Carers allowance for a social contract.

[Friday123]

Hello,

we have been BT customers for a number of years and for the last few years I have become a carer for a family member.
I am the current contract holder.

What with the price increases recently we are looking at ways of reducing our outgoings so I was looking at alternatives and came across the BT social contract option which I then applied for however as I am in receipt of carers allowance and not UC the application could not proceed as I think carers allowance is more a legacy benefit these days and so was not recognised by the process.

The family member I care for is in receipt of a number of benefits pension credit being one of them and I just phoned cs to ask if we could add her name to our contract in order to be able to apply for the social contract tariff and was told that was not possible and also that it was not possible to switch our current contract into her name only.

I was also told that when our current contract ends on July 7th or thereabouts that if we apply for a new contract under the family members name we would then lose our current phone number which we have had for decades and do not wish to lose.

I would like some help if possible to clarify what options are available to us and if it is possible to add a family members name to an existing contract or to transfer a contract into a family members name or if it could be possible to start a new contract at the same address as an old contract in a different name and retain the old phone number?

Complicated and long winded and if you have read this far well done and thank you.

Yours hopefully,...

[imjolly]

@Friday123 

you cannot transfer the contract as advised and you would need to end your current contract and get a new contract in name of someone who qualifies for BT Home Essentials.  

this could get messy especially as you want to retain number so I have asked a forum mod who is BT employee to see if they can help

they will post here

[DavidM]

Hi @Friday123 and welcome back.

Thanks for posting about the Essentials package. @imjolly is totally correct. You would need to cancel the current contract which would release the number. You would be without service while the new order is processed. Once everything is ceased off you can then reorder throiugh the Essentials package and we would attempt to get the old number back for you, though there is no guarantee that would happen. As you're stil in contract until July your best option would be to hold off to avoid any early cancellation charges. Once you get close to that date post back and we'll be happy to lend a hand.

Cheers

David

[Friday123]

Thank you both.

I'm not going to do anything before the contract ends I guess but I was considering maybe then going to Now for a month in order to take the  number with me then come back to BT and port the number again.

Not knowing how the number swop goes between companies would that be a possibility or would a two month gap be better?

Thanks again.