SWGFL Termination fee £1k per site!

[chrisrowlands]

We are thinking about moving away from SWGFL and have just had the termination fees come through to us. They want around £1000 per site to move away from them. The costs are broken down as the following:

Unrecovered Costs
core £300
software £100

Breakage costs
Telecoms £0
Admin £150
Engineering £350
Lost Profits £100

To me this seems pricey but SWGFL was put in before my time and I have no idea what was signed contract wise and if we really have to pay this to leave? Does anyone have experience with this?

Cheers

[Oaktech]

This is good to know... we are slowly severing our links with them, hosting our domain internally and moving our registrar and name servers to another provider to manage our own subdomains.

Please, let me know how this goes as i'm going to have to do it before august.

[Achandler]

When we left our local council there was NO COSTS at all, and if you are end of contract then there shouldn't be any costs.

[chrisrowlands]

Thanks Achandler, we are an academy now so I doubt the local council will get involved but 1k does seem excessive. I am not too sure what to do, pay it, argue it, or do something else?

[Achandler]

I would check the contract to be honest, if your contract has expired then you shouldn't have costs.

If it has expired then I can see why they want to charge you. When we left out LA for the internet connection, software they provided etc, we were at the end of our contract and just gave them written notice we were leaving, they arranged to collect some of their on site equipment and then that was it.

[X-13]

Thanks Achandler, we are an academy now so I doubt the local council will get involved but 1k does seem excessive. I am not too sure what to do, pay it, argue it, or do something else?

Can you get hold of the contract?

I would try that and see what it says.

[nephilim]

Do it at the end of the contract, so that you incur no costs at all. Have some suppliers on the ready and negotiate deals ready for when the contract expires. I have found most tend to end in April with councils as they like to do it all for the financial year.

Some of the fee's seem a bit ridiculous, admin - this is quite steep but an admin fee is expected, engineering - ok, so they have to cover the cost of recovering the equipment, removing the line etc but the one that gets me is "Lost Profits"...sorry, that is crazy!

[chrisrowlands]

We will be out of contract as far as I know we have waited a year to be out of contract. The contract ends in April and we are giving 6 months notice. I have found a copy of the SWGFL user agreement online and it states:

termination or expiry of this Agreement the Service User shall:

11.6.1 pay to SWGfL any Termination Fees due under or in relation to this Agreement;

11.6.2 pay to SWGfL all arrears of any Charges due to SWGfL under this Agreement up to the
date of termination; and

11.6.3 return to SWGfL any of the Confidential Information and provide a written certification that
such Confidential Information has not been retained save to the extent this is required in
relation to the Services.

So I don't know what we can do. I agree some of the costs seem excessive, should I ask for a detailed breakdown of the costs?

[Achandler]

I would refuse to pay anything if you are end of contract, simple as that

[nephilim]

Yes...ask for the full and complete breakdown, along with a simplified copy for someone that is not in a position to understand the finance side of things.

[chrisrowlands]

Well I would say the same but it states "for the avoidance of doubt, in cases where terminations have been requested in which costs apply, the process will not commence until a purchase order has been recieved to cover the costs".

I think we will have to ask for a breakdown but I am still unsure if you are out of contract if they can even charge fee's but I am not sure either way.

[Progress]

If you are out of contract, there should be no charges -
I have moved a few schools away in Derbyshire and Derby City, from LEA control. The only charges that I have come across are for transferring mail accounts and "decommissioning" services. Just make sure you have a backup system in place first though. I buy a temporary domain, .org or something for £10.80 from One.com. Register that with Office 365 for Education or Google Apps and use that to set up the new system, when you get control of the domain , just switch over the default domain name to the .sch one.
Look for bits in the contract concerning auto-renewal, but If you kick up enough fuss, there should be no charge.

[esafety-adviser]

Termination fees, mad and frustrating as it sounds, are not uncommon whether at end of contract or not. If the termination fee is written into the contract there is no get out clause, although £1000 is pretty steep.

[Domino]

Stop paying them at the end of the contract, what're they gonna do, stop your service?

I doubt the fees would stand up in court, and the cost of taking you there would outweigh the loss anyway.

[speckytecky]

It worries me greatly that someone at SWGfL isn't working hard at keeping customers. Apart from the odd glitch I have found them pretty good at providing the services and support schools need - seems a bit crazy that an organisation will actively assist its clients to migrate e-mail services to Microsoft. I believe SWGfL is part of RM if I w a shareholder in TM I'd be seriously concerned that the management at SWGfL isn't fighting to keep and build the services it provides.