BT Moving House lock-in

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Hi,

A friend of mine just moved house and told BT about it. She has BT Infinity, and the minimum term was due to end in February 2017.

The problem is that BT extended her contract for another 12 months starting February, so now her minimum term ends in February 2018.

Is there any way to get out of this?

We were supposed to go shopping on uSwitch and friends soon, but now BT locked her in for another year with apparently no recourse. If there's a cooling off period, the 14th day to do anything is Saturday the 17th (i.e. in the next 3 days).

This appears to be a new thing. When I moved home last year I had just one month left on my minimum term and they didn't impose a new 12-month term on me then.

jb66

Seems reasonable for BT to recontract for 12 months considering they absorbed all the installation fees at the new property,

teddysmum

I thought that all providers locked people in if they moved mid-term.


This is in exchange for being billed for moving expenses. Otherwise the customer would have a cease charge at the old premises, a possible gap in provision, then connection charges at the new place, so a tie in gives a good deal.

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It looks like I got very confused along the way. I got a few more details of what's happening:

1. Every provider has a different way of handling house moves, from Sky having zero costs or extensions, to TalkTalk handcuffing you for an extra 18 months.

2. My friend didn't get everything extended for 12 months. She had to extend her line rental term to 12 months. Broadband term end remained the same (or got extended a little bit, I'm not clear, as it ends in March, not February) because it needs to be at least 3 months long only.

3. These terms were not applied to me when I moved house in January this year. I did not have to extend my line rental term to 12 months, I did not have to take a 3 month broadband term. I had just one month left and that's all I moved with.

What this means: Broadband and line rental are now out of sync and typical shopping practices don't apply if BT want a sack of money or won't release the line come broadband shopping season. I will have to find out more from BT to plan the next steps.