BT Broadband Cancellation Complaint

halftermdates

A complaint about BT and their cancellation fees!


I am moving house at the end of February and need to cancel my BT Total Broadband service and BT land line. I am on an 18 month contract with 14 months left to run, so I understand as per their terms and conditions there will be a charge for ending the contract early.

I was advised by BT home moving services, that as I was moving in with my parents, who already have an existing BT landline but no broadband with BT, I would be able to transfer the remainder of my 14 month phone and broadband package to their address and not have to pay a cancellation fee. I would transfer the remainder of my contract to their address and become the account holder. Exactly like I was moving home, except I'm moving home in with my parents.


My parents are not under any contract terms with BT, they simply pay line rental. So all that would happen is my parents would now have BT total broadband supplied via their existing BT landline and I would now pay for the land line and the broadband at their address, where I would be moving to. Simple?

NO!!

BT Customer Services advised me that during the transfer of my package to parents address, a new telephone number would be assigned to my parents address. This is not what they want, they just want to add broadband and BT said I could transfer my contract to the new address and face no fee.

They do not want or require a NEW BT landline number, they have a BT land line number already. For a start my Step dad works from home and cannot spend weeks chasing everyone up telling them of his new number, secondly they don't want to run the risk of being allocated an 'old' number that might have been some 24 hour mini cab firm etc.

So because BT cannot guarantee my parents would be able to keep their existing land line number, my folks are having to sign up for BT broadband as new customers and I cannot transfer my existing 14 month broadband and phone package to their address and must now pay a £196 early cancellation fee.

As I plan on only staying at my parents for a few months installing a second line was not an option either.

Totally incompetent service from BT. The reason given to me was that BT and Openreach are two different organisations and as part of the transfer process of a package to another address a new phone number is always assigned by Openreach. Why can they simply not just assign the BT number that is ALREADY IN USE at my parents address to the new package?

All BT had to do was ensure my parents could keep their old BT landline number. So now BT are going to get more bad press as I now blog all about them. What happened to common sense?

You are welcome to post this blog across the internet as I feel BT.com and BT Openreach need a lesson in customer service and efficiency.

davmail

It's all about money,money,greedy people,I had a short dispute with them over lousy service/customer service,I am leaving them,my broadband lasted only 1 day before it went wrong,I canceled within my 14 day period,but am still being charged a £30:00 'disconnection fee'even though their own terms and conditions say you can cancel with out having to pay a fee.They say they are being kind to me by letting me off my telephone line contract,fair enough,but if it said you can cancel without charge,why are they charging me?

The wall socket broke,the little flap snapped,could not plug the phone in,was there for years,not abuse,just wear and tear,rang up,told I would not be charged,engineer came,said was just an old part,would not be charged,guess what?Got a bill for £220:00 for replacing the part!!!!!!(The part costs 50p in Maplins)Great BT,as I say,it's all about money,sod the customer,rake the revenue in.:(

macman

If you cancelled your broadband without using a MAC to migrate elsewhere, then yes, you will be charged a £30 cease charge, this has been part of BT T&C''s for couple of years now, and all other ISP's too. It's due to the charge levied by BT OR on BT Retail for removing your broadband connection at the exchange.
Use a MAC and no charge is made.

davmail

Ah!Thanks for clearing that up....:T

halftermdates

Still no response from BT over my above initial posting. Greedy and inefficient service.

Mark_In_Hampshire

I'm a bit puzzled.

You have a landline and contract at address 1.

You're moving to address 2. To take that with you, you would need to do one of two things:

1. Have a new landline installed at address 2 and move your contract to that (which would in itself start a new contract anyway) - address 2 has 2 lines;

2. Have your parents completely close their account so the house has no lines, then move your contract to a new line (which will be the present line) at address 2.

Option 1 brings no monetary benefit that I can see and probably comes with a cost to install the new line.

Option 2 works, but your parents would be without a line for a while (anything up to 3 months, at the moment by the look of things) and would then probably get a new number, yes. It's a new customer with a new contract at a new address. A new number is perhaps reasonable.

However when you move out, do you then reverse option 2 and your parents then take out another "new line"...

Lines can't just "change hands" in the way that it sounds like was described to you, so the initial information was flawed.

The best providers, who come top in surveys, generally have month to month contracts - like Zen, AAISP and IDNET, so you don't get stuck with these enormous fees to end lengthy contracts. No use now, but worth bearing in mind for the future.

halftermdates

BT Cancellation Fee £196 - Complaint
UPDATE: Response below from BT received today.

Thank you for your email and recent contact on twitter.

I am very sorry that you have cause to complain about the move of services to your new address. There is only one way in which we can guarantee that your parents number is not affected by this and it is to install an new line installed in your parents home and transfer your current contract and services to the new line. This however would incur a connection charge of £130 Inc VAT. This way your parents line would be left alone and there would be no chance of any issues with the telephone number. As you have been made aware we do not own the numbers on the UK telephone network and thus are not is a position to offer you assurances that if you were to move your services over to their line that we could get the number back

I can appreciate your concerns and understand what you want to do but we can not guarantee that your parents number would remain the same if you were to take over the line. It is possible for us with your parents permission to place a take over order. This would mean that we would move your services to the line that is already there. Your parents would get a final bill and you would be responsible for payment of the account.

We wouldn't be able to guarantee there (spelling) number would be allocated to the line after you take over the service but we could attempt to get this back afterwards but this would run the risk of them losing their number and I can understand that this is not an option for them.

If you would like us to go ahead with either of the above please contact me back and I will be happy to make the arrangements for you and I am sorry for the way you feel about this and I am sorry if you have been give any conflicting information when you spoke to our customer services.

Thanks

Neil O'Shea
Digital Care Advisor


** So sadly I'm forced to pay a £196 cancellation fee because the old number at the property cannot be transferred to me. A second line is not an option for various reasons. **