MSE News: BT now charges for 1571 calls – opt out to avoid £42/year bills

giraffe69

Checked my january bill...

Charged for both 1571 and Caller ID. I was told I would not have to pay these charges last year when if I signed up for a 12 month contract with line rental saver.

Just phoned to complain about this and spoke to Nagesh. He said he couldn't do anything about the 1571 fee except cancel the 1571 service. However, he did refund and cancel the caller ID charge for the duration of my 12 month phone contract.

I got the same message when I rang BUT the refund of the caller ID for the rest of the year had started a new contract minimum term by the time I got the email from BT. Of course, no such thing was mentioned on the phone.
The conversation I had with them started on their webchat. They took my account number but by the time someone who might know what they were talking about called me they had "a blank screen" so wanted the details again. Judging by the reaction of the person at BTs end this lack of joined up thinking gets remarked on quite a bit.

Aquamania

Arrghhh!

Just received my first BT bill for this year and see they have charged me £1.75 per month for BT Privacy & Caller display. - that's almost 6 months worth; since 4th Jan plus 3 months in advance
(I get billed quarterly ... and pay line rental 12 months in advance (December))

So I called them and first thing I got was a recorded message telling me BT charge £1.75 a month for this service with effect from 4th Jan

When I finally get through to billing to query this, the first thing he told me is that BT charge £1.75 per month for this service w.e.f. 4th January.

(Btw, I first got through to sales, but didn't realise that until speaking to the guy for a short while. Got through very quickly and spoke to a man with a Yorkshire Accent. He put me through to billing as he could not resolve the billing error, but I was on hold a heck of a long time before anyone answered there, and then I got someone who I presume was based in India )

But my records show that I pre-registered for FREE BT Privacy and Caller display way back on 30 September 2013, and that BT were going to add this to my account at sometime up to 4th January
I don't think they ever did, but fortunately I took a screen-grab of my confirmed pre-registration.

No arguments from BT, they agreed to re-credit me the associated charges. My account is in credit anyway, so nothing to pay, but they would only re-credit the account with the associated charges they have made, not re-issue a new bill (the credit will be on my next bill)

So a word of warning. Check your bill carefully and if you think you may have pre-registered for this service to be provided FREE (it could have been 6 months ago!) then get them to re-credit the charges at least.

I'll leave the battle of whether or not you should actually pay the charges in the meantime up to those that may be affected. But don't pay for something that should be FREE, no matter how much they try to otherwise convince you it costs £1.75 from 4th January.

I'm not sure they have any evidence of whether or not I pre-registered, but you can get this for FREE even today (you just need to agree to remain a customer for another 12 months)

OnAndUp

Lindalou wrote: »

I paid for my BT line rental for 12 months in advance at the beginning of December, but I notice on my monthly bill this time I have still been charged for caller ID, even though it is free with 12 month contracts. I went online and chatted to a customer support employee, who confirmed that it should be free. He ordered a new contract for caller ID and is going to refund what I have already paid on my next bill.
The purpose of this post is just to advise BT customers who have paid the 12 month rental in advance to check your bill !! If it has happened to me, how many countless others will be paying this charge without realising. £1.75 does not make a noticeable difference to your bill to make it stand out as an error. But BT must be raking in thousands of £1.75's per month! Please check!

As above same thing happened to me I reckon loads of others must now be in the same boat - so Check Your Bills!?!?

We are stuck with them for another 17 months now as had a really good deal on Broadband but the Customer Service seem to be crap!?! Thinking of buying new cordless phones with an Answerphone too now as we are also going to be paying £1.75 a month for 1571 too all that time may as well put it towards new phone!