BT calling plans

Brian64 · 21 March 2010 at 10:47PM

Thanks for the advice Premier.I think i will make my complaint in writing rather than phoning them again and see what response i get.Probably best to have a paper trail should i need to escalate my complaint and i would need to get a letter of dead lock or wait the relative period of time to take the matter to ADR scheme.

brewerdave · 22 March 2010 at 8:27AM

Premier wrote: »

BT sent me a letter to advise me my 12 month Evening & Weekend Plan contract was coming to an end. It said if I wanted it to roll over to another year I didn't need to do anything.
I didn't do anything ... but they are now charging me extra for the Evening Call element.

Premier - same thing happened to my daughter - chased via BT contact on this site and charge for Evening element was refunded in following month's bill - non renewal blamed on a " system" error.:rotfl:Some system !!!!

Brian64 · 22 March 2010 at 10:40AM

Brian64 wrote: »

I think BT make a lot of money by not sending out reminder letters when your 12 month contract has ended so they can automatically lock you into another 12 month contract.I had been wanting to change my calls to another supplier but keep my line with BT by FeB i went into my account on line thinking my 12 months should be up by now but not sure as i was told i would receive a letter from BT 4 weeks before to remind me which i've not received.Anyway whilst looking on their web site i got a pop up asking if i wanted to chat to a bt advisor and i enquired if they had an option for line rental as i was wanting to switch my calls and was told they don't do line only and my best option would be the weekend plan.so in FEB i changed from the unlimited anytime to the weekend plan.Forward to today BT bill arrives log into my account and charged £86.71 in cancellation charges! Phoned BT spoke to advisor who said reminder was send not BT fault i didn't get it blame royal mail and that my contract had ended in DEC and i had been put on a new 12 mth contract. I asked why i was not told this when i was on web chat or when i went to change my plan online and he said that had i phoned i would have been advised of the cancellation charges but not online.He then put me on hold to talk to someone regarding it and came back and said if it was up to him he would refund the charges but whoever he spoke to said because i'd done it online they couldn't. I asked what their complaints procedure was and if they were in an ADR scheme (as i was going to ask for a letter of deadlock) he didn't seem to know and advised me to write to BT. I will take this matter as far as i can as it is very bad practice by BT.

Just of phone again to BT spoke to a really helpful advisor who put me on hold whilst he spoke to a manager came back and said he would do a refund for the cancellation charge so a good outcome.

Premier_2 · 22 March 2010 at 11:49AM

brewerdave wrote: »

...
Premier - same thing happened to my daughter - chased via BT contact on this site and charge for Evening element was refunded in following month's bill - non renewal blamed on a " system" error.:rotfl:Some system !!!!

Did you actually get the refund, or were you simply promised it? Unfortunately I can't accept promises from them anymore as they appear to mean nothing.

Sometimes, the words peanuts & monkeys spring to mind when I speak to BT call centre in India. It's obviously located there because its cheap.

Actually that's possibly unfair. The CS advisors appear to know the system as far as their pay is concerned and will tell you whatever is needed to ensure you rate them highly.

I've been on to them a number of times re my complaint.

The first one promised me the refund ... and that a revised bill would be available to me online within 3 hours.

It never arrived, so I called again. This time the different adviser said the refund had been processed, but the revised bill not sent. They would post it but it would take 48 hours to be available online. When They then asked me to rate their efforts I said I couldn't do that yet as it would depend on if what they promised actually got delivered (bearing in mind my previous experience)
They then said hang on a minute... and came back to me and said the online bill will be available within the next 5 minutes, so how would I rate him now?:rotfl:
I said if that was the case, I would be prepared to hold the line and see if it is delivered as promised and then rate his performance. I had a feeling when he declined this invitation that he was up to no good.

Called again, this time was given more nonsense. Apparently the refund was attempted to be processed but the refund was refused - no reason given. However, he said the previous guy had now processed a refund for a different service/amount instead.
There were lost of other inconsistencies in the tales I was being told.
Eventually I asked to speak to the guy's manager, and he said "ah, if that means you no longer wish to speak to me, do I take it that you assess my performance in my treating this matter as having been totally resolved to your satisfaction?":eek:

It was at that point I gave up and a Formal Complaint in writing has been submitted to the company.

Edit: I think my other issue is that when a complaint is raised, BT do not look at the root cause of the complaint, and if they do as was suggested to you it being a 'system error', they don't put measures in place to prevent further duplicate errors. Computers don't generally make mistakes, it's the humans that tell them what to do that make the mistakes, so if there is a 'system error' then chances are it's going to affect lots of people unless action is taken to rectify the root cause.

Money_Mitch · 22 March 2010 at 12:36PM

I made a local call to the doctors a few weeks back 30secs cost me 15p BT charge a connection fee of 9.9p it would have been cheaper to use my mobile, BT still get away with murder

Money_Mitch · 22 March 2010 at 12:37PM

I made a local call to the doctors a few weeks back 30secs cost me 15p BT charge a connection fee of 9.9p it would have been cheaper to use my mobile, BT still get away with murder

Premier_2 · 22 March 2010 at 1:38PM

Money_Mitch wrote: »

I made a local call to the doctors a few weeks back 30secs cost me 15p BT charge a connection fee of 9.9p it would have been cheaper to use my mobile, BT still get away with murder

You can't really complain when BT charge you the amount they say they will for using their service.

I said, you can't really complain when BT charge you the amount they say they will for using their service.

The connection charge is part of their advertised tariff.

Take a look at Heinz' informative post on how to get the most out of your BT residential landline
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.html?p=1598074&postcount=4

(but if you plan to make very short chargeable calls, less than 1 minute, to 0845 & 0870 numbers, then you would be better off using the services of 18185 rather than BT for the call as they apply a lower connection charge which saves more than the higher timed rate will cost. Chargeable calls to 0845 during the weekday daytime will always be cheaper with 18185 (3p/min) than with BT (3.948p/min)).

Heinz · 22 March 2010 at 1:47PM

Money_Mitch wrote: »

I made a local call to the doctors a few weeks back 30secs cost me 15p BT charge a connection fee of 9.9p it would have been cheaper to use my mobile, BT still get away with murder

Think yourself lucky that your GP is not one of those who have changed to the Surgeryline system with a 5p/minute 0844 number and a 'no queues' system which makes you join an endless menu system and makes you press this, press that (a queue by another name) to speak to someone.

Terry_D · 23 March 2010 at 4:20PM

I've just had an interesting 1 hour call with BT after receiving my latest on-line statement. I don't know if everybody is affected by this but for this month they are adding an additional charge to bring my rental date in line with my statement date (Nice little earner!). OK, they can only do this once so hey ho! But when I looked at the bill the additional charge which was for exactly half a month was £9.02 but then I was charged £11.30 for a full month and it kinda didn't look right so I did my own calculation and found they had charged me over £3 for the part month.

So called them up. The first guy got so confused with my calculation that he cut me off (not deliberately I don't suppose ;-). So not to be done out of three quid I phoned back (0800 number so no problem) Different guy, same heavy Asian accent, same confusion - After about 20 mins of disagreeing and our voices getting rapidly louder I was suddenly, without asking or being told, was put through to A MANAGER. Again an Asian accent but much clearer (and calmer) after a little further discussion he could see where I was coming from and promptly offered me an immediate refund of £3.37 off this bill.

After graciously accepting what after all was mine anyway, I then went on to ask him how this could have happened and if it had happened to me how was it not happening to thousands of other customers since these bills are system generated by BTs computers. Well this had him flummoxed to say the least saying only a few customers MIGHT be affected but this was a one off error etc etc etc.

Moral of this story is you are affected by this one off re-alignment of charge dates, carefully check your bill! It might only be £3.37 to me but multiply that by possibly thousands and BT may have just made a few bob this month!

BT calling plans

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