BT Excess Charges Scam!

omissimo

Hi all,

I've just received a rather excessive bill from BT for £117 which includes £80 worth of excess internet usage charges.

In their marketing materials BT say that they will inform you when you approach your usage limit and when you go over it, however I didn't receive any warning emails.

I called their customer service department to find out what happened. After being baffled by a myriad of automated options I eventually go through to someone but I couldn't understand a word the guy was saying (obviously a non UK based call centre) he said if I upgraded they might be able to do something about the charges. I said ok and was swiftly transferred to a UK based call centre where the chap was more than happy to upgrade me to option 2 (and try to sell me TV on top) when I asked about the charges he said he needed to but me back through to customer services. Surprise surprise this was a non UK call centre where the chap could barely speak or understand a word of english, I eventually got so frustrated I had to hang up.

It seems as though BT's policy is to avoid dealing with customer service by frustrating the customer to the point of giving up through the use of automated phones and staff that cannot understand or speak the language. However when they want your money they make sure you get through to someone who speaks english as quickly as possible. Frankly it's disgusting! :mad:

If anyone has any ideas on dealing with BT (legitimately!) I'd like to hear them.

invalid_username_2

Something simialr happened to us so we are now thinking of leaving bt for good and joing sky or talk talk.

Buzby

Your scenario is not uncommon, and shows a complete and utter contempt BT have for their customer base. I would suggest you don;t upgrade OR change your package until the issue is resolved to your satisfaction. BT are supposed to provide at least 2 warnings, if you as the bill payer recieved nothing - then you've nothing to worry about - you dispute the bill until they rebate it and apologise for not following the agreed disputes proceedure. Whacking on an amount to your bill, as coercion to make you upgrade is a scandal.

tripled

A few days before my broadband contract was up I moved from BT to another provider, however they had already issued my next quarterly bill and charged me in advance for the next three months broadband. I gave it a few days before calling them to allow their systems to update (in which time they had taken the DD payment) and asked them to recalculate my bill and refund the money (around £100). Apparently this wasn't possible despite the fact the transfer had gone through two days before my contract finished, eventually after a heated discussion with their Indian call centre I gave up and contacted my bank to reverse the DD. Without warning my phone line was disconnected and over the following week I had a series of angry letters including from debt collecters.

A letter of complaint later and I had a call from a UK call centre apologising and agreeing to write off the disconnection fee and the few quid I owed them for line rental. Since then I've had a phone line put in by the Post Office who are significantly cheaper (£25/month unlimited broadband including phone line and weekend calls) and all the call centres I've spoken to so far are UK based. I did quite a bit of digging around and it was by far the cheapest deal I could get in my area, as the exchange isn't unbundled so ultimately everything comes through BT Wholesale.

Bogof_Babe

You could register on BT's forums and ask on there for assistance. I've done this and they are very helpful - I got my problem sorted out and a refund on my account quite swiftly.

http://community.bt.com/

BT_company_representative

Hi omissimo

I have just seen your post and would like to look into this for you, if you would like me to look into this for you just check out my profile section were you will find my contact details.

Regards David

dshart

This is typical of the very poor customer service provided by BT. To get more business or to upgrade you they route you to a UK call centre where they cannot do enough to get more business from you, but when you have a problem with them you can only get the Indian call centre and get the runaround till you eventually give up.

I had a problem with my BT service a couple of years ago where my broadband connection kept dropping, I called their customer services and was given the run around for several weeks with them saying they could see no problem with the line and asking me the same list of questions each time I called. Eventually after a lot of arguing I persuaded them to send out an engineer to check the line, despite their threats that if the problem was found to be with my equipment that I would be charged (this is a tactic of theirs used to discourage you requesting and engineer callout).

Anyway the engineer turns up and finds out there are several problems on my line and in the local exchange and that I am on the wrong RAS profile and should be able to get much higher broadband speeds. He sorts it out and my broadband worked much better and faster.

Now two years later I am having disconnect problems on the line again and I have put off calling them because I know the hassle I will go through to get anything done. I eventually gave in and called them and requested that they check the line and tell me how many disconnects I had experienced over the previous 3 weeks. I am told that he will call me back in 15 minutes. 15 minutes later he calls back and tells me that there is nothing wrong with my line and it must be a problem with my equipment. I ask what about the disconnect data and he says he cannot check this data. I inform him that I know BT can check this data because I have previously had an engineer at my house call up and immediately obtain this data, but he still says he cannot get it and there is nothing further he can do. I eventually get to speak to a manager and I get no joy from her either.

Her suggestion was that I connect my router to the master socket and monitor the connection myself for 24 hours. I ask how am I expected to do this when the computer is far away from the master socket and there is no way I could be expected to sit watching a light on a router for 24 hours. She tells me that unless this test is done that she cannot take my fault forward. I then tell her that I have carried out this test and still had a disconnect while we were on the phone but she doesnt believe me and will still not take things forward. Eventually I persuade her to pass it onto the engineer and get told I will get a call back within 24 hours, which 4 days later I am still waiting for.

I have had a call from the Indian call centre asking if my line is okay, to which I reply "what work have they done to rectify a fault" and they tell me none, but are just checking if the fault is still there. I tell them that if they have not done anything why would they expect the fault to have disappeared? (I was caught out by this previously when I received a call after reporting the fault, where they asked was my internet currently working and when I answered yes that I was currently able to connect they closed out the issue and I had to go through the whole process again to raise an intermittent connection fault).

BT's customer support is useless and it is just meant to frustrate you so you do not report faults. Their Indian call centres just work from a scripted sheet and they have no technical expertise and will do anything to avoid transferring the issue to the technical department.

If you ever do manage to get an engineer to come out I have found them to be very helpful and they can usually trace problems quite quick and give you good advice. Most of them are also quite critical of the call centre support who in the end give them very little indication of the problems you have been experiencing.

brit1234

I have just discovered a similar thing with THREE. They gave me a 15 GB limit for just under £20, however this is very deceptive.

What they don't tell you is there is a 15.2 GB limit. £20 for the 1st 15 GB and another £20+ for the 0.2 GB which you don't know about. So when infact you thought you were paying about £20 when you run out you are actually paying £48 with other costs. The only way to find this out is to check your monthly bill in your bank account and then go to the three website.

It is a complete rip off.