BT late payment fee

thecoffeehouse204

I work for a small firm that moved premises a few months ago. We set up a redirection on our phone with BT and have been being billed for this monthly. As it was only set up for 3 months we didn't see the point in setting up a DD so have been paying by cheque.
The bills we've been receiving are normally dated the 1st of every month with a red reminder about a week later (normally crossing in the post with the cheque). For various reasons we've missed paying June's bill and didn't receive a red reminder. It's only come to light as being outstanding when running our month end cheque run last week so the cheque is now on it's way. So today July's bill arrives and it's larger than normal, I take a look at the itemised bit to discover they have charged us a £13.50 late payment fee for last months bill! :mad:

To put it in perspective the cost of the redirection is £11.33 plus £3 for not paying by DD so the normal monthly cost is around the £16 mark. I just find it ridiculous that they feel they can charge nearly the same amount for 'late payment' surely there should be some rules on how much this fee can be in proportion to the outstanding debt.

Does anyone know if there is any legislation on late payment fees or are they just free to charge whatever the hell they want? And how likely are they to cancel this charge if we give them a ring and plead first offence? It just really made my blood boil that they feel they can charge £13.50 for a £16 debt less than 30 days after being billed for it.

Any advice would be much appreciated.

Mark_In_Hampshire

For a start the reminder not arriving is irrelevant. There is no requirement on a company to send a reminder before imposing a late payment charge.

However I find it hard to see how the cost (to the supplier) of late payment can be more than the cost of supplying the service itself (your point)

A party cannot gain a material advantage from a breach of the contract by the other party.

Therefore, I'd suggest that a charge of £13.50 is likely to be unlawful and therefore not recoverable.

There has, however, yet to be, as far as I am aware, a serious challenge to this in respect of utilities (credit card companies were told that a charge of more than £12 was likely to be unlawful, though that does not mean that a charge of £12 is likely to be lawful)

It used to be the case that BT bills were either deliberately back-dated or left sitting around for a week or so before being posted to the customer, hence they arrive on "day 1" and are due for payment on "day 2" or "day 3" which is almost logistically impossible.

The question is, "what is a late payment?" - if the due date on the bill is barely achievable, this is a form of trap. It is designed to patronise and bully the customer into believing that it's impossible for them to pay their bill in a timely manner without handing over control of their bank account to the payee in the form of a direct debit mandate, which IMO is never a sensible thing to do.

If you did not pay anything at all in June however and it's now July, a late payment charge is reasonable. The question is about the amount not the imposition.

Buzby

BT has successfully had the late fees upheld in court, so it hs deemed 'fair', the charge being based as a discouragement. As you are a business user, you do not benefit from Consumer legislation, but even then - you;d still be expected to pay, providing the charges are not hidden. And they've never been accused of this.

Marteebies

Hi there,

I had this problem too.
Didn't receive any reminder emails but only the letter but it was already too late then.

After reading few forums about it, I went to their customer service chat, talked about some legal stuff, the fact that it is unlawful, etc...
Ask the person I was talking too to take my complaint, got a number for that.

Then call later to talk to someone which took my complaint number, read through the chat history, and without having to argue, got the 2 late payment fees taken off, easy!!!
:j

Good luck for all of you who have some problem with that

seanos_2

bt are useless