BT 'Payment Processing Fee'

bummerinthesummer

I am totally against BT on this, and anybody else who levies such a charge.

My argument is this...

Why should I pay you, for paying you ? Simple.

BritBrat

KILL_BILL wrote: »

the woman who took bt to court lost her case

she took the cas as a matter of principle she stated

she was a solicitor as well - not that she couldnt afford the extra 1.50 per month

My stance is a matter of principle but I am winning

BT have lost well over £200 from me and I never pay the payment charge even though I still pay the same way I did before using online banking, and they never ask me to.

I am totally against BT on this, and anybody else who levies such a charge.

My argument is this...

Why should I pay you, for paying you ? Simple.

Exactly.

normanmark

bummerinthesummer wrote: »

Why should I pay you, for paying you ? Simple.

Well you don't if you go by direct debit, which offers much more protection to the consumer than the other payment methods.

deadringer

xenosys wrote: »

While it's all fair and well taking a company to court over a quarterly £4.50 payment processing fee and challenging this in a court of law, why on earth has BT been hit with the brunt of the critisism and media plublicity when other telecoms companies in particular do exactly the same thing and not a peep is heard of it anywhere? ... I don't mean to come off here as a BT fan boy, because I'm certainly not, but it does concern me, that based on media exposure, BT seem to be the ones that are hit hardest, when really, they were just following suit.

Perhaps for new customers joining BT. However, for existing customers, BT can't just unilaterally charge whatever it wants. It can *propose* such new terms but it cannot *dictate* them.

Charging £4.50 to clear a cheque or handle cash is still ridiculous no matter what.

BritBrat

I bet if you clicked the direct debit option and sent two cheques one month so that you were in credit.

Any further payment would not get the charge as you would be in credit and no bill to pay. Yes it would lose you interest but It may not be as much as the charge.

Now the above is not tested so try it at own risk but I know it works with online banking (been doing in nearly a year now) and payment cards.

wantmemoney

deadringer wrote:

Charging £4.50 to clear a cheque or handle cash is still ridiculous no matter what.

The reason they give for charging £1.50/month sounds ridiculous because it's not the real reason. The real reason is based on pure economic greed.

from their standard reply letter:

We have introduced these changes because it costs more to accept non-Direct Debit payments from customers. This is not just because of the cost of taking the payments, but because on average customers are more likely to forget to pay or not pay, and this leaves us with bad debt of around £100 million a year.

They have calculated that on average each of their 5 million non direct debit customers are responsible for bad debt of (£100m / 5m) = £20/year = £5/quarter.

The actual figure BT decided was £4.50/quarter or £1.50/month.

The £100 million 'bad dept' figure only appears on paper. This figure is already factored into the retail prices of the calls and services.

normanmark wrote:

Her point about a bank account was laughable really. Who these days do not have access to a bank account?!

BT

BritBrat

But they have a late payment charge that should cover that.

Maybe the late payment charge should be increased to say £25 a throw instead of around £7 but my guess is they are scared to increase it to the real value it should be beacuse the of the bank charges campain.