We have just received a "charge for stopping service before term expired" bill from BT for £120!

 

We have our phone and internet with Talk Talk (TT). When signing up to TT we were advised that we needed an active BT line.

 

We asked specially about the charges we may incur by connecting to BT and then TT. We were told that all charges and fees would be taken over by TT.

 

We therefore activated our line with BT and applied to TT. Now two months later we get a massive bill from BT!

 

Where do we stand? What are our rights?

 

We are on direct debit with BT, so we have a week before the amount is taken from our bank account. Can we stop this and dispute the bill without incurring any late fees?

 

The annoying thing is, we had a BT account for 12 months in our previous flat, but it seemed impossible to transfer this account?

 

It seems bizarre that the only company in the UK you can use for telephony is BT?

 

Help?!

 

I have just received a cancellation charge for £70 from BT. However in my case I was never made aware by BT or Talk Talk of these cancellation charges. With BT I do not have a written contract or indeed the terms and conditions, I just ordered the line rental so I could get broadband into the apartment by and that was that. Now they are charging me a cancellation fee for line rental although they will still get paid through Talk Talk on my behalf and they also say I ordered option 3 phone services. There is only one thing I think I can do and that is to go to the ombudsman otelo over this. By looking at this site tonight it seems to be that both companies are taking advantage of customers and that BT have a complete monopoly over the line rental so whichever provider one uses you still get screwed by BT.

darrinm81:

 

 

We have just received a "charge for stopping service before term expired" bill from BT for £120!

 

We have our phone and internet with Talk Talk (TT). When signing up to TT we were advised that we needed an active BT line.

 

We asked specially about the charges we may incur by connecting to BT and then TT. We were told that all charges and fees would be taken over by TT.

 

We therefore activated our line with BT and applied to TT. Now two months later we get a massive bill from BT!

 

Where do we stand? What are our rights?

 

We are on direct debit with BT, so we have a week before the amount is taken from our bank account. Can we stop this and dispute the bill without incurring any late fees?

 

The annoying thing is, we had a BT account for 12 months in our previous flat, but it seemed impossible to transfer this account?

 

It seems bizarre that the only company in the UK you can use for telephony is BT?

 

Help?!

 

Hello darrinm81,

Sadly in this case you would not have a leg to stand on,

You will have T&C's of the line rental supplied by BT which covers cancellations within the minimum term (12 Months) and by joining TalkTalk you are ending your contract with BT before the minimum term.

TalkTalk are correct in saying that they will take over all charges but leaving a contract within the minimum term would not be covered in that speech.

Sorry but the best thing you can do is bite the bullet and ride it out; the savings from TalkTalk will make it worth it in the end.

Regards,

Mike.

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ALWAYS CHECK ANY ADVICE GIVEN AGAINST AN EXPERT BEFORE YOU PROCEED

I also ended up with the same BT charge of £70, despite promises from the sales team that I would not be charged. The process is made quite clear by the sales team that they take over any charges from BT. I spent a long time chasing talk talk's customer service and eventually had my complaint escallated when they finally agreed to a "goodwill gesture" to cover the £70. My concern now is that this whole nightmare is going to be repeated when I move house.

I have submitted a formal complaints letter to BT however have heard nothing back. It seems they are suffering from complaints meltdown with many people struggling to get through to anyone!

Fortunately I have heard that many customers are now getting the £125 fee refunded!  The charge appears to be an automatic charge regardless of your situation. The fee should not apply if the existing property had a BT line connected.

See article and quotes below...

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BT gets its lines crossed with a fee for all

Link to article in The Guardian 10 Nov

"New occupiers are automatically charged the £125 fee, regardless of who used to supply the phone service. However, BT said this week that the charge should not be payable if the previous occupier was with BT. This has been refuted by readers' experiences."

--

I also found this info:

"Hi, I actually work for BT so thought I would try to clarify when
connection charges apply. Firstly there is no sliding scale the
connection charge is now always £124.99 as that is what Openreach
charge us. There are four different line status, these are:

... 

******Stopped lines: If a line has been used recently but the previous
owners have cancelled their account the line will be in a stopped
status. These lines will always have a dial tone but you won't be able
to make calls. There is NO connection charge for these lines. Note if
there is a dial tone but the advisor quotes £124.99 it maybe the
address has been entered incorrectly (it happens fairly often) even if
they don't find the line and send an engineer out I should think you
should be able to argue your way out of the charge as absolutely no
work is actually required for these lines. "

I recently switched my mum over from her bog-standard BT rented line and TalkTalk pay-as-you-go minutes to a full TalkTalk phone/broadband package, which includes line rental.

She just got a letter from BT confirming the cancellation of their service, and stating that she "may be liable for cancellation fees for the early termination of your BT Retail Agreement". Being the alarmist that she is, she now thinks I've messed everything up and BT is going to stick her with a big bill.

From what I can gather, BT is primarily referencing termination of an existing broadband agreement, right? (which she doesn't have). The only thing I could imagine her being liable for is the early termination of a line rental agreement.

My questions are these: given that she has lived at the house for donkey's years and always rented the line from BT, do they by default still put you in a line rental agreement? Is there a chance that unbeknowst to her (and me) she is in the middle of some automatic 12-month agreement, which she may have to pay the balance of? Or is line rental a 12-month minimum (which she has exceeded by 30+ years), and then a free-out after that?

Thanks

Tom

what they tried on with me was they said i was 6 months through an 18 month contract that i knew nothing about. even resulting in them sending 3 letters threatening court action After eventually speaking to someone at bt they said that someone from sales will have rang the house and could have spoken to anybody and offered a call plan, once whoever answered the phone agreed and we didnt contest the bill, we had agreed to the contract by default. After numerous emails and phone calls which resulted in me threatening them with court action. (They had already taken £100+ that i had in credit in my account and were demanding an extra £60) they eventually conceded and sent me my £100 back so dont let them grind you down

Just an update on this post...

After numerous written correspondence to BT which resulted in zero replies, I decided to contact the CEO via e-mail.

I received a reply the same day telling me the issue was being looked into. Not long after I received a cheque in the mail for the full refund and a courtesy phone call to apologise. In addition I was offered a choice of gifts - wine, chocolate, gift vouchers... not a bad result!

So to those who have had no luck with their complaints, it may be worthwhile trying to contact the CEO!

Hi, I have also had a bill for a cancellation charge for £150 from BT, after paying £125 to get the line re-connected! I have complained to them by email's and they just basically say that it's tough!! Please can you advise the CEO email address that you wrote to... its my last hope!!! Thanks

Where to even begin with BT. First of all the closed my account with out evn telling me and billd me £90 for it, i then had to open a new account and was charged £25. Due to BT disconnecting my line, i lost my internet and my BT Vision. After my new line being connected, it took them 2 weeks ot get my BT Vision sorted and their custoer agents were telling me thatmy BT INternet had been ordered and would be activated ASAP. Turned out that it never was activated at all and that theBT agent was full of crap and had not done her Job correctly. I then had to wait another week for my Internet to be activated. On the Billig side, i had give them my bank details toset up a monthly DD, i got my first bill through and they had decided to place me on Quaterly billing even though i had set up a monthly DD, or so i thought. I onl went with BT becasue the area i lived in, with most of them at the time you had to have a BT line to get the internet and this as the only service proider in the area, if i had a choice i would of gone with Telewest or Virgin Media as it is now.

With the £90 charge they gave me for diconnecting my phone line i refused t pay it as i did not requst it to be cancled, BT said fair enough and withdrew the charge, how ver they still saw fit to then send this on to debt collection agency called Westcott. I made severel phone calls to BT and everytime th assure me that this had been sorted and that they would contact the debt collection agency...did they?...Did the Fook! I had letters coming thrugh so i just phoned up BT and told them i would take them to court and that i had recored conversations and that i would go to trading standards about this. BT's customer service is the worst i have ever come accross ever, i cant believe the way they deal with their customers, its so awful.

Along with this charge, they decided to take £33 out of my bank last week for an account that should of been closed months ago when i oved from my last property. I had to contact them, find out why, the agent on th phone said she did not know why and that i wpuld have to contact my bank to get the money back. Luckily due to the direct debt garuntee you are able to claim for it and the bank will credt your account with the funds that same day however any charges will have to be dealt wit by the debitor.

To top it all off, BT managed to knock a Brick out of my wall when installing my phone line and their claims department still have not got back to me.

BT are the worst telcoms compnay ever, if you have a choice of using anothe provider, please think twice abou using BT.

And yes i had to pay £125 twice for installing my phone line. I consider my self a rite MUG!