Landline price rise and line rental saver.

[conrad]

BT are confusing the matter by calling it LRS when the ability to quote line rental separately no longer exists.

It should be regarded purely as an upfront payment of £219.84 which gives you a monthly reduction in your broadband costs of £19.99 - it shouldn't be referred to as LRS but that's how the BT systems deal with it as a legacy item which is redundant under Ofcom rulings.

[kencridland]

I agree with you. This situation is unacceptable. In the information when buying a line rental saver, in the email having bought it, and on the website even now, it is not made clear at all that BT could increase the cost of your line rental once you have bought it up front and paid for it. In fact the email confirming the sale said, "Thanks for choosing Line Rental Saver, As you've paid for your line in advance, that means you're saving money now and you won't need to pay it again for 12 months"

I also got BT complaints people with no idea of what was going on. I received a deadlock letter from BT and am now going to the Ombudsman. I am citing three issues, that a payment is being demanded for a service already paid for up front without any reasonable indication that that would happen, that the BT complaints people are not able to explain anything or deal with this issue, and that I am looking for a Time and Trouble award for being messed about. 

[garybs29]

---

@kencridlandwrote:

I agree with you. This situation is unacceptable. In the information when buying a line rental saver, in the email having bought it, and on the website even now, it is not made clear at all that BT could increase the cost of your line rental once you have bought it up front and paid for it. In fact the email confirming the sale said, "Thanks for choosing Line Rental Saver, As you've paid for your line in advance, that means you're saving money now and you won't need to pay it again for 12 months"

I also got BT complaints people with no idea of what was going on. I received a deadlock letter from BT and am now going to the Ombudsman. I am citing three issues, that a payment is being demanded for a service already paid for up front without any reasonable indication that that would happen, that the BT complaints people are not able to explain anything or deal with this issue, and that I am looking for a Time and Trouble award for being messed about. 

---

I refer you to my previous post - Fact is you've paid to get a 19.99 discount on your package for a line rental saver paid in advance, the price increase is applied BEFORE that discount is taken off ergo it's not a price increase on something already paid for as far as I can see

[Stumpy21]

I don't understand the problem.

If you opt in to LRS you pay £219.84 upfront and get 12 x credits of £19.99 off your bills = £239.88 so you are £20.04 better off per year compared to someone who does not pay LRS.

@kencridlandplease don't rock the boat and ruin it for those of us that understand how it works and are happy to receive the discount, regardless of what BT wants to call it, if you cause too much fuss BT will remove it (like has happened with Plusnet) then all the people who are happy with how LRS works will lose out.

Simple really if you don't want to save money don't take the LRS,

The annual price rise to your package is part of the contact when you sign up to BT so it shouldn't come as a surprise when BT applies it.

[kencridland]

To @garybs29 and @Stumpy21 and all on this thread - Well, I have now had a response from the Ombudsman who found against BT. Here is the conclusion -
"Conclusion
BT has applied a price increase to your monthly package, however this was not made clear at the time of order for your Line Rental Saver, and therefore I consider that the price increase should only apply to your monthly service, as this was not explained to you at the time the package was taken out. BT should therefore provide a credit of the difference on the LRS increase from 31 March 2022 until your renewal date for the LRS. They should also provide you with an apology."

Hopefully, BT will now review their marketing so that it does not leave lots of people with the wrong impression, including the Ombudsman. He looked at what had been sent to me, and what was on the BT website. So, there is no special case for me here, as I only got the standard stuff.

I think one of the most misleading bits of marketing was the email BT sent to me (and others) as follows -
"It costs £219.84 for 12 months, which means you get one month free by paying upfront."
Getting one month's line rental completely free (which is the way that most people read it and I think BT are happy for them to read it this way) is of course impossible if that price does not actually cover the full cost of a year's line rental in practice.

In answer to Stumpy21 about not rocking the boat, what BT need to do is be much clearer in their marketing and materials about how their price rises are calculated, so that it is completely transparent to all, including the Ombudsman. There is no need for them to withdraw the LRS which would lose them customers. They just basically need to be - well more open and honest.

[garybs29]

The reply from the ombudsman is actually laughable, there's been no increase applied on the line rental saver, so in effect they're saying you're due a credit of 0!! Brilliant work from them

[kencridland]

The conclusion would perhaps read better corrected as follows (my change in bold). 

"Conclusion
BT has applied a price increase to your monthly package, however this was not made clear at the time of order for your Line Rental Saver, and therefore I consider that the price increase should only apply to your monthly service, as this was not explained to you at the time the package was taken out. BT should therefore provide a credit of the difference on the line rental increase from 31 March 2022 until your renewal date for the LRS. They should also provide you with an apology."

This is clearly the way most people have read the situation on LRS. The contrast between the information given for a contract (where the CPI+3.9% is highlighted) and the information not given when advertising and buying a LRS is stark, and needs correcting. BT need to make it clear, by including that the LRS 'discount' will not pay the Line Rental in full following the yearly increase of CPI +3.9%) in March each year, and that increase will be added to the monthly bills from then on. They have chosen not to do that, knowing I would argue that most people will think that the LRS is a better deal than it actually is.

[garybs29]

I love the twisting you're putting on this, fact is you pay 219.84 upfront to get 19.99 a month off your package price including line rental charges, the pacakge price is then increased but the same 19.99 per month comes off, ergo the lr saver price is not increased! The standard line rental price which you keep talking about increasing is completely irrelevant, if you're that desparate to get a credit then technically yoy need to pay the extra line rental upfront first above the lr saver

[kencridland]

In response to the points made, when I bought the line rental saver, along with loads of other people, I believed I was buying a year's worth of line rental up front. In it for me was a free month's line rental and avoiding future line rental price increases in that year. In it for BT was getting my money up front and tying me to BT for a year, most likely along with other overlapping contacts for broadband etc.

Then at the complaints stage, the LRS argument the way you put it was made to me by BT.

The question is, has BT made it clear enough to everyone what it is selling when it sells a LRS, including with respect to future price increases on the line rental. Even now, after the price increase on line rentals, every bill I get from BT says in the left hand column "With Line Rental Saver your line rental is discounted because you paid for the full year upfront." Statements like that are disingenuous and not clear. I read that as the line rental was paid for the full year upfront. BT would argue that it means the LRS is paid for the full year upfront.

The Ombudsmen was required to look at evidence I put forward, evidence BT put forward in response, and then any comments we made on each other's evidence. Taking all of this into consideration, along with industry standards, best practices, relevant legislation and the rules set by the regulator, he has decided that BT did not make it clear enough. He made comments in his full statement (which BT now have) like, "On reviewing the confirmation email I can see that the company do advise that your charges would be impacted by a price increase, but it is not clear how having an LRS in place would impact this price increase. The LRS confirmation email sent to you is also unclear, as it doesn’t explain how the LRS is impacted by the annual price increase." There are lessons there for BT, and I hope they take them on board.

[conrad]

BT should stop calling it LRS as line rental is no longer charged separately.

They should just call it Package Saving Bonus and state that if you pay £219.84 up front you receive a monthly discount of £19.99 against your broadband package.

If they had a decent computer billing system all they would have needed to do was change "LRS" to whatever they want to call it.