MSE News: How to beat BT's broadband, home phone and TV price hikes

harz99

As you wish clothtabs, as you wish.

stbutler

The article seems to be misleading, it says:

"BT says customers can cancel penalty free if theycontact it within 30 days of notification of the price rises, which some will have already received. If however, you're getting a MAC so you can switch to another provider, you have 14 days from receiving notification to cancel."

That doesn't match my email from BT. The email says that I have 30 days to contactthem to cancel. Then it says, in a different sentence, that I have to give them 30 days notice (i.e. presumably when I contact them within the first mentioned 30 days) or 14 days if moving provider. So it seems that I don't have to contact them within 14 days to move provider as suggested by the article. Wording in the BT email:

"So, if you want to change something, or even leave because of these price changes, and you're within your minimum contract period, you'll need to call us within 30 days of receiving this email to avoid paying acharge for leaving early. You'll need to give us 30 days' notice to leave (or 14 days if you're switching provider), starting from the date you ask us. We won't charge you the increased price during that time. "


And a question - what if I want to half leave and half switch provider? I think that I'll want to switch my line but cancel the broadband, what notice do I need to give?

I'm thinking of getting a new line installed for the broadband because that will force whoever to give me a new copper wire and hopefully that'll stop my constant dropouts. Might seem drastic, but (a) I'm sick of it when I'm trying to work and (b) my employer will pay as I work from home.

JJ_Egan

MAC method no longer exists .


If you are working from home then you should be on a business contract .

poppasmurf_bewdley

So it started off when I got the infamous email informing me of the changes to BT Sport, and the £5 charge.

Then I received another email from BT letting me know that my line rental was going up £1 per month.

And to round things off nicely, they emailed me again last week announcing that as my 12 month contract was coming to an end, they would be charging me £1.75 per month for Caller Display!

So this morning I phoned them (why do I always pick the time when they announce that they are handling more calls than usual and there is a queue?:mad:) and spoke to a very pleasant lady somewhere in the UK (Thank heavens for that - no Indian call centre this time), and told her I wished to cancel due to all the price increases.

To cut a long story short, my monthly bill for phone and unlimited broadband is now £25 instead of £33 with a new 12 month contract.

Ironic that all BT have managed to do is alienate me as a customer with all their price increases yet have finished up taking £8 less per month from me.

Ok, I don't have BT Sport Heavy (as opposed to Lite), but I could afford to take it now and still be in pocket. But I'm not. I'll wait until the Champions League proper and FA Cup start towards the end of the year and consider it then.

All in all, BT have made a pretty poor impression on me and doubtless millions of other customers, and still managed to take less money from me than they were before.

Maybe a new PR firm should be on the cards for Britain's biggest phone company, to show them how to treat customers.

Swipe

I'd never go back to BT after they tried to steal £100 from my elderly parents. It took me 5 phone calls to get it back and only then when I was able to get through to someone who was prepared to listen instead of reading off a script. I'm sure many elderly folks would have just accepted that they were incorrect and what BT was telling them was correct, which in my mind, makes that totally unacceptable.

macman

I would have thought their PR is actually rather good: you rang to cancel, and instead of sticking to your guns you were then persuaded to take out a further 12m minimum term?

brewerdave

...the problem is that for every one of "us" who negotiate there are still 10s of ISP/Telco customers who will grumble about the increases - but still pay them !!:mad:

poppasmurf_bewdley

macman wrote: »

I would have thought their PR is actually rather good: you rang to cancel, and instead of sticking to your guns you were then persuaded to take out a further 12m minimum term?

I rang with the intention of doing a deal, but I wasn't going to let BT know that, was I?

After the disaster last year, when I left BT for TalkTalk, and was back with BT within six weeks because TT couldn't provide me with an internet connection for longer than about two hours at a time, I knew that I didn't want to leave BT.

I just didn't want to pay their over the top prices. And now I have another 12 months of paying what I consider to be a reasonable price, not a rip off price.

I still think that BT need a decent PR company because their PR recently stinks.

Gordon_Hose

I've just left BT with 6 months to go on my minimum term because of the price increases. Saving a lot more than £8 a month!

poppasmurf_bewdley

Gordon_Hose wrote: »

I've just left BT with 6 months to go on my minimum term because of the price increases. Saving a lot more than £8 a month!

In June last year, I was feeling exactly as you are now. I left BT to go to TalkTalk, thinking of all the money I was saving.

But as I pointed out above, the TT experience was so horrific that I emailed the CEO and after talking with someone in her office, my new contract was rescinded and I was soon back with BT, and I again had a decent broadband service.

When you have bad internet, the price pales into insignificance.

I hope your experience of leaving BT is better than mine.