Misled by BT, could I ask your advice?

yum86

My friend was misled by BT customer service and would like to ask your advice.

He was going to move out his previous flat and move to a new place. He was told by landlord of previous flat that he had to stop telephone service by 30th November. At that time he had not signed the tenancy agreement of new flat yet so he was going to stay in another place temporaly.

He wanted to keep BT phone number so contacted them middle of November and asked if they could still treat his case as "moving home" although he was not moving into new place directly.

Their answer was NO, and he was told that he needed to cancel the line and pay the cancellation charge. He says he was told the charge was £17 so decided to cancel it and arranged the cancellation in advance on 20 November and to send the final bill to his tempolary address.

It didn't arrive so he contacted me to find out what happened. English is not our native language, we are Japanese, and he can't speak English very well so he worried that he did something wrong.

Then I phoned BT on 30th November and asked what was going on. The male operator told me the service had not been cancelled yet so I arranged the cancelletaion again but before that I rechecked about the cancellation charge. The operator said it was £17 but because I sometime mishear, to make sure I asked if it was 1+7 or 7+0, and he said 1+7. It was the amount what I was told by my friend so I agreed with the cancellation. Then I arranged to send the final bill to my friend's temporaly address.

I had to contact them again on 10th December because the bill didn't arrive. The operator said he couldn't find the adress I told last time on their data base so I told the address again. Then once again I asked him if the cancellation charge was £17, 1+7 and he said he thought so. Then I phoned them again because still the bill didn't arrive. I was again told cancellation charge was £17.

It was only yesterday I found out that they charged my friend £70 for cancellation. We have been misled by BT for more than one month and told wrong amount for 4 times.

I now know T&C says the charge is £70 and my friend will pay if he needs to pay that amount but he also says he would not have cancelled it and seeked the other way like asking previous flat's landlord to wait if he and I were told the charge would be £70.

At first he just wanted to move the service to new place, not to cancel. I would like to know if I can do anything for him, like droppig off the charge or juts paying £17, etc. If there's no way then that's fine, we think we just need to accept that.

Thank you for taking your time to read this long post.

Drunkstar

When was the line activated?

yum86

I think it was in June so I'm sure £70 charge will apply for the cancellation.
His intention was just to move the service to his new place when he first contacted them so unfortunately he didn't read T&C well.