BT price increase

clive2702

On 9th Feb, Callum from MSE stated -

"Signed up to your current deal with BT or EE between 11 January 2019 and 31 August 2020? Most face a 0.6% rise

Most broadband, home phone and mobile customers who signed up to their current deal between 11 January 2019 and 31 August 2020 will hit by a smaller rise, which has now been confirmed as 0.6%, from 31 March (you'll also see this on your April bill). 

This is due to these terms and conditions allowing for an annual increase pegged to the previous December's CPI as announced in January. It means a £20 a month bill will go up by 12p a month or £1.44 a year"

So, I'm wondering why is my deal going up 4.5% when my deal was taken out on 9 January 2020? BT insist it's going up by 4.5%

JJ_Egan

CPI plus 3.9%  is what should be on all adverts and your signing up email .

No idea where the lesser figure came from as this method of CPi + started August 2019 fror BT .

Neil_Jones

CPI 0.6 was published here:

https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/bulletins/consumerpriceinflation/december2020

(see bullet point 6 in the "Main Points" section)

bristolleedsfan

JJ_Egan said:

CPI plus 3.9%  is what should be on all adverts and your signing up email .

No idea where the lesser figure came from as this method of CPi + started August 2019 fror BT .

BT Annual increase started off as just CPI

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2019/01/isp-bt-to-match-uk-broadband-and-mobile-price-rises-to-cpi-inflation.html

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2020/09/sneaky-uk-broadband-isp-bt-inserts-new-3-9-price-hike-clause.html

clive2702

After going through my old emails, I found one from BT on 6/1/2020 confirming my new 2 year deal. Within this email I found this statement from BT - 
"We're changing the way we increase our prices. From 11 January 2019, if you sign up to a new contract for a landline (including call charges, features and plans), broadband or mobile, the monthly price will increase every year from March 2020. That increase is based on the Consumer Price Index rate of inflation which is published in January of each year."
So BT say it's CPI, not CPI plus a bit more???

JJ_Egan

As above that changed .

Stompa

clive2702 said:

On 9th Feb, Callum from MSE stated -

"Signed up to your current deal with BT or EE between 11 January 2019 and 31 August 2020? Most face a 0.6% rise

Most broadband, home phone and mobile customers who signed up to their current deal between 11 January 2019 and 31 August 2020 will hit by a smaller rise, which has now been confirmed as 0.6%, from 31 March (you'll also see this on your April bill). 

This is due to these terms and conditions allowing for an annual increase pegged to the previous December's CPI as announced in January. It means a £20 a month bill will go up by 12p a month or £1.44 a year"

So, I'm wondering why is my deal going up 4.5% when my deal was taken out on 9 January 2020? BT insist it's going up by 4.5%

Indeed, I signed up in September 2019 and am also being told 4.5%. In reality though, due to the way their discounts work, I'll actually end up paying them 6.3% more than I do at present.

clive2702

SUCCESS - I took on BT and initially they said that they were right and MSE were wrong. They said a letter of deadlock would be be sent to me so that I could escalate it. Yesterday, I had a call from BT. They apologised to me and admitted that BT had made a system error and that my broadband should only increase by CPI in view of the date that I renewed it. They made a generous gesture of goodwill payment so I'm now paying less than I was for the remaining term of my deal. Nice to get the big boys to back down.

bryan.steiner

On 4 March I received the notification from BT that my contract prices for my broadband and call plan, which was taken out in February 2020, would be subject to the annual increase. Broadband was to rise by 0.6% and call plan by 4.5%. I queried this with their billing team and was given the run around. They undertook to respond within 48 hours and did so by telephoning my mobile phone three times within 5 minutes, on each occasion letting it ring once and then cutting off. I then received an email
 informing me that they had attempted to make contact with me no doubt a ploy to show that they had attempting but failed to make contact . Following this I contacted them yet again and getting no considered response escalated this to the CEO Phillip Jansen. This was immediately passed to the Executive Complaints Department who managed to misunderstand the issue presuming I was complaining about the CPI increase rather than the proposed 4.5% increase to my call plan.  I accused them of being in breach of my contract which of course they disputed. Having retained the emails containing their contract T & Cs I had immediate access to copy and paste these into my emails disputing their position. They offered adjudication but I simply responded that this was not required and all that was is to reduce the proposed price increase to my call plan to CPI. The issue continues to be unresolved.