Getting clarity on charges

[Beaselwood]

Yesterday I negotiated a new Broadband package with a very helpful member of the BT team.  The monthly fee agreed was £20 a month (with calling package on top.)  I would receive a confirmation by email.

The email confirmed a monthly fee of £39.99 a month.  I can only assume that this does not take the line rental saver into account (which I have paid in advance.)  But WHY doesn't it clarify this?  Why should I be left doubting whether the correct figure had been updated?  I tried the call centre again, but gave up after 30 minutes' wait.

So I thought MyBT would show me the breakdown of the new fee I had negotiated, but it doesn't.  MyBT orders does show me that I have bought a new package, but nowhere does it tell me WHAT I will be charged.  This should be easy enough shouldn't it?  I consider myself a reasonably savvy person, but if this information is hidden somewhere, I can't find it.

So to recap my question, can anyone confirm whether the monthly charge shown in the email confirmation from BT is BEFORE application of the line rental saver?  Many thanks!

[unwina]

Yeah I'd have to say the BT systems are not the easiest to understand. I did my upgrade online with the offers in my offer eMail just before it runs out. I went for the cheapest which was pretty much similar to what I already had with a few extras. This is what my BB confirmation email said if it helps.

Ongoing charges for this order

700 Minutes Calling Plan 700 minutes of calls to any UK landline number or UK mobile, anytime. £7.00 Broadband Package Yet to discover BT TV? See bt.com/bttv for a great TV service £39.99 Special offer discount Your special offer discount lasts for 24 months -£8.00 Line Rental Saver for 12 months ren-ALL -£19.99 Total ongoing charges £19.00 For the record my LRS runs out on the 26th but I upgraded after the new contract had completed as I did it all online and the  order system can only deal with one order at a time. I don't fully understand why the systems can only cope with single orders but that's the way it works. Not sure that helps you  - My spreadsheets analysis of the 5 deals I was offered - the above was cheapest for me if I selected the same as I had last year as after endless calcs it seems I will be but it is cheaper than last year by £6.49 I think I worked it out as. I also have a few other things that were carried through but they don't show on this email. I kept all my contractual docs that detail everything I signed for my records. I printed them to pdf's as I didn't expect the BT emails to detail it all and they didn't. The first bill will be when I can be sure and will allow me to fully check the improvements. Not sure why BT has to make it so complicated though. As far as you are concerned I think you are correct. I have LRS and the renewal was 11*19.99 but on the bills it will show as -19.99.

[Beaselwood]

Thanks Unwina, much appreciated.  My email confirmation is nowhere near as detailed unfortunately, and curiously this morning I received another email reminder to renew my broadband.  I think I will  have to sit on the phone again for an hour to get some personal attention!

Cheers!

[unwina]

I got emails reminding me about renewing but then I had asked for it to renew on a specific date after I actually processed the job. Sadly BT has never been the best at this stuff and less so since they probably got rid of staff who were well paid and replaced them with offshore staff some years back now. I worked in engineering development and design until we passed it over to India at the time - I think its all returned now - but many of the staff that had worked in BT for years to early retirement after being replaced. In my area they Moved a lot of engineering over to India and to be honest when it was completed we were lucky for them to have picked up 10% of the engineering knowledge they needed. I heard it was offloaded again before it was probably passed back to the uk but by that time much of the expertise had either left the company or had retired as in my case.  

To say that BT websites are a mess and not very easy to work with would be an understatement but it is what is is and we are left with it. I personally stay with them as I got a deal that worked but it was very close this time round and as an ex employee still have very considerable financial interest in BT being better or at least not being sold off!.

Good luck