BT - Shady Practice

Stompa

I've just logged in to my BT account, and the first thing I see is a banner saying:

Your broadband contract’s ending soon – we’ve got some deals for you
Now’s the time to renew, or upgrade to a package that suits you even better.
along with a Renew now button.

Now, given that I have an 18 month contract which commenced mid September 2019, I reckon it has almost 6 months left to run, which is not what I'd call 'ending soon'. Seems a rather shady practice to me.

Chino

But then there are other posters who claim that their ISPs should be telling them when their contract's minimum term is nearing its end, calendars and diaries apparently not being a thing where they live, so what's an ISP to do?

brewerdave

Stompa said:

I've just logged in to my BT account, and the first thing I see is a banner saying:

Your broadband contract’s ending soon – we’ve got some deals for you
Now’s the time to renew, or upgrade to a package that suits you even better.
along with a Renew now button.

Now, given that I have an 18 month contract which commenced mid September 2019, I reckon it has almost 6 months left to run, which is not what I'd call 'ending soon'. Seems a rather shady practice to me.

Are you absolutely sure you have an 18 month deal ??

Stompa

brewerdave said

Are you absolutely sure you have an 18 month deal ??

Yes. They don't make it easy to find such information on their website, but when you finally do* it says:

Contract terms
Package - 18 months from 16 Sep 2019

Quite why they can't print that information on every bill (as seems to happen with gas and electricity companies) is beyond me.

*MyBT > Track your order > Track order > View order summary

Penguin_

Probably hoping you'll be taken in by the new deal & won't start to think about how long you have left before you can start looking at other suppliers.

Stompa

Chino said:

But then there are other posters who claim that their ISPs should be telling them when their contract's minimum term is nearing its end, calendars and diaries apparently not being a thing where they live, so what's an ISP to do?

Of course we should be told, but 6 months early seems rather premature to me. Particularly as, if I were to choose to 'Renew now', I imagine my existing (cheaper) contract would be immediately cancelled and replaced with a new (more expensive) contract.

Croft12

@Stompa I had the same but I'm not sure its shady. I presume you don't have line rental or phone packages expiring as that seems to trigger the same things.

Anyway I'd look at the offers. They are pushing some very good speed upgrade deals atm. You may be able to get the same price as now for faster...

JJ_Egan

Been on my page for six months or more  .

All offers  in excess of current costs even before price rises  .

giraffe69

Chino said:

But then there are other posters who claim that their ISPs should be telling them when their contract's minimum term is nearing its end, calendars and diaries apparently not being a thing where they live, so what's an ISP to do?

Put the end date on the web page and send a reminder with, say, two months to go not six!

"Are you absolutely sure you have an 18 month deal ??"
I'm on an 18 month deal and they did this to me

Stompa

Croft12 said:

@Stompa I had the same but I'm not sure its shady. I presume you don't have line rental or phone packages expiring as that seems to trigger the same things.

Anyway I'd look at the offers. They are pushing some very good speed upgrade deals atm. You may be able to get the same price as now for faster...

My broadband, line rental & phone packages are all in sync, so it's not that.

The offers don't look that great. An extra £5pm for the same broadband package as I have currently, with no mention of line rental or call packages at all (I imagine you have to add to your basket before finding out about those). I suspect they're unlikely to match my current free anytime calls though.