BT Cancellation Period on 'Upgrades' if you are already a BT customer

LC88

Hi all,

Hope someone can help with my query.

My dad has broadband with BT and had been with them for about 8 years on a capped broadband deal. He's recently 'upgraded' due to the saga below and I want to know if he can cancel it.

Last month he received a warning email saying he was likely to go over the 10 GB limit. This was a shock as his average monthly usage to that point was a mere 2GB.

He rang BT who claimed that someone had hacked his broadband and was stealing usage. They basically fobbed my dad off and just sent him a new HomeHub (my dad had an ancient ASDL router) to solve the issue by saying this was more secure and would prevent hacking.

At this point, I told my dad to leave BT, and go with someone else as at this point he wasn't tied into a contract (it was just rolling on each month). I also fired off a complaint to BT CEO (which no one had responded to).

He wasn't keen on leaving BT (my dad is of the age where he believes BT/British Gas are still the gold standard unfortunately) so I advised him to ring BT again to get a better deal as he was paying a ridiculous £17 per month for capped broadband. The lady he spoke to said the best deals were on the internet so it was better to 'upgrade' to a cheaper deal via that. My dad did that on Sunday 1st Sept and effectively took out the Option 1 broadband (capped at 10GB) for £13 a month (12 month contract) and also paid line rental for 12 months up front. He received 1 email confirming he had 'joined' BT. No other paperwork has been received.

Roll forward today - my dad checks BT's usage monitor and apparently has used 1GB of data in 2 days and is predicted to go over the allowance this month. There is just no way my dad could have used 1 GB of data. I think he is encountering BT's inaccurate broadband usage monitor as per the other thread on this board. It's totally infuriating and now I don't believe anyone hacked into his bandwith in the first place. I think BT are just unable to calculate correct usage and because of that he may get over charged. I have no faith in BT sorting it out given the other threads and complaints I have read about this today.

Unfortunately my dad did this upgrade without me present and didnt save the T&C for me to check. .

I'm hoping he might be able to cancel this new contract - does anyone know if this is possible? I have trawled the net and BT's own site to no avail. Surely there is cooling off period of at least 7 days? I'm thinking distance selling rules might apply?