Is BT ripping off elderly neighbour for phone and broadband?

elsien

M25 said:

As you don't really know your neighbour's business it's better not to get involved. If she asks for help that might be different. I say might because does she have any family visitors? They may not be impressed.

If things go wrong you'll have to sort it.

If the lady does want help then whether her family are impressed or not is beside the point. It's up to her who she asks to help her. 

macman

Jonx999 said:

la531983 said:

By all means they will put on something cheaper but I suspect you are whistling in the wind when it comes to a retrospective refund. 

I wasn't expecting a retrospective refund, I just wondered if they are likely to offer an existing customer a similar deal to what they offer new customers.

If she is out of minimum term, then they will always cut a deal, as long as you make it clear that you have an offer of X elsewhere and are prepared to move. But BT are always expensive, being the legacy provider, and millions of elderly customer pay more than they need to,because they don't or can't negotiate. Plusnet is the obvious switch: same company, always cheaper. The sticking point here is the email address, which locks her into BT. Set her up on Gmail? Then she can move where she likes.

Jonx999

Thanks for the comments.  Frustratingly I've just seen my neighbour and learned that she phoned BT last week to query the price - and they signed her up to a new 24-month contract costing "only" £60/month.  It's a mess.

iniltous

I would suggest you don’t really know what your neighbour pays for , £60 a month is the ‘list’ price for 900Mb broadband with a phone service ,many will pay much less than this if they haggle , BT don’t have a special ‘price list’ they refer to for the gullible or easily persuaded, so assuming they don’t have 900Mb but do pay £60 a month then it’s going to be the case that they are are not on a ‘basic’ package at all and have ‘added’ extras …now it could be the case that they are paying for some items / benefits that are not essential or likely to be used ( like Halo3+ ) , which can significantly increase costs, but it misrepresents the situation to say they pay £60 for basic broadband.
BT  fibre essential broadband ( 40Mb ) with a phone service is about £37 , someone taking this , but adding unlimited calls for example gets the price upto £50+, without any context ( knowing what they are actually getting ) it’s impossible to know if it’s a good , bad or average deal , but implying £60 is for ‘basic broadband’ is wrong , if ( for example ) , they were offered F2 ( 80Mb ) , unlimited calls , and TV for £60 then that’s probably a decent deal .

M25

Like I said: don't get involved with neighbours unless you have to call 999.