Refund for Queen’s funeral cancellation?

[CDiamond]

Dear BT community,

Well I’m going through hell after having left Talktalk since my contract ended and they hiked the bill up to a whopping £36. I’m unable to work currently due to what is deemed severe mental illness, on a low income and was delighted to find that BT offer the home essentials Broadband for only £15. Now that’s turned in to a whole other level of hell in itself, as it seems like I’m the only person so far that can’t be traced with BTs checks with the DWP, someone nice is on the case (with no promises) but as it stands I’m in limbo on their lowest contract at £31 which doesn’t beat Talktalk’s final offer of £24, waiting to see if there’s anything that can be done. Two weeks so far.

To make matters so much worse now, of course my activation date has been cancelled, and instead they have pencilled me in back of the queue for TEN days time, despite knowing that is the precise date that I am cut off to the point of no return. I think this is unacceptable… it truly is for me as I have moderate tinnitus that is ‘fizzing’ my head in even worse, no tv aerial connected at mine as I only watch internet and stream music constantly to distract from the tinnitus and keep me sane, lol. Also have very limited mobile data, no music system. Dear god I feel up the creek. I suffer from PTSD so music and listening to podcasts is frequently the only thing that gets me to sleep.

Venting aside, I’ve just seen that you are supposed to get paid for every day of delayed activations, will that be so in this case? Having half a mind just to give in and go back to Talktalk because this is ridiculous now. I have to understand the reason for cancellation, but why push me back to the queue?

[gg30340]

See link re compensation.

Automatic Compensation | BT Help

[CDiamond]

Thank you I appreciate the reply, this was the page I saw, however I am wondering if BT will still pay seeing as the delay was unavoidable?

[iniltous]

Any date you were given was tentative , (not a contractual date ) , how can you be given a firm date when your eligibility to the social tariff is dependent on confirmation from a third party ….if and when the confirmation is given , then you will be given a firm date and should that date be missed then compensation in line with the T&C’s should be payable, but at the moment BT don’t even know if you are eligible.
If your order hasn’t actually been accepted it’s pending confirmation that you do qualify for this social tariff, your existing TT service isn’t affected by this ( if it’s also delivered over Openreach ) , BT would serve your notice once confirmation that you do receive the qualifying benefits as been given, if you have independently contacted TT and told them to stop ( cease ) your service on a particular date , then the correct process hasn’t been followed, you shouldn’t contact your old provider yourself, if you have and your TT service has stopped, that’s not BT’s fault .
FWIW , if your minimum term expires with a company, your service simply continues, but possibly without any discount that was applied during the minimum term , the service doesn’t stop , unless you tell them to stop it , if you leave it to the new provider , then the service isn’t stopped or ceased , it’s migrated to the new provider , so you don’t suffer a break in service.

[CDiamond]

Thanks for the response. To be clear this was an official activation date because I did as I was advised to temporarily go on to their lowest BB package available, while the team hopefully work it out so that I can be switched over to the cheaper £15 package. So they were going ahead with the installation regardless

[CDiamond]

I understand what you are saying in regards to not contacting TT, however it is in their terms that they must be notified 30 days before hand, so as it stood in the end they were good to wave any extra bills, which I was already struggling with, so that’s why I went to them direct

[iniltous · Accepted solution]

If you joined BT on a regular package , the idea being that when the confirmation of your eligibility to the social tariff comes along ,  you would be moved onto it , and any credit due added to your account to make up for the difference between the social tariff and the one you were temporarily put on seems reasonable, however the migration process is gaining provider led , you don’t serve notice to TT , the new company ( BT in your case ) does, and it’s irrelevant that TT state 30 days notice etc ( that’s only the case if you move to a company not on Openreach  ) ,

With migration it’s 10-14 days notice , that the new provider gives to the old provider ( not you )

If you incorrectly stepped in and told TT to cease your service, and they have done as you asked and ceased your service , that’s not going to be something you will be compensated for….BT cannot migrate a line that has a pending cease on it , so that cease goes through first, and the migration order has to be cancelled and replaced with a different type order ….it’s unfortunate, but it’s your intervention that caused this loss of service, BT didn’t say anything like ,  ‘ now ring up TT and cancel your service with them’ 

Obviously, you could  cancel with BT and go back to TT if you wanted , it wouldn’t be instant , it would still take some time, but you would have to tell BT that this is what you are going to do ,  BT may be waiting on the DWP saying you qualify for the social tariff, but your standard deal is presumably still going through with the same terms you were offered  ( a credit when the DWP give confirmation ) if you don’t want to overpay and be refunded you would need to get BT to cancel that order , to allow a TT order to go through, otherwise TT will have trouble raising an order while there is still a BT order on the system.

It seems to me you are not due compensation  , BT haven’t made any mistakes in this instance 

[CDiamond]

Well actually in my case I was I’ll advised by the operator that sold me the package as I asked them for help to make the transition as smooth as possible, having never done it before, and mentioned about then ringing Talktalk to cancel and at no point did they say that this wasn’t the process. But yes it is just one of those unfortunate things. Thank you for the in-depth explaination