BT Essentials

sueread1969

Anyone come across this, a friend  applied to switch to BT essentials as she qualified for it. She also advised of her health vulnerabilities, which led to her not being able to access the payment systems of BT,  but was told that due to arrears on the account that she could not switch to this tariff until the arrears were cleared? So had to pay ongoing monthly costs plus arrears thus making the issue worse and basically not accessible for her.

Neil_Jones

sueread1969 said:

Anyone come across this, a friend  applied to switch to BT essentials as she qualified for it. She also advised of her health vulnerabilities, which led to her not being able to access the payment systems of BT,  but was told that due to arrears on the account that she could not switch to this tariff until the arrears were cleared? So had to pay ongoing monthly costs plus arrears thus making the issue worse and basically not accessible for her.

What does that mean, "not being able to access the payment systems of BT"?

sueread1969

sorry, as she did not set up a DDR, she was expected to call each month and make a payment, she was unable to do this online. she did not really understand that she had to do this

Neil_Jones

Sorry, what's a DDR?

Do you mean Direct Debit?

Should be able to set up direct debit on the phone I would have thought.

Ultimately if the payments were not made for whatever reason then they will have to be cleared before you can go to the tariff you want.  That's not unreasonable.  If you use the service/phone line and don't pay for it, it gets cut off, same as most things.