My So Called Life…

Well, having had the email from the nice chap at @BTCare we received a letter stating our Weekend and Evening Plan would expire in May 2011. We also received another letter saying the same again, except it said not to worry, out BT Total Broadband was still in place.

We have never had BT broadband, so as you can imagine I was slightly concerned by this.

Anyway, I just had a call from them basically saying something had fucked up, and our contract would in fact be up in December, not next May like the letters say.

It’s amazing what damage a bad piece of customer service can do for a company. Up until now I’d say I was a happy customer of BT’s, but that one phone call yesterday turned me against them completely. Then out of the blue a tweet from their online help account.

I honestly didn’t think it would come to anything. I full expected yet another kick right square in the nuts.

Instead, what I got was a reasonable response from a fellow human being who was able to sort out the problem quickly and easily. Job done.

All I can say is thanks. It’s a shame that couldn’t have been done in the first place. My faith has been restored in BT but I sure as hell won’t be using your call centres again.

Well, I never expected this.

After my previous little rant on here and twitter, a BT representative has gotten in contact and asked to look into our problem. After about 3 hours crafting a reply, removing all expletives and personal attacks, rewriting it from scratch and trying to sound like the reasonable person I really am, I think I’ve put together a well argued case. OK, so maybe not particularly well argued, but we’ll see if BT can come up with the goods (well take the goods away without putting a family into debt in order to cancel a service we really don’t want).

We were originally going to let the contract run out in December, then move the service over to Virgin, but at this point I’d love to be able to just tell BT just go away (See, I’m being restrained…).

I think the cost to cancel what’s left of our original contract would have been about £52.50 (£7.50 for each of the 7 months left) although I’m pretty sure there’d be a cancellation charge on top of that. BT however want 133 quid, or at least that’s what they told me this afternoon. I’m not quite sure how that works out. They’re either charging us for 17 months or the charge is £43 on top of the monthly fee, which means we’d still have to pay £95.50 to ditch them at this point.

Anyway, we’ll see what they say. I have my doubts, but they may yet surprise me.

** Update **

See what happened next…

BT are a bunch of thieves. Their company policy is designed to confuse consumers. Having decided that a half meg is simply not enough and BT are unable to do anything to the line to correct this (we’re a fair old way from the exchange, I accept this) we have decided to cancel our BT line and get VirginMedia.

Just out of curiosity I called them this morning to see when our contract expires (some time in December, which is right as we moved in last December), I was told we would not be able to cancel as the BT Unlimited Evening and Weekend Call Package had just renewed itself and we would have to wait until next May to cancel our contract or we would have to pay off the contract until May.

Fucking hell I thought. That’s not good.

Well, it turns out they send out a letter saying they will renew the 12 month contract unless you tell them not to, not that I saw one of these. Now concentrate, here comes the science bit.

As this ‘addition’ to our existing contract is being automatically renewed  it comes under the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000. This gives you 7 working days to cancel any contract that is not set up face to face with a signature, however this only applies from the point when written confirmation of the contract is provided. BT have as yet not provided such a confirmation.

[...] the obligation to give written confirmation and additional information is not fulfilled within three months beginning with the day after the day on which the contract for services is concluded, the cancellation period is the period of three months and 7 working days from the day after the day on which the contract is concluded, regardless of whether performance of the services has begun or has been completed.

http://www.out-law.com/page-430#Right

This means I have three months AND seven days to cancel this contract, or seven days after they provide me with written confirmation that they have renewed the contract.

No mention of this was made when I called BT this morning. I doubt it’s even something the admittedly very friendly chap I spoke to was even aware of. This is something which BT don’t want you to know, so they can cream more money out of us.

I’ll be calling BT with the good news shortly.

** UPDATE **

Well, it seems that BT are even more despicable and underhanded than I gave them credit for. They really couldn’t care less and seem to think that the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 bill simply does not apply to them. We’ll be giving citizens advice and Ofcom a call and see what they have to say about BT’s underhanded methods. Failing that we’ll just cancel the standing order. Fuck BT.

** UPDATE 2 **

The saga continues…