU is a device that can provide an hour’s back-up power to our router during a power cut, allowing you to make phone calls to emergency services during that period.

  • Accessible formats: We can supply large print, audio versions of various documents and policies, Codes of Practice, Policies and bills on request.

  • Third party bill management: You can nominate someone to manage your Voneus bills (plus, if you want, your Voneus account) on your behalf. To set this up please contact our customer support team.

  • Priority fault repair: If there are any issues with your service, and, due to a disability that you’ve told us about, your service needs repairing urgently, we’ll make sure we prioritise that repair. 

  • Debt challenges: If you’re struggling with money or your financial position has changed, we’re here to help. Get in touch to see how we can support you - we have lots of options and will always do our best to keep you connected.

 

Ensuring we continue to provide vulnerable customers with the best experience

We provide training to our team on our policies and procedures to support vulnerable customers and monitor, evaluate and improve our policy based on feedback to ensure you continue to receive the best experience.

 

What records do we keep?

If you contact us by phone, email, social media or live chat and let us know of your circumstances as a vulnerable customer, we’ll keep a note on our customer records, which will be recorded and shared only as necessary for the purposes of this policy so as to be visible to all appropriate frontline staff on internal systems with appropriate access controls in place. This is so that our agents, if you deal with them again in the future, will be aware of your circumstances and you won’t have to explain each time. You can see the full details about how we manage this in our Privacy Policy.