BT termination charges

prodigalmum

I have just cancelled my BT line before the 12 month contract expires.
I have been told that the charge for this will be over £77.
I did not have any special deals when I joined BT as the line was already in place and I just changed providers.
Surely these sort of charges are unreasonable, considering the amount of work involved?
Would appreciate some feed back re which governing official body I need to contact that can rule these charges unreasonable, or are they perfectly legitimate? Thanks

macman

prodigalmum wrote: »

I have just cancelled my BT line before the 12 month contract expires.
I have been told that the charge for this will be over £77.
I did not have any special deals when I joined BT as the line was already in place and I just changed providers.
Surely these sort of charges are unreasonable, considering the amount of work involved?
Would appreciate some feed back re which governing official body I need to contact that can rule these charges unreasonable, or are they perfectly legitimate? Thanks

What's unreasonable about BT expecting you to honour the 12m minimum contract you agreed to? The fee for early termination is the monthly payment x the no. of months left on the contract. Standard terms.

c.reid

lukegregory wrote: »

I moved house earlier in the year and took my BT line with me but last week decided to take up a contract with Sky for my home telephone.

Today I received a letter from BT stating that they had received notice of an order to move my phone line and that I would need to pay over £50 in termination charges, because "of stopping your BT phone services within the minimum term of the contract".

I called BT and pointed out that I had been a customer for a number of years, all be it that I had taken my account with me to my new address. I was told that moving house and taking your BT account with you means entering in to a new 12 month agreement.

I don't remember this being mentioned when I initiated the move and certainly didn't sign any new contract/agreement.

Do I have a case to have the termination charges revoked?

Im in exactly the same boat. I transferred my phoneline when i moved house and had to pay £125 connection fee, almost as soon as it was connected, and before i have even made a call i transferred to talk talk. I have now been stung with a final bill of £216 for being connected for less than a week and making no calls.

Contacted BT and they say the same - new contract etc and im stuck with it. Did u get any further with resolving your bill or did u just have to pay it?

Ypaymore

c.reid wrote: »

Im in exactly the same boat. I transferred my phoneline when i moved house and had to pay £125 connection fee, almost as soon as it was connected, and before i have even made a call i transferred to talk talk. I have now been stung with a final bill of £216 for being connected for less than a week and making no calls.


Contacted BT and they say the same - new contract etc and im stuck with it. Did u get any further with resolving your bill or did u just have to pay it?

If you wanted Talk Talk why didnt you get them to connect you, instead of agreeing to a 12 month contract with BT and then cancelling it.

http://www.talktalk.co.uk/newlines

ACDeag

macman wrote: »

What's unreasonable about BT expecting you to honour the 12m minimum contract you agreed to? The fee for early termination is the monthly payment x the no. of months left on the contract. Standard terms.

Not quite true the fee is more like £7.50 - £8.00 x no of months left on contract. Depends on calling plan as to the £7.50 or £8
http://www.productsandservices.bt.com/consumerProducts/dynamicmodules/pagecontentfooter/pageContentFooterPopup.jsp?pagecontentfooter_popupid=24641

Heinz

c.reid wrote: »

Im in exactly the same boat. I transferred my phoneline when i moved house and had to pay £125 connection fee, almost as soon as it was connected, and before i have even made a call i transferred to talk talk. I have now been stung with a final bill of £216 for being connected for less than a week and making no calls.

It's ironic that BT introduced the 12 month minimum contract because Talk Talk were encouraging punters to get BT to install the line and then, just as you have done, immediately jump ship (so they could take it over for £2.35 instead of having to pay Openreach £103.40).

In effect, you have paid BT £122.50 to have the line installed, have subsidised Talk Talk to the tune of £101.05 and will also have to pay BT for breaching your contract.

Cat_slave

BT took 4 weeks to sort out my landline at my new address. When it was finally up and running I decided to cancel and signed up with the Post Office. BT then hit me with a £77 cancellation charge. During my original phone call to BT I was told I 'may' have a cancellation charge applied if I cancel before the 12-month contract term. I disputed the charge on the grounds that (1) this term was not clear (it was not clear that I would be entering a 'new' contract with BT as I had been with them for many years), and (2) that BT had breached my contract with them by failing to provide me with a phone line within a reasonable time. After protracted correspondence and phone calls to the director's office, they agreed to 'waive' the fee but they made clear this was simply a goodwill gesture. Hope that helps.

iniltous

BT wanted (as the incumbent and so the provider most likely to be losing customer to other providers) the right before the transfer was made to contact the end user and point out any contractual obligations, and give the end user the option to cancel the switch, the other companys (talk talk, sky, post office etc) objected saying that they had 'won' that customer and BT shouldnt be able to try and talk them out of switching so Ofcom dont allow BT to contact the end user during the switching process
Switching customer are either contacted by or contact the gaining company who say, 'leave it all to us, you dont need to do anything
we will contact bt for you' they dont care if you get stung for early termination penaltys,
Its the end users responsibility to check if there are going to be any penaltys and how much they will be, and if the switch is still worthwhile.
Now BT only have less than 50% of the residentail line rental market, it wont be long before the SP who objected to end users being
contacted by BT, demanding Ofcom let them contacting their customers who are dumping them on the premise that
'we dont want our customers to be hit by penalty charges'.....

Tribulation

lukegregory wrote: »

Today I received a letter from BT stating that they had received notice of an order to move my phone line and that I would need to pay over £50 in termination charges, because "of stopping your BT phone services within the minimum term of the contract".

Sounds familiar, I received a letter from them yesterday saying I will owe them £73 to terminate my contract.

I replied with the following email, am still awaiting a response

I changed my call plan well over a year ago as I wanted to have the lowest call plan available.

I was talked into getting the next one up as there was no extra cost.

I was under the impression it was for a 12 month contract.

At no point do I recall being told it's a 12 month renewable contract and at no point do I recall ever being told it was up for renewal.

I have just had a good look around your site and cannot for the life of me find out when this 12 months starts or finishes from within any option while logged into my account.

I have just checked the last two paper bills and again there's no mention of any 12 month renewable contract.

On my bill dated 13th August 2009 under Line Rental, there is no mention of being under any contract.

On my bill dated 4th May 2009 under Rental Charges, it states "Credit for UK Evening and Weekend calls at no extra cost (12 MONTH CONTRACT)

No mention of the word renewable, that to me looked like I was still under a normal 12 month contract in May, but was no longer under it in August.

I have been in credit for most of the year, so you have been earning interest off of my money.

As my contract is up, I have decided to move to Virgin media for their TV, Phone and BB bundle.

Today I have received a letter from yourselves saying your sorry I'm going and that my estimated final bill will be £73.79 in termination charges. I 100%dispute those charges (for the reasons given above ) and will not be paying them and am prepared to go to court if necessary.

Again, I've just tried to find out when this supposed reoccurring contract renewed/expired and you have made such information impossible for me to find on your site.

I appreciate that this isn't your fault personally and am not meaning to come across rude to you. But I am extremely angry, this looks like underhand tactics by your company and in effect you are placing the consumer in a no win situation. If 'm not informed I'm on a 12 month renewable contract but placed on one, then I'm given no indication when this contract is up, can find no such information when logging into my account on your web site, it is hardly ethical.

Please give it your urgent attention.

many thanks

ps, a copy of this has been taken to place on file so that it can be sent to ofcom etc if it ends up necessary to do so.

regards

Tribulation

Looks like that email did the trick

Less than 24 hrs later I received a call from BT saying they would remove the termination charge, they have confirmed this via email along with a refrence number