BT Taken To Court By Customer Over Direct Debit Contract

[EXC]

Re: BT Taken To Court By Customer Over Direct Debit Contract

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/to...cle3735295.ece

From The Sunday Times

April 13, 2008


Outrage as the cost of BT calls goes up 1,900%



Ali Hussain



BRITAIN’s largest landline provider has slumped to the bottom of the customer satisfaction league tables for the first time as the backlash against its sneaky charges grows.

More than 3m BT customers say they are dissatisfied with their service, according to comparison firm Uswitch.

It comes after the phone group, with about 10m customers, raised its line-rental charge for the majority of users on April 1 for the first time in two years.

Those on BT Together Option 1, now known as the Anytime Weekend package, pay 1.5p per minute for evening calls instead of the previous 4.5p per hour – a 1,900% increase for a one-hour call.
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There has also been growing resentment from customers who, if they do not pay by direct debit, are charged an additional £18 a year.
Earlier this month, Ros Fernihough, 62, from Walsall, West Midlands, lost her battle against BT after taking the firm to court over the charges. She said she will continue her fight.

Though Talk Talk has come second overall for the third year running, satisfying nearly eight out of ten of its home-phone customers, it may face a similar backlash after saying it will increase call rates from May 15.
It will replace a flat evening call charge of 4.25p to a 1.4p a minute rate – similar to BT’s 1,900% rise.

Daytime call charges outside a price plan will go up from 3p a minute to 3.9p a minute.

Talk Talk will also introduce a new £1.25 a month charge for those with paper bills, which will affect an estimated 1m customers.
Sky, part-owned by News Corporation, ultimate owner of The Sunday Times, which has been in the market for only 18 months, is ranked the best provider overall, winning in seven out of 11 categories in the survey.
Its phone package comes free with its bundled TV and broadband deal which costs £16 a month, although you still need to buy line rental costing £10 – a total of £26 a month.

From this month, BT Option 1, 2 and 3 packages have been replaced by Unlimited Weekend, Unlimited Weekend and Evening and Unlimited Anytime plans respectively, although the tariffs come with slightly different price plans.

BT has also introduced 12-month contracts for the first time, which are automatically renewed unless the customer opts out. Under the new price plans, an estimated 9m customers who receive their bills by paper will see the charge go up by 75p a month to £11.75 – netting the firm around £80m, according to Uswitch.

Customers on the Unlimited weekend package will receive free evening calls to landlines if they sign up to the 12-month contract.

[argentarius]

Re: BT Taken To Court By Customer Over Direct Debit Contract

The 1900% increase figure is entirely spurious. Most people don't spend an hour on the phone to one person. They certainly don't do this for every single weekend call, which would be the only way for the 1900% increase figure not to be rubbish.

And obviously Talk Talk's bills are increasing in a similar way - Talk Talk's pricing structure has always been designed to be just fractionally cheaper than BT's in every regard, so that they can give a guarantee of saving BT customers money if they switch to Talk Talk. But Talk Talk also offer "free" (included) broadband, which BT don't - so their overall package is significantly better value IMHO.

In any case, the 1900% increase quoted is rather academic. Charging a "per minute" rate for these calls is merely reverting to where we were until BT chose to introduce the present "cut price" arrangement. Just because you cut something in price by (up to) 99% doesn't mean it's particularly wrong when you later reverse that cut. I don't actually think 1.5p per minute is as expensive as national weekend calls were before the cut, in any case.

[Tools]

Re: BT Taken To Court By Customer Over Direct Debit Contract

The 1900% increase figure is entirely spurious. Most people don't spend an hour on the phone to one person. They certainly don't do this for every single weekend call, which would be the only way for the 1900% increase figure not to be rubbish.

You obviously haven`t seen my phone bill

[Amy]

Re: BT Taken To Court By Customer Over Direct Debit Contract

You obviously haven`t seen my phone bill

I would imagine that he is able to communicate by way of a telegram or maybe tin cans tied together with string and therefore, he will see no need for a BT telephone line at all.

[Xena]

Re: BT Taken To Court By Customer Over Direct Debit Contract

I would imagine that he is able to communicate by way of a telegram or maybe tin cans tied together with string and therefore, he will see no need for a BT telephone line at all.

:rofl::rofl:

[argentarius]

Re: BT Taken To Court By Customer Over Direct Debit Contract

Tools Your phone bill sounds quite interesting then!

But for people who spend lots of time on the phone, BT Option 1 is rarely the best tariff in any case. It's basically meant for people who don't use the phone very often. And then they threw in the "1 hour for 5p" plan so that Granny could ring her kids/grandkids for a decent chat every week or so. It was a nice idea, but that doesn't mean that it is going to cause a huge amount of difference to most people.

Amy Ha ha. I use Talk Talk for line rental/unlimited UK calls/broadband. In fact, I could pay less by removing the unlimited UK calls but I'm tied in for 18 months. I will probably downgrade in due course - but Talk Talk have actually just reduced the price of this tariff by around £3 a month so it's scarcely a bad deal.

[Amy]

Re: BT Taken To Court By Customer Over Direct Debit Contract

And then they threw in the "1 hour for 5p" plan so that Granny could ring her kids/grandkids for a decent chat every week or so. It was a nice idea, but that doesn't mean that it is going to cause a huge amount of difference to most people.

How shockingly ageist of you.

Amy Ha ha. I use Talk Talk for line rental/unlimited UK calls/broadband. In fact, I could pay less by removing the unlimited UK calls but I'm tied in for 18 months.

More fool you then.

[WendyB]

Re: BT Taken To Court By Customer Over Direct Debit Contract

I quite often spend an hour on one call. And I have the unlimited package because kids tend to use the phone when they get in from school, so the evening package would be no good to me. Anyoine with teenage kids knows the amount of time they spend on the phone, and intenet! Rather on my landline bill than their mobile bill.

I'm with Tiscali, for phone, and broadband, and pay my line rental to tiscali too, which means i don't have to have any dealings whatsoever with BT any more. Tiscali's line rental is free in a lot of areas, giving the total package a cost of £19.99. Unfortunately not in my area yet, but I get 25% off line rental, it costs around £28 per month. Have been told that they are roling out the free line rental, but BT are being awkward about handing over info etc which is whats holding it up. Have had no problems at all with Tiscali phone.

Ref the report above, Sky talk was very good. Only moved away from them because of the horendous internet problems, which, to be fair, were originally caused by BT accidentally cutting my phone line off then wiping off the tags, hence making internet reconnection seemingly impossible.

[argentarius]

Re: BT Taken To Court By Customer Over Direct Debit Contract

More fool you then.

No, actually. The "free" broadband was only available at the time with unlimited UK calls. It was the cheapest overall package.

No other deal, over the 18 month term, would have been cheaper.

Hence I wasn't complaining about being tied in.

[Kafka]

Re: BT Taken To Court By Customer Over Direct Debit Contract

The issue of the BT court case has cropped up again today on the OFT Wins thread with reference to my comments on the judgement being flawed.

I would still appreciate sight of the judgement if any has it please, because I think it would prove very interesting if, as appears, the judge decided that the charges were 'fair and reasonable' without apparently investigating the true costs of processing or to disaggregate the different payment methods that they have deliberately muddled. If he indeed meant that they are fair and reasonable for customers I would like to know what he based this on, as nothing BT have revealed can support this claim in my view.

Since last posting (posts 43 and 44) I have received another response from them, posted below. Amazingly this adds nothing to the earlier ones, but just rehashes the same tripe and ignores all the questions that they either don't want to or can't answer about their 'fairness, reasonableness and openness' that they are so proud of. I will respond some time. They seem paralysed and devoid of the banks' creativity, where they try to hide their deceit by inventing arguments like 'fees for a service' and 'packages of services' to hide their profitmaking and present it as genuine cost covering. BT don't even try to justify their arguments.

Interestingly they are sorry for the distress they may have caused me - doesn't that make them nice guys really? I intend to cause them a whole lot more distress yet myself.

Don't forget there is still a week or so left to complain to OFCOM about the charges.

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 12:57:53 +0100 (BST)

Re: I want to complain - I have a general complaint

Dear Mr K,

Thank you for your e-mail dated 31/3/08. I am sorry it took so long to get back to you. I am also sorry that you are not happy with the previous responses regarding this issue.

BT believes it is fair and reasonable for there to be price differentials between customers paying by direct debit and those who don't. BT has always been transparent in our charging and we will continue to maintain a differential because it costs more to process non-direct debit payments.

BT therefore firmly believes we are within our legal rights to raise and collect the payment processing fee and will be following our normal credit management procedures. Customers will need to pay the fee along with other outstanding debts, if correctly raised, to avoid any restrictions of service.

Many other telecom companies charge customers an administration charge if they do not pay by Direct Debit and some only accept customers who agree to pay by Direct Debit. BT's charge is amongst the lowest in the industry. In addition, BT's policy on ways to pay is generally accepted as the most customer-friendly in the telecom business.

BT have also been very careful to ensure that customers on low income, light usage and special schemes see their bills remain the same - or in some cases fall. Last summer, we went a step further to protect low income customers by introducing a new tariff called BT Basic, especially for customers on Income Support, Job Seeker's Allowance or Pension Credit. It gives low income customers a phone line for as little as £4.50 a month. BT Basic is currently not available to existing customers.

I must stress that BT was recently challenged in court by a BT customer, over the Payment Processing Fee (PPF). As with previous cases relating to this charge, the judgement was in favour of BT.

I am sorry that this is not the response you were hoping for. Once again please accept my apologies for any distress this may have caused.

Thank you for contacting BT.

Yours sincerely,

April Jeffery
eContact Customer Service

[Vortex]

Re: BT Taken To Court By Customer Over Direct Debit Contract

Have you asked them about internet payments where someone pays the bill on receipt via internet banking because the processing side is the same as Direct Debits via the BACS system?

[Kafka]

Re: BT Taken To Court By Customer Over Direct Debit Contract

Have you asked them about internet payments where someone pays the bill on receipt via internet banking because the processing side is the same as Direct Debits via the BACS system?

No I haven't. I only asked about my own situation, where I pay them online in one go. This is an automated payment, yet they are making out that because its not a DD it involves a lot of work and cost for them. Their response is always that any payment method other than DD involves cost and work and the lot average out at £1.50 per month for all non-DD payers. The complaints section aren't capable of dealing with complaints or answering questions, it seems.

[Vortex]

Re: BT Taken To Court By Customer Over Direct Debit Contract

That is a pile of crap if ever I hear it. It involves the same process except they do not request it, IMHO, it involves less work not more work. They send you a bill each month even if you are on DD or not. The question is do they have systems to determine how the payment is made and can they levy a charge if you pay by any other method other than online or DD?

[argentarius]

Re: BT Taken To Court By Customer Over Direct Debit Contract

I can't understand why BT keep on rehashing the "it costs more" argument either, but I wouldn't agree that renders the judgement wrong.

Their point shouldn't be "it costs more" but "it's the price and it's up to us what to charge".

I think we are all agreed that "it costs more" doesn't apply for those who pay their bill on time, via BACS as pretty evidently the costs are identical to full bill DD in that case.

The only case where "it costs more" applies is for people who don't pay in full, on time. And there are other means to charge in those circumstances.

Having said all that, I would still argue that there is no reason why BT cannot choose to charge different tariffs to DD and non-DD customers, if it pleases them to do so. But it should express it like that - two separate tariffs - not express it as a separate payment charge. That's how the utilities (gas & electricity) mainly operate.

I realise that the reason they do it as they do is that the financial service is exempt from VAT whilst the telephony service is VAT rated at 17.5%. Presumably the gas and electricity suppliers can't be bothered to go through this rigmarole as their VAT is only 5%.

[Vortex]

Re: BT Taken To Court By Customer Over Direct Debit Contract

I think the problem has arisen in the past where there has not been a charge and BT has imposed this. For some people, Direct Debit does not work so they pay cash yet for that price and the way the bill is sent out they appear to be penalised for doing so. Their argument is the reverse, and that it is a discount for paying by DD. I wish their bills gave the full price and added wording to the effect of; discount of £x for paying by DD. Of course that removes the need for an additional price shown on the bill. However it may prove to be confusing for the average consumer and that means UTCCR and PIL