MSE News: BT accused of breaking rules on contract tie-ins

nzseries1

Das wrote: »

Just received a call from the exec team already! Only emailed my complaint about 10 minutes ago.

What did it say? Tell us how it goes :T

evenasus

acc2007 wrote: »

The only renewable contracts are on the Unlimited evening and weekend calling plan.

Their website only has the Unlimited Weekend Calling Plan & the Unlimited Anytime calling plan.

emeraldbugle

emeraldbugle wrote: »

My contract auto-renewed last week. I never received any mail in January informing me of this. I have phoned and after a few arguments, they have put me on the same plan with no tie in, it costs £2.99 more. I am ready to go to O2 now.

If I hadn't managed to sort, would I have been able to cancel under their 7 day cooling off period on an auto renew contract?

:mad::mad::mad::mad: They've only gone and billed me £88+vat cancellation charges. I am fuming.

reihtec

Anyone know if there's anything in the contract that would allow us to cancel this contract without incurring the fee? Maybe citing the recent price increases?

lokiman

Das wrote: »

Good to see this is in the news! These renewable contracts are disgraceful! I received no letter or phone call and assumed I was on a rolling contract after the 12 months expired, like most other contracts!

I'm pretty angry at the moment, they want me to pay £73 for cancelling early but I've cancelled my direct debit and am fighting this one!

This has just happened to me, and I'm so disgusted at BT that I've cancelled my broadband package, telephone package and line rental. I was looking at the offers made by other service providers (mainly Sky), and just made an inquiry with BT customer services to make sure that, if I wanted to change my broadband and/or phone providers, there wouldn't be a problem. OK, well it turned out that my broadband package expires in June, so no problem there. Then the customer service agent said that my phone package didn't expire until 11th March, 2011. This was odd to me, because I knew that I had originally signed up for a 12 month term and certainly had no recollection of notifying them in March of this year that I wanted to renew for a further 12 months: "Oh, yes, sir, we sent you a letter in February, telling you that, unless you notified us with 14 days to the contrary, we would be automatically renewing your phone package for a further 12 months. It will cost you £76 if you cancel early". I had received no letter from them, or even an email.

Frankly, this is a very shoddy, disgusting (and probably unlawful) practice, and whereas I was originally only considering changing my service provider, this one phone call, and what I discovered about BT's business practices made my mind up for me. I already have a Sky TV package, so I immediately phoned Sky and set up an unlimited broadband and talk package with them. I also moved my line rental.

I'm certain that my original contract with BT did not contain an autorenewal provision, and I'd doubt that a unilateral contract can be created by mere acquiescence (let alone acquiescence to a letter that I never even received).

I will never again deal with BT.

marlon-dingle

Hi,
I had a years contract with BT on their Unlimited Evening and Weekend Plan which was due to reach its first year anniversary on 18th Jan 2010.
I had noticed on this website better offers so thought I would change supplier.
BT sent me a letter saying that unless I rang a number in the letter the contract would automatically renew.
I rang the number and told them I wanted to cancel and move my business elsewhere.
Moved supplier and thought nothing else about it.
Today I get a letter saying I owe BT £68.23 cancellation charges due to not terminating my contract.
Rang them up and told them I had but they insisted they had no record of my call so I still have to pay.
I know I did cancel before 18th Jan so I refused to pay.
We are now in dispute.
Has this happened to anyone else?
Thanks!!

lokiman

Well, further to my earlier post, I phoned the BT complaints line and registered my complaint, without telling them that I had already decided that I was going to switch my services, and received a voicemail message a couple of days later informing me that they'd taken me off a fixed contract. I could no longer have the free weekend and evening plan (it seems that a rolling contract is now mandatory if you're on that plan), but that didn't matter to me anyway, since I'm switching to Sky. I owe them about £20 for line rental until the end of May and the remainder of my broadband, but that's it. Do BT not realise just how much customer goodwill they're losing over this? They made my mind up for me the moment they informed me that I'd been put on a rolling contract without my knowledge or consent.

TwoAyEm

I just found out this morning that we've been raped over a barrel on this too. Moved into our new house last December, took out a 12 month contract. Fair enough. They can only provide a 0.5meg connection for our broadband supplier in our street and, being the good little people we are we stuck with it as we had a contract in place. I rang them this morning to see when we could cancel the lot (presuming it would be some time in December this year) and move over to Virgin Media (not much better, I know, but will provide guaranteed(ish) 10meg connection).

It turns out the 'Unlimited Evening and Weekend call plan' renewed itself on the 13th! I now have another 12 months stuck with these c**ts. If I want to cancel now and sever all ties with them it'll cost me over 130 quid! It's only a little over £150 to keep the bloody thing in service for the next 12 months!

Meanwhile our broadband provider (who I've been with for 13 years!) have said to end our £30ppm ADSL contract now (which will actually be up in December) will be nearly £210. Admittedly, they said we could regrade to the £10 a month package, with a new 12 month contract, and that would only cost us £140 quid. I haven't spoken properly to them yet, so not so annoyed with them, as we were aware of the contract when we went into it.

So now we're getting Virgin installed in a week, so for only an extra £10 (assuming we downgrade the ADSL) we get 100 TV channels, lots in shiny HiDef, and a proper 10meg connection (no phone line yet, but come next may...). It seems we'll also have a backup ADSL line in case it goes horribly wrong in the first 12 months.

If BT had let us cancel in December I really wouldn't have minded. I've never really had a problem with BT before, but this has shown me what scum sucking b**tards they really are. I feel bad because the call centre staff were nice as pie, even though they were completely ineffectual, although the last lady I spoke to said she could stop the contract renewing again next year, even though she thought at first it was too soon to put an end to a contract.

I'll be calling back tomorrow with the reference number she gave me, probably recording the call too, to confirm the ref she gave me is actually a pre-emptive cancellation.

Once this contract runs out in 12 months I can say with my hand on my heart I will NEVER use or recommend a BT service or product again.

Absolute w*nkers.

TwoAyEm

lokiman wrote: »

Well, further to my earlier post, I phoned the BT complaints line and registered my complaint, without telling them that I had already decided that I was going to switch my services, and received a voicemail message a couple of days later informing me that they'd taken me off a fixed contract. I could no longer have the free weekend and evening plan (it seems that a rolling contract is now mandatory if you're on that plan), but that didn't matter to me anyway, since I'm switching to Sky. I owe them about £20 for line rental until the end of May and the remainder of my broadband, but that's it. Do BT not realise just how much customer goodwill they're losing over this? They made my mind up for me the moment they informed me that I'd been put on a rolling contract without my knowledge or consent.

Have you got the number still? It'll at least get me off 6 months extra line rental.

reihtec

Well after using my Voip line for the last month or 2 and getting everyone in the house using their free minutes, I actually built up a credit of about 27 quid. So I called BT to find out when my contract ended and lo & behold it actually ends in August. So I found out how much it'd cost to cancel and I was told just over 30 something quid. Working it out, I thought I'd rather pay the few extra pounds than continue to pay the subs and boy am I glad I did. Turns out that I was actually given back a credit for some prepayment and so today I finally got a REFUND of £41. I actually got more money back than I was going to pay them or had in credit. And bonus that I don't have to shell out £12 per month for the next 3 - 4 months. I am a happy bunny!!