Price the Exit Before You Switch: A Small Business Guide to Getting Out of Supplier Contracts

Every few months someone rings you with a deal that would save you £40 a month on broadband, energy, card processing or software. Sometimes it's genuinely good. Other times the saving evaporates the moment you try to leave whatever you're currently tied into, and you end up paying twice for three months while a termination charge lands on the statement.

None of this is hidden, exactly. It's just buried in a PDF you agreed to in 2023 and never opened again. Before you sign anything new, spend half an hour answering six questions about the old contract.

Step 1: Find every contract you're actually in

Start by listing the suppliers you'd be switching: telecoms, energy, card payments, software, waste collection, the lot. Then check your bank statement for the last three months — direct debits reveal contracts you'd forgotten about.

Dig out the paperwork. If you can't find it, ask the supplier for a copy of the signed agreement and the current terms. They're obliged to give you the terms; whether they make it easy is another matter.

Step 2: Pin down the notice period — and the date it starts counting

This is where most of the money is lost. Notice periods are frequently 30, 60 or 90 days, and many contracts renew automatically for another 12 months unless you write to them in a specific window. Miss the window by a week and you've bought yourself another year.

So the question isn't 'how much notice?' — it's 'notice by when?' Get the renewal date and work backwards. Put the resulting date in your calendar with an alert two weeks earlier.

Watch for contracts where notice can only be served on the anniversary, or only in writing by post, or only via a specific portal. A phone call to a call centre is not notice.

Step 3: Add up every fee, not just the one on the front page

The headline 'early termination charge' is rarely the whole story. Ask about:

• Termination fees — often a percentage of remaining monthly charges.
• Admin or 'deinstallation' fees, which are sometimes invented at the point of leaving.
• Hardware restocking or non-return charges — routers, card terminals, meters, handsets.
• Minimum spend clauses — if you promised £X of card processing per month, you may owe the shortfall.
• Clawback of any discount applied at the start of the contract.

Energy is its own world: micro-business contracts have rules about notice and termination fees, and the terms should be set out clearly in your contract pack. If they aren't, ask for them in writing and keep the reply.

Step 4: Check what you'd lose, not just what you'd pay

Cost isn't only cash. Would you lose your business phone number, or your card payment history? Would moving software mean manually rebuilding two years of invoices? Is there a data export, and does it cost anything?

For telecoms, check whether your number can be ported and what happens to your line during the changeover. For card processing, check the notice period and whether you can run two terminals in parallel. For software, check whether your data is exportable in a usable format, not just a PDF dump.

Step 5: Cost the overlap honestly

A month of paying two suppliers is often cheaper than a 90-day termination charge. Work out the total cost of switching — exit fees plus overlap plus any setup charges plus the value of your time — and compare it to the saving over the full new contract term, not just month one.

If the new deal is 12 months at £30 less, that's £360. If leaving costs £250 and you pay £60 of overlap, the maths has just changed completely. Sometimes the right answer is to stay put and diarise the notice date.

Step 6: Get it in writing

Verbal assurances from a salesperson are worth roughly nothing when a billing team applies the rules. Send this before you commit to anything.

Subject: Contract details request — [Account number / business name]

Hello,

Before we review our arrangements, please confirm in writing:

1. The current contract end date and any renewal date.
2. The exact notice period, the last date notice can be served, and the accepted method (email, portal, post).
3. All charges payable if we terminate on [date] — termination, admin, hardware, discount clawback, minimum spend.
4. Any equipment we must return, by when, and the charge if we don't.
5. How we obtain a full export of our account data and any associated cost.
6. Confirmation of the final billing date and that no further renewal will be applied once notice is served.

Please reply by email so we both have a record.

Thanks, [Name], [Business]

Keep the reply. If the answer contradicts what you were told on the phone, the email wins.

If they won't give you a straight answer

Escalate to a formal complaint in writing and give them a deadline to respond. Sector ombudsmen and regulators — the energy ombudsman for utilities, Ofcom-mandated processes for communications — exist for exactly this, but they expect you to have complained first. For smaller sums, a letter before action and the small claims track are cheap and surprisingly effective.

The five-minute habit that prevents all of this

Next time you sign anything, add three things to a spreadsheet: the supplier, the renewal date, and the last date to give notice. Set a calendar reminder for two weeks before that notice date. That single habit is the difference between choosing your suppliers and having them choose you.