Terms & conditions
Ikon Comms Limited, trading as My Chat
These terms explain how the My Chat home phone service works, what we promise you, and what we ask of you. We've tried to keep them clear and in plain English. If anything isn't clear, please call us on 01494 853 113 or email helpme@my-chat.co.uk.
Nothing in these terms affects your legal rights as a consumer.
1. About us
My Chat is a trading name of Ikon Comms Limited, a company registered in England and Wales (company number 17119071). Our registered office is 20-22 Wenlock Road, London, England, N1 7BU, United Kingdom. Our VAT number is 517066595.
In these terms, "we", "us" and "our" mean Ikon Comms Limited trading as My Chat. "You" means the person who has signed up for our service. "Your line" means the My Chat phone line and number we provide to you.
2. Our service
We provide a home phone line that works over a broadband internet connection (often called "VoIP"). It includes a UK phone number, the call plan you choose, voicemail to email, caller ID, call waiting and call forwarding.
To use the service you need a working broadband connection and a power supply at home. We don't currently provide broadband ourselves, but we can help you arrange it.
Our service is for home and personal use. If you're a small business with simple needs, please talk to us first. For larger business requirements, our sister company IKON ICT can help.
You must be 18 or over and live in the UK to use our service.
3. Signing up and starting your service
When you sign up online or by phone, we'll contact you to confirm your details before anything is set up or charged. Before your contract starts, we'll send you a contract summary showing your plan, price and the main terms.
To protect you and to stop our phone numbers being misused by scammers, we carry out checks before we provide a line. These may include confirming your identity and the address where the phone will be used, and checking that the service is for home use. We may decline an order if we can't complete these checks or if we think the service may be misused. You can read more in our privacy policy.
Your contract with us starts when we confirm in writing that we've accepted your order. Your service starts on the date we agree with you.
4. Your right to cancel (cooling-off period)
If you sign up online or by phone, you have 14 days from the day your contract starts to cancel for any reason. To cancel, call or email us.
If you ask us to start your service within those 14 days and then cancel, we may charge for the service you used up to the date you cancelled. If we've sent you equipment, please return it unused and in its original packaging within 14 days of cancelling. We'll refund what you've paid for it within 14 days of receiving it back.
5. Your phone number
Keeping your number. If you want to bring your existing number to My Chat, we'll arrange the move ("porting") with your current provider. You must be the account holder for that number, or have their permission, and we may ask to see a recent bill. While your number moves over, we may give you a temporary number so you can make and receive calls. We'll agree the move date with you.
A new number. If you'd like a new number, we'll give you one with a local area code.
Taking your number with you. If you leave us, you can take your number to your new provider. Ask your new provider to arrange it and we'll release the number. We don't charge for this.
Phone numbers are allocated by Ofcom. We can't guarantee a particular number, and in rare cases we may have to change a number - for example if Ofcom or our network provider requires it. We'll give you as much notice as we can.
6. Equipment
We can send you a phone, or an adapter so your own phone works with our service, already set up for your line. The price of any equipment, if there is one, will be shown before you order and in your contract summary. Once you've paid for it, the equipment is yours.
If equipment we supply is faulty, please tell us. Your rights under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 apply: we'll repair or replace it, or give you a refund where the law says you're entitled to one.
The equipment is set up to work with our service. Please don't change its settings unless we ask you to, and keep any passwords we give you private.
7. 999 calls and power cuts - please read
You can call the emergency services on 999 and 112, and the NHS on 111, from your My Chat line. We give the emergency services the address you registered with us, so it's important that it's correct. Please tell us straight away if you move or if the phone will be used somewhere else.
Your phone will not work in a power cut, or if your broadband stops working, unless you have a battery backup. This includes 999 calls. A cordless phone also won't work in a power cut. We recommend keeping a charged mobile phone handy.
If you rely on your landline - for example because you use a telecare alarm or pendant, have a disability or health need, or have no mobile phone or mobile signal at home - please tell us. We'll offer you a solution that lets you call the emergency services for at least one hour during a power cut, free of charge. You can choose not to have it, but we'll explain the risks first.
If you have an alarm, telecare or other device that uses your phone line, please check with its provider that it works over a digital line before you switch.
8. Prices and bills
Our prices are shown on our website and in your contract summary. All our prices for home customers include VAT.
- Your plan's monthly charge is billed monthly in advance.
- Calls that aren't included in your plan are billed monthly in arrears, at the rates shown in your contract summary.
- Calls are charged per minute, rounded up to the next whole minute.
- Any included minutes are for calls to UK landlines (numbers starting 01, 02 and 03) and UK mobiles (07). Unused minutes don't carry over to the next month.
- Calls to other numbers, including international, premium-rate and other special numbers, are not included. To protect you from fraud, these are barred on new lines. If you'd like them opened, please ask us and we'll tell you the rates first.
We'll tell you how to pay when you sign up. If a payment fails, we'll contact you to sort it out. If a bill stays unpaid after we've reminded you, we may restrict or suspend your line (see section 12). We won't charge you more than our reasonable costs for chasing a missed payment.
We put a monthly spending limit on call charges to protect you from unexpected bills, for example if your line were used fraudulently. If you reach it, outgoing chargeable calls may stop until the next month or until you ask us to raise it. You'll still be able to call 999, 112 and 111 and receive calls.
If you think a bill is wrong, please tell us as soon as possible. We'll look into it and put it right if we've made a mistake.
9. Changes to prices and these terms
We may change our prices or these terms. If a change isn't to your benefit, we'll give you at least one month's written notice and you can end your contract without charge before the change takes effect.
Any price rise will always be shown to you in pounds and pence. We will never link price rises to inflation or use percentages.
10. Your responsibilities
You agree to:
- give us accurate information, including the address where the phone will be used, and tell us if it changes
- use the service lawfully and in line with our acceptable use policy
- keep your equipment, passwords and voicemail PIN safe, and tell us straight away if you think someone else is using your line
- pay your bills on time
You're responsible for calls made from your line, unless they were made because of something we did wrong. If your line is used fraudulently and you tell us promptly, we'll work with you fairly to put things right.
11. Service quality and faults
We'll do our best to provide a reliable service, but we can't guarantee it will always be free from faults or interruptions. Because the service runs over your broadband, its quality depends partly on your broadband connection, your router and the equipment at your home.
If something goes wrong, please call us on 01494 853 113 or email helpme@my-chat.co.uk. We'll help you find the cause and fix any fault in our service as quickly as we reasonably can. If you lose service for a long time because of a fault on our side, we'll credit your monthly charge fairly for the time you were without service.
Sometimes we or our network provider need to carry out maintenance. We'll try to do this at quiet times and give you notice where we can.
12. Restricting or suspending your line
We may restrict or suspend your line, or stop providing it, if:
- we reasonably believe it's being used for fraud, scams, nuisance calls or anything unlawful, or in breach of our acceptable use policy
- you haven't paid a bill after we've reminded you
- you gave us false information when signing up
- we're required to by law, by Ofcom, by the police or by our network provider
Unless it's urgent - for example to stop fraud - we'll contact you first and give you a chance to put things right. Even if your line is restricted, we'll try to keep 999, 112 and 111 calls working where we can.
13. Ending your contract
There's no minimum term. Your contract runs month to month and you can end it at any time by calling or emailing us. Your service will stop at the end of your current monthly billing period, unless you ask for a later date. There's no cancellation charge. You'll need to pay for any calls made up to the date your service ends.
If you're moving to another provider and keeping your number, ask your new provider to arrange it. Please don't cancel with us first, or you may lose your number.
We may end your contract by giving you at least one month's notice, or straight away if we're entitled to suspend your line under section 12 and the problem isn't put right.
14. Our responsibility to you
If we break these terms, we're responsible for loss or damage you suffer that is a foreseeable result of our failure or our negligence. We aren't responsible for loss or damage that isn't foreseeable.
We aren't responsible for problems caused by things outside our reasonable control, such as power cuts, faults with your broadband, or severe weather. We aren't responsible for business losses, as our service is for home use.
Nothing in these terms limits our responsibility for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that the law doesn't allow us to limit.
15. Complaints
If you're unhappy with our service, please tell us so we can put it right. Our complaints code explains how to complain and what happens next. If we can't resolve your complaint within six weeks, or we agree that we can't resolve it, you can take it to CISAS (the Communications and Internet Services Adjudication Scheme), an independent dispute resolution scheme approved by Ofcom. It's free for you to use.
16. Your information
We use your personal information as explained in our privacy policy.
17. Other important terms
We may use other companies to help provide our service, such as our network provider and equipment supplier. We remain responsible to you for the service.
We may transfer our rights and obligations under this contract to another organisation, for example if our business is sold. We'll tell you if this happens, and your rights won't be reduced.
If a court decides that part of these terms isn't valid, the rest will still apply.
These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales. You can bring legal proceedings in the courts of England and Wales, or if you live in Scotland or Northern Ireland, in the courts of your home country.
18. Contact us
Phone: 01494 853 113
Email: helpme@my-chat.co.uk
Post: My Chat, Ikon Comms Limited, 20-22 Wenlock Road, London, England, N1 7BU, United Kingdom