Locked into HALO and unable to reduce costs - do BT ever try to retain loyal customers?

[Puma937]

@NigelB72 - my neighbour moved to Sky which is far cheaper, but is having a nightmare. So that puts me off.

Virgin Media is now available at our address and the package prices are great, but I really just wanted to stay with BT and migrate to EE when required. It's just the pricing that is extortionate.

I thought the fact that I am out of contract with BT would allow me to negotiate a new competitively priced contract - well one equivalent to a new customer. BUT.....the best they can offer is to remove Halo by being forced to move to EE and expect me to pay £17 more a month than a newbie. BT are taking loyal customers for mugs and forcing them to leave.  

[Puma937]

Has anyone managed to get a retention deal that at the very least matches a new customer offer?

It's strange that the best advice is to leave BT altogether.

[naylor2006]

New customers are always offered incentives because most the time we cannot be bothered to change provider and pay the extra money to avoid the hassle. I am in this category, if my price goes up a tenner i'd probably suck it up, 15 maybe but 20 i'd considering having to leave, its just the way companies operate. Luckily though with Openreach infra we are free out of contract to go anywhere.

If is Virgin it is likely Cable? Even so they do operate their own Fibre now, this could be a good idea because the order of a Virgin setup will not interfere with your existing, like me you could run the two together until you are sure you are ready to cancel the other. Then when it comes to moving changing again in 18 months time just go onto a rolling contract with Virgin and setup an Openreach based ISP again, ensure its all good then cancel Virgin. 18-24 months later...I think you get the gist. Doing it this way means you have a backup, jumping to another Openreach provider and back again always means you will change over on a given day and if there is a problem....= downtime.

You are in a position of power here if you ask me.

Also can anyone confirm if this guy can just go to EE and sign up as a new customer without dealing with BT at all? Are the companies that separate yet?

You can change the topic to "does anyone ever try to retain loyal customers", not often.

Actually, as generally dreadful Virgin's Customer Service is, their orders usually go through fine and they do offer pretty nice deals when you want to leave, thats always been my experience, I just wanted off Cable and onto Fibre.

[WSH]

I’ve only scanned the rest of the thread quickly, so forgive me if someone has already covered this.

Have you tried approaching EE directly?  Afterall, if you are effectively leaving BT, it’s not up to them whether they offer you new customer terms or not.  They’re fond of saying EE is a separate company when it suits them.  If that is true, the terms are up to EE not BT.

[naylor2006]

Yup, I forgive you for not scanning, this is exactly what I said, he is out of contract, just sign up at EE as a new customer and have them cease the existing service as part of the new order, just like if he was going to Sky, Plusnet etc. EE and BT are supposed to be separate now.

[WSH]

Yes, but the point I was making is that they are the same provider when it suits them to be, so will it necessarily lead to a break in service?

Plus EE are probably best placed to answer that, so I wouldn't be wasting my time talking to BT about it.  (A transfer is "Gaining Provider Lead" afterall).

[Puma937]

@naylor2006 @WSH - Quick Update: I called EE twice and was left on hold for 30mins each time, so gave up. Called BT again Thursday evening and spoke to a lady called Amy in Cornwall who was extremely helpful. Ideally I would like to stay with BT to make things easy. We have hours on recordings on our BT Pro box, so switching would mean we lose them.

She informed me that I definitely do not need to leave BT if I don't want to. She then looked at the best price available and quoted £50.99 for FF500......on EE. When I queried why it was EE, she told me that there are NO offers on BT - effectively forcing me to move. I then said that as a  new customer FF500 is £39.99 on EE , so I might as well sign up as a new customer. She then said that they were the same company and that my address would be flagged as an existing customer, so I couldn't switch via that method.

We continued chatting and she then suddenly knocked £16 off the £50.99 and quoted £34.99. I asked how she could suddenly reduce my bill by £16, but she had no answer. She then stated that she would pull together all the available options and email me the prices. Surprise surprise.......nothing received.

[brookheather]

I am currently on BT FF500 (no Halo or landline) and paying £33.43 - I just checked my EE offers and they are now matching my current BT price so FF5500 Essentials for the same £33.43 and FF Gigabit Essentials for £44.99.  Previously the EE prices were more expensive than my current BT price (under contract until March 2025) but now seem to be more reasonable - perhaps they are trying harder to encourage migration from BT to EE.

[naylor2006]

I would be just exploring signing up to EE as a new customer at this point going directly to them, their prices are great at the moment.

[chrisjp]

Ahh, so BT and EE are separate companies when it suits BT to claim that, but are the same company when that suits them better.
Re-inforces my view that, unfortunately, BT/EE has turned into a scam company