I have just received by quarterly bill for combined telephone and broadband service from BT and notice that I have been charged for a late payment fee and an outgoing call bar charge for an event occuring at the begining of the quarter (late Nov).

Checking my records, I notice that I did not receive an E-mail notification for the last quarterly bill (Ending late November 2011)(I'm on electronic billing) and that this resulted in me not picking-up the outstanding charge until the line was disconnected in mid December 2010.

I haven't been in the best of health recently (Since February last year), and at that time I was using the landline to phone the GP at least once a week.

To add insult to injury, the existing year long contract which I was signed-up to in January 2011 lapsed without BT giving a courtesy heads-up E-mail and, as a consequence, the Calls and Broadband package lapsed back to an undiscounted rate meaning that I have now been charge £18 a month for both services.

Additionally, they've put up their landline rental charges.

Hence quarterly bill went up by a third (£50) this time.

Looking back to records in March, I see that they did exactly the same then and I wrote am E-mail of complaint - to which I got no response and was unable to chase up because of pressures of work.

Prior to that, In desperation I had been more or less forced to change to their Total Broadband Service (5MB) because of the constant losses of broadband service that had occurred at the end of 2010 - previously I had had an uninterrupted Broadband service from 2001 on their legacy 2 MB service.

Conincidentally, this disruption in billing and service seems to have conincided with a high intensity postal advertising campaign by the local cable provider (Virgin).

One begins to wonder whether there is a behind-the-scenes set-to going on (Rather like occured at Heathrow airport) or whether this is just BT alone trying to finance the ridiculous discount pricing to new customers by overcharging existing clientel (I been with BT 26 years)

I'm considering writing to the Chief Executive of BT about this with a cross referral to the regulator.

Any other long standing customers getting this sort of treatment from BT ?

Nick

Edited 11 February, 201214 yr by Clunkclick

BT are proper monkeys. Sign you up to a great deal, then hope the customer does nothing when it expires.

Same as the banks, get a great savings rate, after a year you are on 0.1% interest. Oh and the utilily companies. Come to think of it the insurances companies give you a new customer discount too.

Keep a track of what is due when - Its a faff but the only way if y9ou want to be savvy and pay the least.

BT broadband is pretty poor - you can do a lot better with your BT line and use another provider for your internet.

I pay my line rental to BT yearly so £10 a month. I can't renew it early so have to wait until the day after, it then takes 7 days to "process" so BT have me on the standard rate fot 7 days - Like I said monkeys. No cable here.

BT are proper monkeys. Sign you up to a great deal, then hope the customer does nothing when it expires.

Same as the banks, get a great savings rate, after a year you are on 0.1% interest. Oh and the utilily companies. Come to think of it the insurances companies give you a new customer discount too.

Keep a track of what is due when - Its a faff but the only way if y9ou want to be savvy and pay the least.

BT broadband is pretty poor - you can do a lot better with your BT line and use another provider for your internet.

I pay my line rental to BT yearly so £10 a month. I can't renew it early so have to wait until the day after, it then takes 7 days to "process" so BT have me on the standard rate fot 7 days - Like I said monkeys. No cable here.

As I have said before on this site, all this price comparison m'larky is completely and utterly worthless. I've got records of my BT telephone bills at the same property going back to 1985. My usuage has been fairly constant and consistent. I think my quarterly bill in 1985 (For Telephone only on the old analogue service) was £20 a quarter (Line rental + usuage + tax). Now the telephone element (Line rental + usuage + tax) = £74.55(£39.45+£24+ £11.10) i.e. its increased 3.7 times for no additional service. Over the same period the RPI has increased about 2.5 times :-http://www.wolfbane.com/rpi.htm.

So much for price competition, economies of scale, digital transmission and flater/leaner/meaner organisations.

It shouldn't be the case that i have to be a commercial wiz or have to resort to intricate financial planning or financial instruments just to have a basic s*dding service that's been with us for the last 100 years.

ITS SO TEDIOUS LIVING IN THIS F*CKING COUNTRY NOW WITH ROBBERY DISGUISED AS COMMERCIALISM.

Nick

Edited 11 February, 201214 yr by Clunkclick

Prices go up, do you think the engineers are on the same wages as they were in 1985, the diesel is the same price, rent for the exchanges is the same? You have ADSL, you didn't have that in 1985!

Things cost what they cost, you can shop around if you want but you're stuck with it.

Move to Hull or somewhere you can get Cable if you want to get away from BT or go LLU.

I ditched BT after suffering similar behaviour 7 years ago, since then I have been more than happy with a Line rental - phone call and internet package from Vispa.

I get 6.5MB free evening and weekend calls, dirt cheap international calls, 50 GB or peak time data and unlimited off peak data.

Its not cheap at about £41, but if you have tech problems they are pretty hot on getting them fixed ASAP.

Being semi-retired now, I can't afford that sort of dosh, even £18 a month is pushing the boat out.

The trouble is with the ars*h*les currently charged with running the BT System is that the lower orders who provide the service are sufficiently remote not to give a stuff if they lose a few less profitable customers and the up tops UK side are only concerned with the big numbers that impress the City.

Aanyway, I'm going to stick in my letter of complaint and see what happens.

But exactly the same occurred at the end of 2010 and it ended up with a senior manager (In India) temporarily monitoring what was happening to my account/service.

The switchover to BT Broadband in 2002 and the years up to 2010 were relatively good and untroubled and now everything seems to have gone to ratsh*t in the last two years. It could be the start of a re-run of 2010, in that BT may be hoping to move Total broadband customers to Infinity by demonstrating false savings by inflating customers Total Broadband Bills with ad hoc and unreasonable charges. - Infinity, I believe has been ready round here since late last year.

Although there's plenty of competition round here, including Virgin cable, offering the same sort of calls+Broadband package at a third to a half of what I'm currently paying, I not confident about those using ADSL as essentially they will have to use BT's infrastructure and I have no confidence that the advertised prices will be adhered to - i.e. I trust them less than a salesman on on Arthur Daley car lot. As for Virgin, whilst going round the district I have seen a number of their roadside cabinet doors swinging in the breeze indicating that they've either been vandalised by kids or someones tried to make an illegal connection - so I'm not keen to be on the same system as bods who would do that or have much confidence that the system would be always available to provide a service.

Additionally, I am being plagued with nuisance calls at the moment. So the telephone, far from being a facility, is turning into a right pain in the bum.

If worst comes to the worst, I'll ditch the landline, save £400-500 a year and do everything through the Blackberry. That's where the big expansion is supposed to be happening, in 4 G that is.

Correction

Just had a look at the local Infinity provision. Turns out the proposed introduction has been delayed and its slated to be available from March 2012. So that's at least two delays of the proposed introduction date, which was originally scheduled for a year ago. And I'm only 2.5Ks from the exchange. Looks promising on the pricing front though. £18 a month gets you free evening and weekend calls + broadband services up to 20MBsec download speed with a 40GB limit (Currently using about 12GB of that) Landline rental of £10 a month as long as you pay by direct debit.So that would give me an annual cost of £394 (Including VAT).

That still makes it the most expensive of the utilities

Nick

Edited 12 February, 201214 yr by Clunkclick

Prices go up, do you think the engineers are on the same wages as they were in 1985, the diesel is the same price, rent for the exchanges is the same? You have ADSL, you didn't have that in 1985!

Things cost what they cost, you can shop around if you want but you're stuck with it.

Move to Hull or somewhere you can get Cable if you want to get away from BT or go LLU.

Sorry, but those price increases I quoted are double inflation over a 25 year + period. And they don't value long standing customers, in fact they abuse them, at least in terms of commercial marketing. Bt has just turned from a great big bureaucracy that looks after the lower order staff into a great big bureaucracy that gives Marketing men a cushy existence.

Postscript

Just found this:-

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16905703

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Openreach

On those figures I'm being overcharged @£120 a quarter and no doubt the unofficial pressure is on internally to recover the money to be lost in rentals through other means.

Lets face it prices should come down because if they succeed in pushing the majority of existing town customers on to Infinity, there's going to be a shed load of capacity left on the old copper - I suppose in the full ness of time they will be pulling the copper up and flogging it off.

Nick

Edited 11 February, 201214 yr by Clunkclick

Someone pointed out on a business column recently, that BT's share value is LOWER than the scrap value of ll the copper cabling it owns.....

I'm waiting for FTTC to be opened up to other ISP's so i can actually download instead of having a pointless 40mb connection where i can't download anything.

I am on a 6MB connection with Be There and they are totally unfiltered and un traffic managed which is good considering i downloaded over 200GB last month

Just wish i could ditch the landline and have a 'broadband only' line. I would consider Cable if it was any good (had it for 6months when i moved in and never again).

Anyway onto the OP, Why are you not paying by Direct Debit? Surely this is what everyone does and is a lot cheaper?

Edited 12 February, 201214 yr by jrw

Bit of good news - I got out of BT when it was POT . Years before , they'd not needed insurance or VED on the vans . BANG - gone was the pot held by the treasury for insurance -gone was the indemnity from being sued ( as GPO ,crown agent -they couldn't be sued) .

But back on track . When I left , I had the option of a lump sum from my pension funds . At the time it was welcome -we'd moved and the complete house needed carpets etc/etc . I kept the paperwork ,in the assumption that I'd need to wait for my 65th before getting anything,and then not a lot . So as the day get near ,I tried to find the folks to advise of my addr4ss etc . Surprise /surprise - what I thought was a few hundred pounds in the pot ( i guestimated the total at about a couple of K) -turned out to be a nice little sum ,with a juicy monthly payment .So thanks BT . And as an added on - a lot of those skills I got FOC from GPO(T) /POT/BT ,along with the acceptance of the training ,has kept me in work for the past few years .

BUT I'll be the first to admit - at one time customers got served by (ADD NAME OF TELECOMMS COMPANY),and the staff got looked after . Now customers -(unless you're a multinational - forget it ) ,and my chats with blokes on the ground lead me to believe that staff are not a resource ,but a liability .

Bit of good news - I got out of BT when it was POT . Years before , they'd not needed insurance or VED on the vans . BANG - gone was the pot held by the treasury for insurance -gone was the indemnity from being sued ( as GPO ,crown agent -they couldn't be sued) .

But back on track . When I left , I had the option of a lump sum from my pension funds . At the time it was welcome -we'd moved and the complete house needed carpets etc/etc . I kept the paperwork ,in the assumption that I'd need to wait for my 65th before getting anything,and then not a lot . So as the day get near ,I tried to find the folks to advise of my addr4ss etc . Surprise /surprise - what I thought was a few hundred pounds in the pot ( i guestimated the total at about a couple of K) -turned out to be a nice little sum ,with a juicy monthly payment .So thanks BT . And as an added on - a lot of those skills I got FOC from GPO(T) /POT/BT ,along with the acceptance of the training ,has kept me in work for the past few years .

BUT I'll be the first to admit - at one time customers got served by (ADD NAME OF TELECOMMS COMPANY),and the staff got looked after . Now customers -(unless you're a multinational - forget it ) ,and my chats with blokes on the ground lead me to believe that staff are not a resource ,but a liability .

Very true, They just hate engineers, they think we go round to a house to fix the line or broadband and just join a wire or two together and hey presto it all works. Now productivity is measured like a factory system so engineers have learned that quality work is out the window and we now just keep the beancounters happy. There are plenty of engineering disasters now which didn't happen a few years ago.

I've been with them for 44 years now, get my pension and still working for them, I know, I'm mad but I like the money for holidays and generally enjoying myself so I'll plod on for a year or two.

If you are willing to pay upfront, you can get BT line rental for a year with 'free' evening/weekend calls and one 'free' option for £120 incl VAT.

I was faced with that ^ but decided not to bother and told them to "go away". I've gone with the coloured company for a bit cheaper but I'll reserve judgement on whether it's better or not when I've had it for a bit.

Sacked BT off a few years ago and went with the comapny that sponsors the X-factor, despite that the service has been excellent and I have lots of freebies that I would pay for with BT. However, I do tire of them trying to lure me to their BB service despite the fact that I have set my contact preferences to e-mail they insist on ringing up

Very true, They just hate engineers, they think we go round to a house to fix the line or broadband and just join a wire or two together and hey presto it all works. Now productivity is measured like a factory system so engineers have learned that quality work is out the window and we now just keep the beancounters happy. There are plenty of engineering disasters now which didn't happen a few years ago.

I've been with them for 44 years now, get my pension and still working for them, I know, I'm mad but I like the money for holidays and generally enjoying myself so I'll plod on for a year or two.

Bit O/T this bit -but what the hey. I'd have been there ( if i'd stopped) for a few years more.I got sent to the Oban Tunnel (Transaslantic cable terminal,as a disiplinary measure, in 71) .Nice to see some old mates ,still soldgering( or soldering ) on.

The productivity thing started when I was just out of my time ,a T2a - on fitting duties. One mate of mine had a solution to a shared service problem ,which took him hours -he was looking for a positive earth . ( in an area which had high resistance to earth)

PS - do we BT pensioners get any special rates on phones/BB-etc

Edited 23 February, 201214 yr by VWD

Sacked BT off a few years ago and went with the comapny that sponsors the X-factor, despite that the service has been excellent and I have lots of freebies that I would pay for with BT. However, I do tire of them trying to lure me to their BB service despite the fact that I have set my contact preferences to e-mail they insist on ringing up

Remind them of the TPS, for all the good it would probably do.