BT Rolling Contract problems.

DeeCee

Free Evening and weekend calls, Rolling contract.

Started contract 4 Feb 2008, trouble free billing until recent bill dated 10 Feb 2009.
Feb bill charged 12.30 per month line rental (Feb, Mar, Apr) but no discount for rolling contract.

November 2008 bill charged usual £12.30 per month rental (Nov,Dec,Jan) less "promotional discount" of £2.30 for Nov, Dec, Jan.... like previous rolling contract bills.

The rolling contract was automatically renewed on the 4 Feb 2009.

Unable to get a sensible answer from BT customer services to date.

Would have thought "Rolling Contract " would have carried on seemlessly.

I can only hopefully guess I will receive six months discount on the next bill.

Anyone else had this problem ?
BDI

BDI

bobbyforeman

Yes, I have this problem !

I was on a Free Evening and Weekend Plan with an automatic renewable contract. Or so I thought! My latest bill shows the contract finished on 3 Feb 09 and was not renewed as promised. I am now being charged extra for the free evening calls plan but it doesn't stop there. BT are actually charging me for each evening call as well !!!

I have complained to BT who said that evening calls are only free for the first 60 minutes. I pointed out that none of my calls were for more than 60minutes and therefore should be free. I was then told that the call charges shown on the BT website are not always what the customer will be billed for. What? So BT can't even get their website to work properly. I have emailed them a copy of my bill showing the extra charge for free evening calls and the evening calls they are charging me for. The website may show ficticious numbers but my bill is real money that will be taken by Direct Debit in a few days.

I am waiting for BT's reply.

syko29793

The reason the credits are missing is because you are at the stage where you can end your contract.
The bills are charges in advance so for example you get a bill at end of 12 months if BT credit you 3 months in advance for the call plan but you cancel it you will have had 3 months credit for nothing and BT has no way of getting it back even though you may have cancelled the plan.
Following bill will have advance credit and backdated credit if you have not ended the contract.

Gambler

same problem here £2.30 credit not on my Feb bill. I only started the 12 month contract when I moved house in June last year.

bobbyforeman

After a week of emails to/from BT, they are now able to confirm that I was 'mis-sold' a renewable 12 month contract. The contract apparently was only ever for 12 months but they have me on a new contract and they have also confirmed that I should not have been charged for the evening calls either. This was a billing error that occured when my previous contract ended. They can only refund what I have been billed but I note on their website that there are other evening calls with costs that I have not been billed for yet. I am told that they cannot refund those until I am billed in May.

DeeCee

I also look after a Free Evening and weekend contract for an elderly relative, contract was taken out at a similar time.

This contract has rolled over seamlessly, started new year of contract and first three months credits have been applied.

Fortunately on both contacts there has been no charges for evening and weekend calls like others have had.

Never got a clear explanation from BT on the first problem.

imroberts

I signed both myself and my mother up to the rolling annual contract last year. Unfortunately there have been billing problems with both.

My mums discounts stopped in November (and are yet to be re-applied). BT claim that she has already had 12 discounts (between February and November?) therefore they were stopped, however will start again in February. This to me seems very bizarre, however BT's online billing conveniently only allows access to the last 6 months of bills therefore I am unable to prove or disprove this to be the case. BT are also unable to provide access to the bills or tell me the amounts billed and discounted on each.

My rolling monthly contract for some reason doesn't end until March, despite me having signed up for the service in February. Again I cannot prove or disprove this as BT do not allow me access to the bills covering this period last year.

Interestingly my mothers account (which was registered for the annual term approximately two weeks AFTER mine) is already out of contract

Needless to say, I am unimpressed.

bill888

I was wondering whether being billed quarterly or monthly makes any difference to this whole issue?

Both myself and a relative appear to have issues after our 12 month renewable contracts for Unlimited evenings and weekend call plans expired a few weeks ago.

We are both awaiting our next bills to be issued at the moment before we can raise the issues with BT.


Update: I am on BT's pay whole bill every quarter by direct debit. This morning, I phoned BT and asked them to change it to monthly billing. So if there is going to be any issues with any future bills, I won't have to wait 3 months for them to correct any errors I wish to dispute.

bill888

fyi, a relative who was on 12mth renewable contract which expired 2 weeks ago, has just received their monthly bill. They expected the 12mth contract for unlimited evenings and weekend plan to be automatically renewed according to the letter they received last January.

The discount on line rental wasn't reinstated on this bill.

They logged onto BT website to check their account, and it looks like their contract was not automatically renewed. Website clearly shows they are now on the monthly 'Unlimited Evening and weekends plan' which costs more at £12.97 pcm.

(Update 9 Mar): They phoned up BT this morning. BT acknowledged an error had been made. They have re-instated the 12 month renewable contract from today and will refund the difference in line rental charges attributed to the past few weeks)



My own quarterly bill is due on the 11th. When I check my Recent Usage online, my weekday evening call usage charges continue to rack up after my contract was supposedly renewed 3 weeks ago - many of the evening calls should be free. Yes, website says I am on 12mth renewable contract. Wait and see whether the usage charges are corrected when my bill is formerly issued. I've been previously advised by BT that I cannot dispute the usage charges until an invoiced bill appears.

(Update 11 Mar): Awaiting bill to be issued, but in the mean time, when I go online today to check my 'Recent Usage', BT have astonishingly corrected my usage charges. All the weekday evening calls which they had been charging at normal rate since the contract was renewed, have now been amended and calls are now shown as free.

bill888

My bill finally issued today. The Usage charges has been corrected as previously mentioned.

But things have gone somewhat pear shaped with the rental charges.

The online bill shows rental charge for £14.14 for 11Mar-10Apr for the Unlimited Evenings and Weekends call plan.

But there are no credits whatsoever relating for the 12mth renewable contract (renewed from 15 Feb).

There is also an additional rental charge under section 'Other rental charges' for 'Exchange line rental' totalling £28.28 (2x £14.14). At first, I thought this was attributed to the fact I had just changed from 'pay whole quarterly bill' to 'pay whole monthly bill', but after reading of someone else seeing the same entries on their quarterly bill, I now know this to be unrelated. (BT require 15+ days notice and I only gave them over a week to change billing methods)

The downloadable paperless bill however differs slightly in that it shows rental charges for 11Mar-10Jun for 'Unlimited Evenings and Weekend calls plan' totalling £42.42 (3x £14.14). Again, no credits whatsoever relating to the 12mth renewable contract.


It's becoming clear BT billing doesn't seem to be able to reinstate the credits at all (or within a timely manner) despite renewal of the 12 month renewable contract almost a month ago.


Update: Just spoken to BT.

They confirmed once again I was on the 12 month renewable contract for Unlimited evenings and weekends call plan.

The BT call operative must have been misinformed, as he insisted that the automatic renewal of the contract didn't mean I would get the monthly credits on the call plan.... To ensure the credits were reinstated, he said customers had to call them. This contradicts the renewal letter we received.

To cut a long story short, I agreed to renew my 12 month contract 'again' starting from Today even though I was on it already. It could not be backdated to 15 Feb. It seemed to me this was a 'quick fix' solution to ensuring the monthly credits are re-instated in future bills.

They said my next monthly bill should show the correct call plan charges with credits for being on the 12mth renewable contract.

I also asked them to confirm I will get a credit for the call plan overcharge for 15Feb and 11Mar - worth over £2.

As I didn't give them enough notice to switch from quarterly to monthly billing, they will still debit my account for the total shown on my current bill but I will receive credits in future bills.

Perhaps if I didn't do anything, the next bill 'may' have corrected itself automatically..... I recall when I first signed up to the 12 month renewable option 2 contract back in Feb 08, the 4 months worth of credits appeared on my quarterly bill a few weeks later. So was disappointed no credits appeared on this new bill one year later.

I've never had problems with BT in the past, but so far I've not been impressed with the way they have handled the renewal of the contracts for my relative and myself. Hopefully everything will be sorted when next bill arrives.

Gambler

Gambler wrote: »

same problem here £2.30 credit not on my Feb bill. I only started the 12 month contract when I moved house in June last year.

Have now received a letter advising that our current contract ends on 2nd June and will be automatically renewed unless we tell them otherwise.

When we ring we will first of al be asking why they have invoiced us full whack for the past 3 months :mad: