Advice Needed - BT Contract

smeggy82

About six months ago, we started having problems with BT. We were late paying our bill as my brother who I live with lost his job. We received a letter saying if it wasn't paid by a certain date we would be disconnected. We paid five days before this date but they disconnected us anyway. They then tried to charge us for line rental etc for the rest if the contract! I pointed out to them that this had been their error and they cancelled these. My brother is still out of work and we've been looking at ways to cut back on our bills and found out we can get a cheaper service from another company. In total we've been with BT for a year but only six months of this has been in our current contract due to their screw-up. Is there any way we can get out of our contract, considering our original contract would now be finished if not for them?

Buzby

No. You expect them to by bound by their obligations, but not by yours? They would not have disconnected if the money had been showing as paid by the due date. It is an automatic process, so if the funds were there this would not have happened. Your bill will show the day the payment was applied and the service cut off - if this is in your favour, money in before service removed - then you should complain.

Yes, you are committed to the line rental even though the service is cut - this is because it is a minimum term, and needs to be paid for. Once paid, then you are free to do whatever you want. Do remember, other firms if using BT infrastructure are not much of an 'alternative' as the existing wires are used, and BT may have these blocked until any concerns are met.

Mark_In_Hampshire

I think this is a rather grey area - as when we were with BT we paid every bill "late". That's because the due date was never more than 2 days after the bill arrived, and why I put quotes round the word "late".

When we signed up for their services, we did not agree to pay within 48 hours of the arrival of the bills. So I'd argue that there is no basis to determine whether a payment is "late" or not. other than falling back to some notional "within 30 days" term.

In any event however this does not alter the original contracted term, if you want out early, you'll need to pay to the full term.