MSE News: BT reveals price rises - but you can escape the hikes

Tharweb

AndyJ52 wrote: »

Oh Lord! I'm currently on holiday in the US and have only just found the BT email, incorrectly appearing in the spam folder, dated Oct 17. I've no idea of exactly what product I'm on with them, it's all detailed and safely held in the file marked BT in the study at home! I'll need to have that info in order to assess how this price hike will impact us & I'm not going to be back in the UK until Nov 3 - so my 10 days to decide what to do about all this will have long expired by then.
Has anyone got any ideas about how one might go about requesting an extension from BT in these circumstances?
Any guidance or suggestions would be much appreciated.
Thanks in advance. AndyJ

If you have an on-line account that you can access to obtain your BT account number, you can use this link to see whether your product is increasing or not. That's a start.

Other price changes are given here.

steven_cardwell

billyflem wrote: »

Has anyone phoned and asked if they can cancel there BT contract (line rental and broadband) even if their broadband is not going up in price?
Will phone them when I get home just thought I would see how others got on.
Would be happy to write off the remaining 8 months of my 12 month line rental to go,as BT are a nightmare.
Problems with BT :
1/ Never got connected on day 1
2/ Broadband speed 5 times slower
3/ Lost direct debit details got charged for paper billing ( after taking the first 4 payments by DD).
4/ Moved from unlimited to BB option 2 and was getting emails saying i'm close to going over my 40gb usage?
5/ Call center useless had to use forum mods to sort out above problems.

I wish I stayed with Sky,never had a single problem with them in 3 years,I wanted BT sport BIG mistake.

I've not that long sent an email to BT, using CEO addresses that i've used before to basically ask about leaving full stop.

I added broadband & Vision+ to my my call package last May and had problem after problem, 1st was how the box was being delivered, india gave me 2 different answers even trying to flog me a you view box (im in a non fibre area so no use to get BT Sport) then a UK CS said engineer comes out with box, as they wouldn't let me have it without a visit.

I managed to get the £35 fee refunded for that, as my speed was fast enough (i already knew that as with O2 Netflix etc worked fine on Xbox), good job as all the guy basically did was plug it in!

Once i found out the vision box wasn't very good and finding that a lot of the sites that i was getting TV shows from were closing or being blocked, we decided to get Sky fitted, of which when i asked to get BT Sport transferred they wanted to charge £3 for HD even though i had already had it on their own box but couldn't supply it to me in HD, so another irate email to the higher level after Customer Services weren't interested.

During this call back for the Sport, i was told they couldn't reduce the £12.50 TV to £5 package without starting a new 12 month contract, something the likes of Sky have no bother with, so long as you pay for a package for the 12 months you can upgrade, downgrade whenever.

Now we have these price increases to line rental and caller display, my line rental saver runs out at the end of the year and with my contract running to May, i have no intention of adding another 6 months to the end date.

Our phone is set up to only ring with numbers that are stored in the handset, so all these "international" "withheld" and numbers we don't know do get a ringing tone, but our phone is silent and the call will then go to the handsets answering machine, so because of this, we now feel that this £1.75 is holding us to ransom for a product that is being used as much more than just knowing who is calling.

Right now, with BT it seems like it is all price increases and clauses, catches, for myself its like "you can reduce your tv price, will cost a 12 month contract", "you can still get free caller display, will cost a 12 month contract"

Will be interesting to see if i get a reply to my email and if i do, what excuses and clauses/catches they come up with, not to let me fully 100% out what i signed up to be my contract/package that includes the line rental & caller display.

billyflem

As far as i'm aware I signed up for a PACKAGE from BT which included phone line and broadband and you can't have broadband without the phone line.
I only signed up in June and have had nothing but one problem after another,never have I seen a more incompetent bunch of chancers.

The strange thing is since I signed up to BT privacy in June my unwanted calls have tripled and the caller display only works about 50% of the time.
Will be fighting for the next 9 days to get away without any penalties apart from the 12 month line rental which I know is non refundable,but losing £100 will be well worth it.

steven_cardwell

billyflem wrote: »

As far as i'm aware I signed up for a PACKAGE from BT which included phone line and broadband and you can't have broadband without the phone line.
I only signed up in June and have had nothing but one problem after another,never have I seen a more incompetent bunch of chancers.

The strange thing is since I signed up to BT privacy in June my unwanted calls have tripled and the caller display only works about 50% of the time.
Will be fighting for the next 9 days to get away without any penalties apart from the 12 month line rental which I know is non refundable,but losing £100 will be well worth it.

Just got an email back to say someone will from the Executive Level Complaints will get back to me by Friday.

What gets me is the lack of any real info in the email, nothing about the package at all, the various links that have been branded on forums, i've never witnessed from BT themselves either thru email or My BT, the lack of any real info is deafening.

Page after page on forums all asking "can i get out the whole package", yet i'm still to see a proper yes or no, and the BT Forum is one of the worse, considering there are BT employees posting on it.

Another thing i noticed, was the BT checker said that ADSL 1 was only 1 meg for me, yet when i had a 2 meg fixed broadband it was running at full pelt, this was when BT 1st arrived with broadband at my exchange, on ADSL2+ i was getting 4 meg with O2, yet when i did go live the BT Router syncs at around 3.8 but on ADSL 1, with an obviously slower upload, which wasn't all that when i was using a private tracker to download, as it required share ratios and the slower upload wasn't helping that.

Think what annoys me the most is that, i put my hand up and said "i know i signed 12 months and BT Vision isn't great but i'm stuck with paying it off every month even though i'm not using it", but it is the lack of any downgrade without a new 12 month contract catch attached that annoys me, yet it would seem that it is ok for BT to start charging for the likes of caller display when you've signed up for that being free as part of your package.

Even though our number isn't in the phone book and not been listed for 12 months we have been on TPS for years, when we bought phones that can be set up to only ring with numbers stored in the handset, even though we had caller display before that, it would be so annoying to hear the phone ringing only to get to it, to see "international", at least now, the phone just doesn't ring full stop, this would obviously not work if caller display wasn't switched on.

With these extra charges, it makes the rest of the package more expensive even if the calls & broadband bit doesn't change and i personally don't think it is fair that BT can just change/increase stuff willy nilly, like caller display & line rental, then say cancel line rental but you owe the rest of broadband & tv contract, when you can't have one without the other and in my opinion it all came as one package, so that should mean cancelling the whole thing without penalty.

MeGrumps

Being narked about the charges for 1571 and Caller Display I thought I'd look into exercising my right to cancel within 10 days. However, I'm on BT Infinity 1 unlimited and am wary of switching my broadband, partly because I've recently taken a free Youview box from them that binds me for 12 mths. So I thought I'd just switch the phone but not the broadband. However, BT told me I can't have my broadband service with another phone service provider. Is that right? So I opted to just cancel 1571 as I don't really need it. Are there any better options before my 10 day cancellation period expires?

emerald123

I too are fed up with bt.

Spoke to OFCOM who's advice was- ask for copy of contract and if separate, one for phone and one for broadband bt are right but if not then we have every right to cancel our broadband too.

Can't believe it's not clearer as we have no choice, we have to take their land line rental to have their broadband.

teddysmum

emerald123 wrote: »

we have to take their land line rental to have their broadband.

That is the case with some other providers.

steven_cardwell

emerald123 wrote: »

I too are fed up with bt.

Spoke to OFCOM who's advice was- ask for copy of contract and if separate, one for phone and one for broadband bt are right but if not then we have every right to cancel our broadband too.

Can't believe it's not clearer as we have no choice, we have to take their land line rental to have their broadband.

Just had a look at my order email from May, and it shows as "broadband & calls" as being the package with the same end date, this is then followed by details that the calls are unlimited and the broadband is unlimited, but the way it is written it clearly doesn't show the 2 as being separate.

If i remember rightly from the website when i was ordering, you can only order broadband if you take a call package, so surely the 2 go hand in hand when cancelling because of the likes of line rental going up.

What gets me, is BT sends out a cryptic email, that for myself anyway, has nothing in it about my account or package, all it mentions is line rental, 1575 & caller display, they then mention 10 days to cancel.

After reading various forums, it is clear that BT Customer Service don't have a clue what is going on with the price rises and cancelling, so i sent an email to a higher level, got a reply saying i will get a reply/call by Friday, so far i've had nothing back, i just think it is so ironic that they give us a 10 day deadline, yet take 3 days just to get back to you with basically 2 simple questions, 1 "is my package rising" and 2 if the calls & broadband isn't rising "can i cancel whole contract due to price rises of caller display & line rental"

emerald123

in that case we should all phone up and ask to cancel citing that it's a joint contract. I should point out OFCOM said a package doesn't always mean one contract.

Ask them to confirm everything by email that way we can prove we did try to cancel within the 10 days.

The chap I spoke to said whilst they can't help with individual cases we should try to all email this morning programme as they do weekly slots with Martin or the bbc watchdog programme to get a bit of attention.

I'll do both.

sergeant_cookie

I rang bt this morning and have been told I have to pay £118 overall to cancel my contract which ends in April. I thought if I cancelled within 10 days I didnt have to pay anything. Am I under the wrong impreasion or are bt lying to me?

Thanks in advance