BT charging an extra 14.4% per month INCLUDING on what's already been paid (line rental saver)

iniltous

This has been discussed many times on many forums , BT shouldn’t call the discount LRS , but do , it’s a historic reference to when if you paid for a year upfront, you got a months rental free, ( pay for 11 get 12 ) these days , you pay around £220 upfront and get 19.99 knocked off the monthly bill , so the quid pro quo for your willingness to lend BT  £220 upfront, is that you get a discount worth £240 ( £20*12)  so LRS is ‘worth’ £20., it’s not paying for 12 months rental anymore, it’s simply £20 credit.

BT put their prices up , but your discount is still £20 , that’s what BT will claim the terms of the LRS state .

Its no wonder that people are confused, but ‘line rental’ is not a separate item on a broadband bill , if someone pays ( for example ) £30 a month for broadband , the bill doesn’t break that down into  £20 line rental and £10 broadband, it’s simply £30 for the broadband service, someone on LRS , pays £220 upfront, and the monthly bill shows £30 minus a £19.99 discount for using LRS, so the charge is £10.01 and taken via the direct debit ,
it’s understandable that someone may think the yearly increase should only apply to the £10.01, after the LRS discount is taken off the bill , but if the £30 is increased by inflation plus ** %  to £34.50 , and then £19.99 deducted , then the DD is for 14.51 up from £10.01 so it looks like 40 odd % increase , and not around 15% ,
The bill payer may have expected just the  £10.01 to increase after the LRS by inflation plus **% to around £11.50 ish , BT obviously think the entire £30 is to increase by 15%.

I’m not defending BT on this , I’m suggesting the way they interpret LRS , however a poster somewhere on here or another forum recon they successfully challenged this

bristolleedsfan

Vegastare said:

It then gave the option to agree new contact at same price as today for 24mths.
I phoned BT to ask if this was correct and whether the 24mth would see April CPI increase, and did I have to purchase Digital Voice.(this was mentioned in package)  She came back several minutes later and said I would have a new 24mth contract at the price quoted and it would not have the 14% increase in March.  I went through everything again in detail and agreed and received confirmation.

My reason for piggy backing this thread is because quite honestly I am concerned that this will not be the case.
I noted her name and location and have both the start conversation time and end (via pin email and confirmation email) I will wait and see what April's bill brings. 

I took out a new 24 month contract with BT on 17 March. did not get  charged 2022 price increase.

What_time_is_it

Thanks @iniltous. I do understand this. However, BT clearly DID choose to call it a "line rental saver" and DID email me and tell me that I had paid for my line in advance. 

It is my opinion that they have deliberately misled me and other customers. 

Stuart_W

iniltous said:

Its no wonder that people are confused, but ‘line rental’ is not a separate item on a broadband bill , if someone pays ( for example ) £30 a month for broadband , the bill doesn’t break that down into  £20 line rental and £10 broadband, it’s simply £30 for the broadband service, someone on LRS , pays £220 upfront, and the monthly bill shows £30 minus a £19.99 discount for using LRS, so the charge is £10.01 and taken via the direct debit ,

That's just the way BT have chosen to do it. My (Phone Co-op)  bill is still broken down in the same way it has been since 2012 - an annual fee for line rental and a monthly charge for broadband. I obviously am the exception here as I am on an old style tariff no longer available, but rather than just stop Line Rental Saver like most suppliers did when Ofcom mandated line rental inclusive pricing for broadband, BT chose to keep Line Rental Saver in some form, still with the same name, but totally change how the product works, which is definitely misleading. I imagine my tariff will finally bite the dust with the PSTN demise but for now it is still going strong.  

What_time_is_it

@mse_chris - Did you have any luck with speaking to BT about this?

johnbhoy70

I've usually got 'reasonable' deals with BT in the past when renewing and must have been with them for over 10 years now. However, between the middle of November (my contract was up at the end of Nov) and January this year i found them really tough to deal with when trying to get a price i was happy with. Maybe it was just me but i think they were playing more hardball this year.

Took a new contract with them in January knowing that price was going to go up approx 15% too.  I just assumed that most of the big boys would be doing similar and have a figure close to that. 

Would also be interested to see  if anyone has had any success with these rises and are the major competition doing the same on the whole.