MSE News: Escape BT contracts & beat price rises

Mark_In_Hampshire

So far as I know BT Vision requires BT Broadband which does not need BT line rental, unless it's the FTTC service called Infinity in which case it does.

mirandab

Thanks for the replies, much appreciated

Having sent a further email to BT stating that there was an increase to the line rental and the broadband I have received this reply :

Thank you for your email dated 05/12/2011.

I am very sorry to hear that you wish to leave BT. Is there anything we can do to retain your custom?

If you would like to cancel the account, please reply to this email and I will arrange for the account to be ceased and the early termination charges for your package to be waived.

Further savings can also be made if you subscribe to BT's Line Rental Save offer. This would be a one off payment of £120.00 by either debit or credit card. Thereafter over the next 12 months you would not see any line rental charges on your account which is currently a saving of £46.80 a year. To be eligible for this offer you must pay your BT account by direct debit and sign up to our paper free billing. All this can be done online at https://www.bt.com.

I must make you aware that you will receive a wholesale cease charge of £30 for termination of the Broadband service.
This is what it costs BT Retail to send an engineer to the exchange to physically stop the customer’s broadband from being provided by BT any longer.

Please note that BT do require 30 days notice for the cancellation of service.

Thank you for contacting BT.

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Can I just check that the £30 termination fee is correct or are they trying it on LOL ?

Thanks again
Miranda

sly_dog_jonah

mirandab wrote: »

Can I just check that the £30 termination fee is correct or are they trying it on LOL ?

Thanks again
Miranda

If you are actually stopping rather than transferring your broadband to another provider then yes BT can charge the £30 fee. If you are moving your broadband to someone else, then you need to request a MAC code from BT, which you then provide to the new provider during sign up. This would then avoid the £30 charge.

mirandab

Fab, thank you for your help once again

Mr_Crunch

Just in case this is of use to anyone else, I terminated my BT Line Contract within the last couple of weeks without early termination charges purely by rejecting the price increase.

Objecting on price increase grounds (outside the 10-day window, although no-one knows when it starts anyway), I finally spoke to the "Customer Options" Team (Customer Retention in any other language); insisted that the price increase was material and unreasonable and I had never explicitly agreed to the bizarre 12 month automatic rolling contract now banned by Ofcom for new contracts; they offered the (usual) basic £10 per month 12 months payable in advance or a reduced monthly rental of £11.60 per month on another 12 month contract.

Finally left them and switched to the Post Office £12.25 per month including evening & weekend calls (and to mobiles at weekend too) which more importantly is cheap rate 6pm onwards as it used to be, and all on monthly contract rather than 12 months.

I eventually discovered, (because despite BT agreeing to waive early termination fees I received letters/emails saying that about 12 quid would be due for early termination) that the BT billing sausage machine will charge whatever it likes, and does not allow for exceptions. So, as soon as the final statement arrives, you have to call BT, complain (!), and demand that the early termination charge is removed before the final direct debit. So make sure that the agreement to leave without early termination is properly logged (I spoke to 3 different people who failed to log it, the 4th one supposedly has done it).

Life is too short to have BT as a supplier.

resident

Spoke to B.T today and they have told me I am out of contract so therefore won't face any charge if I switch provider,phew what a relief!.


They have offered me £3 pcm reduction which I have told them I will think about, not keen though as I will be tied into a 12month contract with them. Was keen on Primus but they are not getting much good reviews on other threads which is scaring me off,am leaning a bit more towards Post Office home phone. Decisions! decisions!.

amk515

resident wrote: »

Spoke to B.T today and they have told me I am out of contract so therefore won't face any charge if I switch provider,phew what a relief!.


They have offered me £3 pcm reduction which I have told them I will think about, not keen though as I will be tied into a 12month contract with them. Was keen on Primus but they are not getting much good reviews on other threads which is scaring me off,am leaning a bit more towards Post Office home phone. Decisions! decisions!.

I'm in the same position as you. I have been out of contract with BT for near 12 months now and would like to switch.

Was thinking of Primus and was very close to signing up as I only need the landline for the internet but after the horror stories I may just pass on them. I am now interested in moving to the Post Office as their deal looks pretty good but I am waiting to hear of other peoples thoughts on them!!

sly_dog_jonah

We're happy with our switch to Post Office HomePhone+Broadband Extra, which came with £75 quidco cashback.

We actually get a better download speed now than we did on the identical line with BT broadband's rubbish HomeHub 2.0 [It's the same BT Wholesale IPStream product, just re-sold by Post Office]. Part of this might be down to the VOIP phone enabled by default on the HomeHub, which I understand reserves some of the bandwidth. Either way we've gone from a typical top speedtest.net result of 4500kbps to around 5200kbps or more.

We did have some teething problems with static interference on the phone line when the modem was sync'd, and the modem losing sync periodically, but this was eventually traced to a line fault which pre-dated the switch from BT to PO. Post Office got an Openreach engineer out within a day once we'd exhausted all other avenues of eliminating the problem, and after much head scratching, testing and re-wiring of our line the OpenReach engineer managed to resolve it. The download speed hasn't changed but the ADSL no longer drops out periodically, and the phone line is nice and clear now.

Post Office allow you to override with 18185, which is cheaper during the day but at other times PO is cheaper (or free) or the same on whole.

resident

Have left B.T now and joined the Post Office, what persuaded me in the end was Post Office Home Phone package comes with free calls to mobiles at weekends, free calls in the evening from 6pm but mainly because unlike B.T they didn't want me to sign up to a 12month contract. If Post Office did decide to follow B.T and put their line rental charge up I would be free to switch. New service stars in January, so glad to be away from B.T.

Gadgetman

Re my earlier posts. Wrote back to BT on receiving my final invoice with cancellation charges, total £187. Phone call from them today confirming they'd agreed no cancellation fees and an amended invoice would be issued for the grand sum of £3.97. Thank you MSE!