MSE News: Small businesses face £185/yr charge for not opting out of BT classified...

BT are becoming an absolute disgrace.

Recently they incorrectly billed me. I disputed the bill and they promised to look into it. They didn't, but they still took the money by Direct Debit anyway. :mad:
(They have since agreed it was indeed a billing error)

Now they are charging me for products they promised to provide free of charge for 12 months (which doesn't end until Nov/Dec this year); this free offer was in exchange for agreeing to remain with them for 12 months.

Then they sent me a letter offering me 12 months free broadband service. No mention in that letter that, yes they will not charge me for the provision of broadband, but that they sneakily will get their money by increasing the charges relating to phone services, exactly the same phone services as they provided prior to the supply of broadband :mad:

I have, of course, complained, and they just come out with lies, lies lies. I have the evidence to hopefully prove the lies they tell now the matter is going to the ombudsman BT took longer to write the deadlock letter than it took them to agree to provide it when I disputed their version of events.

They continue to demand full payment in advance for some phone services, even though I have asked them to put this matter into dispute (which they refuse). They say only if the ombudsman orders them to suspend collection activities, will they (and we all know it may take the ombudsman months to even start to investigate a complaint, yet BT want their money within days.) :mad:

They also cheat on the advance notice period for Direct Debits. Nornally it should be 10 workiong days plus postage time. Depending on where you look, BT make you agree to 8 calendar days or 6 working days ... but if you opt for paperless billing, the notification of the availability of the bill is perhaps 2 days after the bill is dated, so the advance notice is insufficient, even with BT's reduced agreed period.

Moreover, I have since cancelled what I can of those additional services they are now charging me in advance for - I wonder how long it'll take them to re-credit me? Probably a lot longer than the period they took to bill me for them in the first place.

:mad: :mad: :mad:

To form a valid contract you need offer acceptance and consideration. In action cannot usually be considered acceptance (action can though) - Felthouse v Bindley (1862) - one cannot impose an obligation on another to reject one's offer

so unless there was something about this listing and charge in the initial terms and conditions when these businesses took out a BT phone or other contract, then there's no case for them to answer to.

BT deserve a stern telling off for this.

Look at the size of the phone book and Yellow Pages these days - they're tiny compared to what they were 20 years ago. The number of advertisers has dropped off dramatically as more people use the internet to find goods and services. It seems that BT are desperate to find some way of making the directories pay rather than admit defeat in the face of the big search engines. I know that my wife stopped advertising her business in the directories years ago as Google ads were far more fruitful.