BT automatically renewing 12 month contract

wardie2437

I have just been told by BT my termination charge will be £94. I'm switching to Plusnet for line rental on 28th May.
I do not mind paying the bill for the usage i've had, so if I dont pay the £94 (ie just pay the final bill minus the £94) Can BT still "cut me off" even though by that time I'll be with plusnet.
I will contest this in court if need be.

Mark_In_Hampshire

As far as I know: no, they can't, as long as the transfer has indeed completed by then.

saurya_s

Rikki wrote: »

I have always had a BT phone before the days when you signed up for a 12 month contract.
Now they have changed the basic package to Unlimited Evening & Weekend calls do I automatically have a 12 month contract?

Hi all,
I am in a weird shape. They phoned and my wife answered the call and fell for the seemingly free Unlimited Evening & Weekend call with 12 months contract. I am not even sure how they can ask her if she is not paying for the bill. I got a letter from them but I opened after a month thinking of usual bill or offer. Once I opened I realized that this could be cancelled only within 7 days. My BT line rental contract expires in 3 months, so how can I have this for 12 months unless I have BT line rental for another year. So it seems,they are extending the contracts by cleverly staggering them.

I am not sure if it right to ask someone who doesn't pay the bill?
Many thanks for your help.
S

ken_rayner

wardie2437 wrote: »

I have just been told by BT my termination charge will be £94. I'm switching to Plusnet for line rental on 28th May.
I do not mind paying the bill for the usage i've had, so if I dont pay the £94 (ie just pay the final bill minus the £94) Can BT still "cut me off" even though by that time I'll be with plusnet.
I will contest this in court if need be.

Oh... is that PlusNet, the wholly owned subsidiary of... BT? Seems to me they'll win both ways...

Essexdelboy

I phoned BT's call centre today and was informed that my Unlimited Evening & Weekend contract was automatically renewed on the 13 April 2011. Maybe it was my naivety, however I thought they may send me a letter or even an alert via ‘My BT’ online as to keep me up to date with proceedings.

I was kindly reminded (patronised) on the phone that I should have remembered the end date of the contract was approaching! Unbeknown to BT we have been planning our wedding and got married on the 9th April 2011 and was away on our honeymoon, unsurprisingly remembering to contact BT was not top of our to do list.

I initially phoned to discuss what BT could do price wise with broadband internet and our phoneline but am so disgusted with there rise in line rental, call charges and sneaky tactics that I now want to leave BT and was informed it would cost me £35 to get out of the automatically renewed contract!

Fuming!

iniltous

Essexdelboy wrote: »

I phoned BT's call centre today and was informed that my Unlimited Evening & Weekend contract was automatically renewed on the 13 April 2011. Maybe it was my naivety, however I thought they may send me a letter or even an alert via ‘My BT’ online as to keep me up to date with proceedings.

I was kindly reminded (patronised) on the phone that I should have remembered the end date of the contract was approaching! Unbeknown to BT we have been planning our wedding and got married on the 9th April 2011 and was away on our honeymoon, unsurprisingly remembering to contact BT was not top of our to do list.

I initially phoned to discuss what BT could do price wise with broadband internet and our phoneline but am so disgusted with there rise in line rental, call charges and sneaky tactics that I now want to leave BT and was informed it would cost me £35 to get out of the automatically renewed contract!

Fuming!

If you decide to stay with BT you could go for the line saver rental ( £10/month if you pay £120 in advance) and 'upgrade' to the anytime calls free for 3 months for £4.70/month, this isnt bad if you make some calls during the day as well as evening and weekends,if you just want out you may have to battle to get them to waive the cancellation fee

StuieUK34

on auto renewal (which !!!!es everyone off), if you move to another Carrier (say talktalk/sky/primus), then unfortunatly you have to pay off the remainder of your contract, even if its 10 months!
However, the cost will be £3 per month, so 10 months = £30
How do i know this ? Rang BT myself and said i am moving to Primus for £7.99 per month inc free calls (evening/wkend).
Said i wasnt happy with there crappy auto renewal and begrudge paying anything, followed by "but i know i dont have to pay you the full line rental cost per month for outstanding months as per a regulation by OfCom"....
Got our final bill which was correct, moved to Primus, then remembered after 2 months to remove 'CallerID' !

wild666

Adsime wrote: »

I too have been a victim of the BT automatically renewing contract scam. Husband received telephone call on Monday from BT informing him he could automatically receive free evening calls for free as they wanted to give the same to us as they do new customers. I heard my husband ask this doesn't mean we are tied to a new 12 month contract does it. (I made sure he checked) Was told No and that if we weren't happy we could cancel anyway so not to worry.

The next day I rang BT to check this. I was then told my contract had been renewed over the phone after Mondays call for another 12 months and that we could not get out of it unddr any circumstances! I stated we were implicity told by the BT caller originally we would not be subject to a new 12 month contract and was told if I required to cancel had to do so by the end of the day and would be disconnected within 24 hours. I argued so you are blackmailing us and renewing our contract without our knowledge of this, and lying to us that it wasn't being renewed. I pointed out Ofcom and Which have slammed these practices on 3rd March 2011.

My husband again rang up to cancel the free evening calls and to not renew the contract. He was told we couldn't cancel, despite being told earlier we could if we rang before the end of the day! Was also informed the calls would NOT be free at all as per the original advisor, they would be an extra £3.00!!! My husband stated there is always a cooling off period when buying anything over the phone. We were told there was no Complaints Department and it was not possible for us to speak to a Supervisor. My husband stated he would not accept this at all and refused to get off the line until BT resolved this. Eventually a Team Leader confirmed that the evening calls would not be added and that our contract would not be a renewable one and would just be every 30 days, so we were definately out of contract, whatever that means? They confirmed the line was still active though.

Nowhere online can you find your end of contract date and how many other people are being lied to over the phone, assuming they are getting an additional benefit for free with no changes to contract, as they are told, and then being virtually blackmailed to stay with BT for the next 12 months? None of these customers are being informed their 12 month contract is about to expire and no notification is ever supplied by phone or in writing as per Ofcom guidelines. I used to think BT was reputable, my husband even said BT wouldn't do that would they, when I told him of my concerns initially!!!

We are now switching but I don't think for one minute that they won't try something else ie adding cancellation charges when they have said we don't have to pay them as we opted out of the renewable.

Sorry for long post. Hope others aren't conned by this also.

Write to head office you can get the address from http://wck2.companieshouse.gov.uk/6572555fa70717dd886692d795a1528c/wcframe?name=accessCompanyInfo

give them 30 days to cancel the contract or you will start county court action without further notice to them, if the account is in your husbands name he will have to be the one to do it, if it is in your name then your husband cannot add anything to your account without your permission so just tell BT that you didn't agree to it being added to your account and if they don't remove it you will take county court action and claim all out of pocket expenses

StuieUK34

wont work....
was a big hoohar about it, and was on telly too on Watchdog a long time ago, called dirty tactics, but its auto renewal unless you call to cancel