This topic

Unfairness of BT prices for long time customer of 42 years

Mattiesmomma — Sat, 03 May 2025 15:26:34 GMT

Hi all

We are long standing customer of BT for 42 years. We went Full Fibre last June , FF500 to be exact, decided to do away with landline, mobiles are with Smarty. Pay £56.79 until increase which is now £59.79.

You look on BT site and for FF500 they are offering it at £33.99 24 month contract, up next year to £36.99.

As a long standing customer we are paying way over what we should be, still got 13 months to go on contract. I`m sure some of you have had this issue. Would it be an idea to call retentions at BT and see what they can do, Im sure they will try to get me to go to EE ....... no way.

If we change to another provider towards the end of the contract next year I have read we may still get access to our emails but at a £7.50 charge a month, as we have had these email accounts since the dark ages we do not want to have to notify people of change of email address, the list is endless for the both of us.

I could start using Gmail more for me but do it on a gradual basis.

Look forward to you responses

Regards Jean

Re: Unfairness of BT prices for long time customer of 42 years

imjolly — Sat, 03 May 2025 15:37:56 GMT

unfortunately there is no good deal just because you are a long serving customer and in fact it is new customers who tend to get better deals - unless you negotiate a better deal when you renew your contract. obviously you were happy with your deal when you renewed last year. do you have the add on halo 3/3+ which is an expensive add on? Do you have BTTV?

Re: Unfairness of BT prices for long time customer of 42 years

Anonymous — Sat, 03 May 2025 16:14:11 GMT

It's called the loyalty penalty

You have no-one to blame but yourselves. Never heard of price comparison sites.

Re: Unfairness of BT prices for long time customer of 42 years

Mattiesmomma — Sat, 03 May 2025 16:14:36 GMT

No to Halo 3/3+ and BT TV. We wanted BT to fix the FF in for us. There`s no harm seeing what they can offer, you never now, obviously leaving contract early there`s a huge fee to pay. It will be interesting this time next year what BT can offer us with yet another price increase, Speaking to Retention Dept may help then.

Re: Unfairness of BT prices for long time customer of 42 years

gg30340 — Sat, 03 May 2025 16:24:58 GMT

@Mattiesmomma wrote:

If we change to another provider towards the end of the contract next year I have read we may still get access to our emails but at a £7.50 charge a month, as we have had these email accounts since the dark ages we do not want to have to notify people of change of email address, the list is endless for the both of us.

When you leave BT your email account is "downgraded" to BTMail Basic. This is free however you can not use it on an email client or email apps such as you may have on your mobile devices. It can only be used with a web browser (Webmail). If you only ever use webmail you will notice no difference.

See link

https://www.bt.com/help/email/bt-email-products

Re: Unfairness of BT prices for long time customer of 42 years

chrisjp — Sat, 03 May 2025 16:28:08 GMT

BT claim in their advertising that "existing customers will never pay more then new ones" but this is highly misleading. It's only true if new customers sign up for the expensive "deals" that BT has slowly moved existing customers onto. Of course, new customers are never offered such "deals".
The only time existing customers have any leverage is when their 2 yr contracts come up for renewal and you then have to threaten the Retentions team by telephone (only) with leaving BT to maybe get them to offer you a better deal. This is quite hard to achieve because the telephone agents only get their commission if they upgrade you to a more expensive deal - there is no money in it for them if they downgrade you.
BT operates a "barrow boy" market I'm afraid as, of course, do all other broadband suppliers.

Re: Unfairness of BT prices for long time customer of 42 years

WSH — Sat, 03 May 2025 16:39:41 GMT

So the key in the future is clearly going to be to play one ISP off against the other and *** loyalty. I can see the time coming when you do 2 years with one, then 2 years with another, then 2 years with the first one again. I hope that churn is worth it for them.

Ten years ago I used to be with Sky. I left purely because they had got greedy and it was time to upgrade from ADSL to FTTC. Now, after 10 years with BT I'm afraid the same is true, so I'm probably off back to Sky for the upgrade to FTTP.

Re: Unfairness of BT prices for long time customer of 42 years

gg30340 — Sat, 03 May 2025 16:42:04 GMT

The price promise for renewing contract customers is only if you have the Halo3 package and are renewing to the same package.

There has never been a renewing contract price promise for any of BT's other packages.

Re: Unfairness of BT prices for long time customer of 42 years

WSH — Sat, 03 May 2025 16:54:36 GMT

No offense gg30340, but Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha.... Classic, a price promise on a b****y expensive package...I love it.

Re: Unfairness of BT prices for long time customer of 42 years

gg30340 — Sat, 03 May 2025 16:56:47 GMT

No offence taken. It isn't me that is giving a price promise on the most expensive package. Any one who takes out Halo3 must have more money than sense.

Re: Unfairness of BT prices for long time customer of 42 years

WSH — Sat, 03 May 2025 16:59:44 GMT

I don't have Halo 3, fortunately, just Halo. That was foisted on me as a free upgrade years ago. My instincts at the time were that it would end up costing me money. Should have listened to my instincts!

Re: Unfairness of BT prices for long time customer of 42 years

gg30340 — Sat, 03 May 2025 17:05:19 GMT

No such thing as a "free lunch". The Halo package was just an expensive gimmick which only promised what BT should have been doing in the first place and charging you extra for the privilege.

Re: Unfairness of BT prices for long time customer of 42 years

WSH — Sat, 03 May 2025 17:08:10 GMT

As I said, that was my thoughts at the time but I let it go...mug that I am. Anyway, I'm hijacking somebody elses thread, so I'm going to let it go at that. My apologies to the OP.

Re: Unfairness of BT prices for long time customer of 42 years

Crimliar — Sat, 03 May 2025 23:45:39 GMT

I do wonder if anyone ever pays the list prices according to:

https://www.bt.com/content/dam/bt/storefront/pdfs/BT_PhoneTariff_Residential.pdf

And if you do look at it, see if you can spot the error on pages 1 & 2!

I fully understand that people are paying over the odds. My in-laws pay BT 2.5 times the amount I pay, for a poorer service!

Re: Unfairness of BT prices for long time customer of 42 years

NigelB72 — Sun, 04 May 2025 06:08:33 GMT

I felt the wraith of bt's loyalty pricing a couple of years ago, my TV and broadband were both due for renewal and my VIP TV pack hit £120 per month and they offered me a one off offer for my gfast broadband of only £59.95... they refused to budge on price even when I terminated all my contracts early and even lied about Openreach installation times and accused my new provider of lying about their installation times. They lost all 3 of my accounts and I'll never go back...

Re: Unfairness of BT prices for long time customer of 42 years

Kimberlin — Sun, 04 May 2025 15:18:56 GMT

This whole ludicrous situation of continually raising the cost of broadband year on year by all of the ISP's for those who are seemingly unable or unwilling to help themselves bag a better deal, will continue possibly, forever.

I just binned BT after 4 years because the next price hike would have taken my monthly payment to over £42. When I renewed after year 2 for another 2 years, I had to haggle like hell to get BT to offer me another 2 years at the same price as a new customer. I mentioned it in a previous post to which I was subsequently belittled by another forum member when I stated that I felt like I literally had to grovel to get that 'new customer deal' as an existing customer. Despite what that member said, I felt exactly like that, that I had to grovel to get the discount. This year as soon as my BT contract ended, I couldn't be bothered to go through all of the haggling game and so I did what I did previously, just switched back to Plusnet and I pay ten quid a month less than if I'd stayed with BT, though I accept that if I had actually called and grovelled hard enough, BT MIGHT have given me a discount similar to a new customer.

I can almost guarantee that after this current contract with Plusnet, I'll be back to BT because undoubtedly in 2 years time, BT will probably be offering exactly what I'm now paying but Plusnet will have increased the price for me as an existing customer to the point where it won't be worth sticking with them. It'called flip flopping, an entirely and unnecessary stupid game, but if it saves me 10 quid a month or more, then I'll do it.

Anyway, it's so easy to swap ISP these days. Why anyone whose paying far too much wouldn't, is beyond me. It took just 5 working days once out of contract to swap from BT to Plusnet and all I had to do was change my username and password in my TP-Link router and the move was absolutely seamlesss.

Sadly, within hours of initiating the switch, I was bombarded with a multitude of missed calls from a number I subsequently discovered is allegedly linked to a team operating out of Stevenage who persistently failed to leave a message to tell me what they were calling me for. That to me is both weird and stupid. I'm on silence unknown callers for a reason, specifically to prevent spamming. I searched the number and was presented with a list of whinging by others who have had a similar experience as I did. After a few days of getting the same stupid number calling me every day, I ended up having to block the number. I wouldn't mind, but when I had the MyBT App, I logged in several times before my contract ended and wasn't offered any decent incentive to stay.

Anyway, despite what appears to come across as the whingiest post ever, I actually don't have any problem with BT. I had excellent service for 4 years for 500mb broadband. I can honestly say, I look forward to returning to BT in the future when I'm sure I'll be offered a new customer sweetner.

Re: Unfairness of BT prices for long time customer of 42 years

Mattiesmomma — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 16:58:46 GMT

Of course I have heard of them