I would like to raise my concerns over BT’s practices of contract renewal and their lack of response to requests for assistance.
We recently cancelled our BT phone, broadband and vision service due to the fact we were moving home. When we contacted BT the operator dealt with our request and we were given a date that the services would cease. Shortly afterwards, we received a bill from BT stating that we owed £65.11 for charges relating to the fact that we were still in contract at the time of cancelling. We have two issues with this:
Firstly, when we called to cancel the operator did not explain the fact that we were in contract and the fact we would incur a penalty for cancelling.
Secondly and most importantly, I believe we were in no form of contract with BT. After looking around on the internet it seems BT work on a ‘rolling contract.’ The practice appears to be that just before the contract expires you receive a letter from them saying that they will renew the contract unless you make contact to the contrary. I am 100% confident that BT made no contact with us prior to renewing the alleged contract; I am very particular with correspondence and wouldn’t have missed anything relating to entering a contract.
We contacted BT via the ‘contact us’ section of the website asking for proof that we received notification of the contract being renewed and the auto-reply promised an answer within 72 hours, no such answer has been received. If BT can’t provide us with evidence of this alleged contract then why should we just hand over the money for something that I firmly believe does not exist?
This has raised another big concern for me; I manage I.T at a car dealership and we have several phone lines, broadband connections and leased lines, many with BT – are these all going to be on the same kind of alleged ‘rolling contract?’ One of my pending projects is to review our lines and internet connections and these kind of underhand practices will certainly make me consider using BT both at work and at home.
Can anybody offer a suggestion of how to get some help from BT with this issue? We both feel very disappointed with how BT can make something this simple turn into a very unpleasant process.
