Evil BT

Cat1066

Hello Everyone
Need some help please. Line rental is BT and use Tiscali for calls and broadband. Pay BT £35 per month DD. Second to last quater bill was about £120 and Bt seemed happy to continue to take £35 per month. In Dec left BT for tiscali. Last quater bill for bt before i switched came in at approx £145 and they (in very small print) notified me I would now pay £53 per month.
For a start i dont have the extra a month and secondly as I now only accrue line rental from them I thought this a little silly. Phoned BT and spoke to a lovely woman in India who couldn't understand a word I said due to my lovely Yorkshire accent and vice versa. The long and short of it was that she wouldn't change my payments back to £35. So I decided to take action as I felt that phoning call centres was getting me nowhere and let them take my feb payment for £35 and then cancelled my DD. They have sent me today a letter dated the 2nd telling me to pay them £95 by the 9th or they will cut me off. I have no objection in paying them £35 again this month by cheque, but I don't have the full £96 and object to the way BT can change payments despite the fact that I now only need to pay them £36 per quarter. I am also concerned that if I let them take £53 a month, they may fail to notice that my account is now line rental only and still charge me £53 and end up with a large credit on my account. Does anyone have any advice on what to do ?

Many thanks
Catriona

DonnyDave

Cat1066 wrote:

Does anyone have any advice on what to do ?

Use Whole Bill Direct Debit instead of Monthly Payment Plan (MPP).

Cat1066

ooooh, thankyou. I didn't know that you could do that. Fantasic. That makes things so much easier

somerset_vern

WE have just had a similar experience. We pay £36 per month Direct Debit to BT for quarterly charges and Broadband. As I understand it, Direct Debit is variable so BT have the authority to deduct less if necessary.
In order to keep the monthly bill down, we buy a £5 voucher payment at the Post Office using a swipe card.
BT however deduct the Direct Debit first, then take the total of the £5 payments off the bill.
Not surprisingly, we are in credit by over £90!
I have stopped the Direct Debit (even with its £1 monthly saving).
When the bill is paid off, I shall move quarterly charge and broadband to OneTel (who are now Talk Talk). Our calls are already with them through British Gas (Centrica). Free in evenings and weekends = brilliant.
Perhaps BT should review how they collect money and deduct the vouchers first then calculate the Direct Debit payment.
BT have just lost one customer totally.

topherxp

Cat1066 wrote:

So I decided to take action as I felt that phoning call centres was getting me nowhere and let them take my feb payment for £35 and then cancelled my DD. They have sent me today a letter dated the 2nd telling me to pay them £95 by the 9th or they will cut me off. I have no objection in paying them £35 again this month by cheque, but I don't have the full £96 and object to the way BT can change payments despite the fact that I now only need to pay them £36 per quarter. I am also concerned that if I let them take £53 a month, they may fail to notice that my account is now line rental only and still charge me £53 and end up with a large credit on my account. Does anyone have any advice on what to do ?

Many thanks
Catriona

BT only send you a letter to make payment if the balance after the Direct Debit is over £30.

Heinz

somerset_vern wrote:

When the bill is paid off, I shall move quarterly charge and broadband to OneTel (who are now Talk Talk).

BT have just lost one customer totally.

Welcome to the MSE foums somerset_vern.

Think carefully before you transfer your line rental from BT to Talk Talk.

As has been mentioned in this forum many times, they now bar short codes (1899 etc.), charge £1.75 per month for Caller Display and 50p per month for basic 1571.

Please click on the 'HERE' link in my signature for other things to consider.

Gem_

Cat10066 - welcome to MSE!

You sound like you need some help reducing the cost. Are you ringing mobiles or premium numbers etc? I spend about 30 hours a month calling landlines and only spend £15 per month using BT with TalkTalk carrier switch (which I use for my evening calls) and 18866 in the daytime.

Good Luck



Heniz

Felt I should comment on this - TalkTalk do not bar short codes if you just use the carrier switch for your calls option rather than switching from your BT line (I use 18866 and 18899 with no problems at all from my TalkTalk line). Thought we should make it clear there is a difference.

HTH

G

Edinburghlass_2

Gem_ wrote:

Cat10066 - welcome to MSE!

You sound like you need some help reducing the cost. Are you ringing mobiles or premium numbers etc? I spend about 30 hours a month calling landlines and only spend £15 per month using BT with TalkTalk carrier switch (which I use for my evening calls) and 18866 in the daytime.

Good Luck



Heniz

Felt I should comment on this - TalkTalk do not bar short codes if you just use the carrier switch for your calls option rather than switching from your BT line (I use 18866 and 18899 with no problems at all from my TalkTalk line). Thought we should make it clear there is a difference.

HTH

G

In fact you will find that https://www.call1899.co.uk is now cheaper than 18866 by 1p per call due to the difference in connection charges. £15 a month for calls seems to me to be quite a bit, what sort of calls add up to this amount?

Heinz does say in his post that its if you have your line rental with TalkTalk that they will bar short codes. If you use TalkTalk as a CPS you can, as you say use 1899/18185.

You may be able to find (slightly) cheaper line rental but, if you change, it's likely you'll regret doing so because the first of the below options will cease to be available and some of the others may cease to be available to you (e.g. TalkTalk now bars indirect access codes).

cornerclose

Before I discovered MSE I changed my line rental to Ezetalk, who I was already with for calls and were cheaper than BT (but not very cheap really!). They had made a big thing about costing 50p/month less than BT for line rental.

When my first bill came I found that the 50p/month saving was calculated by comparing the BT price including VAT with the Ezetalk price before VAT. I rang and complained, but they said it was in the T&Cs (in very tiiny wiritng). I cannot use any of these very cheap codes, and I am stuck with Ezetalk until May because their very tiny writing also included a 6 month contract for the line rental. :mad:

I have since learned to read MSE before changing any supplier!

Edinburghlass_2

oops!........

Cat1066

We had such high call charges as we where paying £70 a quarter on dail up charges. That stopped once we switched to tiscali broad band and I get free calls with them too, not this 5p an hour BT rubbish. As we rarely ring mobiles this was the best offer.
I have sent BT a cheque for £35, and sent them a letter telling them I will send them another payment of £35 the following month and so on until the balance is reduced. I also said in my letter that if someone of some authority would like to phone me then they are more than welcome. Not heard anything yet. Am away on business for a week in a couple of days, so no doubt I will come home to find out I have been cut off.