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

jennifernil

we are in contract with BT till 1st September, but have paid LRS till late November.

we want to move to SSE, should we tell BT we wish to cancel from the end of our contract? Does this mean we will be disconneted on 1st September?

Or does something else happen?

JJ_Egan

Under the new rules you sign up with your new provider and they handle it all .
If you move your line rental you will lose the balance of the advanced line rental .

clothtabs

Not such a happy bunny then ?

I usually contact a company's published customer services contact about any issue I may have and then only escalate it to a higher level in the management chain if I'm not satisfied.
But with BT I was never satisfied with their customer services so I emailed the most senior executive I could find as soon as I was given the run around and I suspect that lots of customers who want to leave because of price rises are now being given inaccurate information by the front line BT contacts.

jennifernil

JJ_Egan wrote: »

Under the new rules you sign up with your new provider and they handle it all .
If you move your line rental you will lose the balance of the advanced line rental .

Yes I reckoned on that unfortunately. However we will still make va good saving overall.

My concern is what happens between our BT contract ending and the new provider taking over as some people on another thread have said they were charged a lot by BT when the switch took a while.

SSE say a switch of phone is 23 days, so we could be switched the day after our BT contract expires. However, BB takes 30 days, so what happens with that after our BT contract is up?

To complicate matters, we go away on holiday for 4 weeks on 2nd September so will not be here to see if it all works OK.

On the up side, we will not be here needing to use the BB.

Should we consider just cancelling BT BB and calling plan at end of contract? Then starting afresh with SSE on our return? Or is that not possible?

Would we still have the phone line and just pay BT for calls till we get connected with SSE?

JJ_Egan

another thread have said they were charged a lot by BT when the switch took a while

>> that's down to the new ISP
Your contract does not end it moves to a rolling 30 day contract with 30 days notice required .
BB If you cancel and leave it you may well pay extra charges .
Line will work with BT until you cancel the line rental .

No idea why SSE is taking so long to initiate a switch .

jennifernil

JJ_Egan wrote: »

another thread have said they were charged a lot by BT when the switch took a while

>> that's down to the new ISP
Your contract does not end it moves to a rolling 30 day contract with 30 days notice required .
BB If you cancel and leave it you may well pay extra charges .
Line will work with BT until you cancel the line rental .

No idea why SSE is taking so long to initiate a switch .

OK, that is good, I think.....

But do you mean we cannot cancel with BT, that we are stuck with the present set-up till we switch to someone else?

We have the anytime call plan, £7.50 per month, can I not just say I don't want that and then pay the standard rate for any calls made?

Not sure what you mean re the BB, Who might charge extra? We will not be here to need or use BB.

clothtabs

When I switched from BT to Plusnet last year it took 4 weeks to complete. The switch went smoothly and was handled by Plusnet who gave me the switchover dates up front after I'd obtained the MAC code from BT, which took a week. First they switched the Fibre Broadband after 2 weeks then the phone line 2 weeks later. I was already in credit with BT, since they charge a month in advance, and so I cancelled my direct debit with them before the next monthly bill which underlapped the phone switchover by about 4 days.
Of course they tried to charge me in advance the full amount for the next month and tried to argue that the settlement would occur the month after that when I would get my money back. In the meantime they threatedned to charge me for re-instating the direct debit. I wasn't having any of it and sent them my calculations which showed that they owed me about £5. After a few more silly statements they accepted my figures and sent me a cheque. They are very quick to charge in advance for every conceivable thing but very slow to deliver a settlement statement. I just don't trust them.

harz99

clothtabs wrote: »

I just don't trust them.

That is obvious.


That aside, when you post on here can you please split your post into paragraphs or sentences, a large chunk of continuous text is pretty hard to decipher for those reading it, especially on a tablet or smartphone.


Finally, did you only come on MSE to post on this thread, or have you just used a new name for this purpose?

harz99

This the response confirmation I received by email:


Thank you for your email. I’ve placed a cancellation order for your services today for *********. As we’ve agreed there will be no held to term or cessation charges for this cancellation.

Is there anything else I can help with at all or are you happy for me to close the complaint at my end.

If you’d like to contact me you can call me on *********** or send me an email. If I don’t hear back from you, I’ll contact you again on *************.

Many Thanks,
Carrie

BT Consumer | BT, Riverside Tower, Lanyon Place, Belfast, BT1 3BT | Executive Level Complaints Team

clothtabs

I'm sorry that Harz99 is having trouble reading my posts but flattered that he's made the effort to try.

I'm a newbie here and don't aspire to reach over the 1800 posts achieved by my learned friend.
I'm using an ipad too but as you can tell I'm not as adept at using it as Harz99

Anyway, I doubt if I've got enough days left in my life to rack up my posts significantly as there are other things that I want to do before I fall off the perch.