Problem with leaving BT

[leahb777]

Hi,

This is a bit of a confusing one. I have contacted BT via phone a few times, but I was getting confused by the jargon, and was hoping to get some help written down!

In August, a contract renewal was took out without us asking for it (and our netflix used by whoever did it!). I rang up to cancel the next day. 

On Monday I was looking to leave BT as I need a cheaper contract. I rang up and was told I was still in contract, however they could see i rang to cancel in August and apologised for not doing that, and as a gesture of good will, they would remove any get-out charges if we chose to leave. He gave me a ref number where this was confirmed, as I was worried they might go back on their word.

So on Tuesday, I signed up with vodafone online. I later got an email from BT about leaving and there would be a £590 fee to leave. 

I rang BT today to check at what point that fee would be cancelled (as I cannot afford to pay that in one go). He said something about cancelling the AOT with the BT store, however when he went through the questions, it said I need to contact vodafone to cancel the AOT first. He said they would know what i was on about.

However they did not.

How can I rectify this? If i have specific instructions I will be a bit more confident about how to fix it. 

Thanks for any help, feeling very confused ant sure of my next steps!

[Keith_Beddoe]

@leahb777 

This is just a customer to customer help forum, everyone here, including myself, are just customers.

The only BT Employees are the forum moderators who may offer advice here.

[PaddyB · Accepted solution]

Hi @leahb777,

Thank you for posting and welcome to the Community. I'm sorry to read that you're leaving BT. If you send me your details, I'll be able to take a look at your BT Account to make sure that no cancellation charges are applied to your account.

I have sent you a private message with instructions on how to contact the team.  You can access your messages via the envelope icon at the top right of the screen, or click on this link, Private messages

Thanks,

Paddy

[iniltous]

If you called to cancel in August last year ,( so not a migration but a request to cease your service completely) then obviously a month later your service would finish , as that never happened, you presumably didn’t ring to ‘cancel’  completely , at best you called to refuse a re contract offer , normally you wouldn’t call to do this ( there is no point )  , you would simply continue on an out of contract basis .

As you called because you state someone else renewed on your behalf without your knowledge, and you didn’t want to renew , around August did your price increase to whatever the out of contract price was  ( this is what  should have happened if the  renewal you didn’t want was cancelled) or did  you continue to get  some sort of reduction ( discount) on the price ( which would suggest you were still within a minimum term and not continuing on an out of contract price ) 

The BT Mod  is looking at this now , so it’s nothing more than an observation on my part , but you can’t expect to benefit from a reduction in  price for a new minimum term since August , then 6 months later decide that you shouldn’t be held to the contract , it’s one or the other , obviously if  you have been paying  full price , then you are not quitting early , ( so hard to see why the early termination charge was raised) but I suspect you have been getting a discount since August and you may be expected to pay 6 months difference between in or out of contract pricing , if they agree that the renewal was not agreed by the account holder .

If that’s the case , and you are released from ETC , you may owe the difference between the higher ‘out of contract’  price and the price you were paying ( 6 months worth ) .

[leahb777]

Hi, Thanks for your reply. Sorry, I meant when I called in August, I try to cancel this contract renewal. I wanted a roll-on contract, rather than signing a new one. (I guess technically that means being 'out-of-contract?) I told them that I want to be able to leave in the future if I want to. 

I just wanted to pay the same price as always, but with the ability to move on.

Just looked through my bills, and the price did actually increase in August, by about £10 from previous bills. I am not really sure if this means I was in or out of contract.

Happy to pay a small amount if that is the case (the 6 months difference), I just can't afford the big lump sum of £590, and I need to move away from TV and broadband packages as can't afford it currently. (Dropping TV would save me about £50 a month)

[RobbieMac]

Thanks for sending over your details @leahb777

We've got them now and we'll be in touch as soon as we can to help sort everything out.

Thanks,

Robbie

[iniltous]

I’m sure you realise this statement was never achievable 

I wanted to pay the same price as always, but with the ability to move on.

If your  contract term was ending and you didn’t want to re-contract , then the price would go up to whatever the contractual price was when the ‘deal’ was originally agreed, so ( for arguments sake ) if the deal was £30/month for 24 months ( ignoring any annual increases for simplicity ) then £45 after that , then obviously if you call ( for whatever reason ) and say you want to continue paying £30 and not £45 , then the only way that is doable is by re-contracting ( accepting a new minimum term ) , otherwise the options are you pay £45 to keep the flexibility to leave penalty free when you want to , or join someone else as soon as practicable, 

I suspect that you have agreed to £30 a month ( or whatever you were actually paying ) but naively assumed you could have this discounted rate with no further contractual commitment, when in fact that was never on offer .

Just for clarification, when did your original BT minimum term expire  ? was it August last year , and whoever supposedly renewed it , did so to coincide with the original deal expiring , or is  that date unrelated to the original contract dates you agreed to ?