Unfairness of BT prices for long time customer of 42 years

[Mattiesmomma]

Hi all

We are long standing customer of BT for 42 years.  We went Full Fibre last June , FF500 to be exact, decided to do away with landline, mobiles are with Smarty.  Pay £56.79 until increase which is now £59.79.

You look on BT site and for FF500 they are offering it at £33.99 24 month contract, up next year to £36.99.

As a long standing customer we are paying way over what we should be, still got 13 months to go on contract.  I`m sure some of you have had this issue.  Would it be an idea to call retentions at BT and see what they can do,  Im sure they will try to get me to go to EE ....... no way.

If we change to another provider towards the end of the contract next year I have read we may still get access to our emails but at a £7.50 charge a month, as we have had these email accounts since the dark ages we do not want to have to notify people of change of email address, the list is endless for the both of us.

I could start using Gmail more for me but do it on a gradual basis.

Look forward to you responses

Regards Jean

[imjolly]

unfortunately there is no good deal just because you are a long serving customer and in fact it is new customers who tend to get better deals - unless you negotiate a better deal when you renew your contract.  obviously you were happy with your deal when you renewed last year.  do you have the add on halo 3/3+ which is an expensive add on?  Do you have BTTV?

[Kodikid]

It's called the loyalty penalty

You have no-one to blame but yourselves. Never heard of price comparison sites. 

[Mattiesmomma]

Hi

No to Halo 3/3+ and BT TV.   We wanted BT to fix the FF in for us.   There`s no harm seeing what they can offer, you never now,  obviously leaving contract early there`s a huge  fee to pay.  It will be interesting this time next year what BT can offer us with yet another price increase, Speaking to Retention Dept may help then.

[gg30340]

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@Mattiesmomma wrote:

If we change to another provider towards the end of the contract next year I have read we may still get access to our emails but at a £7.50 charge a month, as we have had these email accounts since the dark ages we do not want to have to notify people of change of email address, the list is endless for the both of us.

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When you leave BT your email account is "downgraded" to BTMail Basic. This is free however you can not use it on an email client or email apps such as you may have on your mobile devices. It can only be used with a web browser (Webmail). If you only ever use webmail you will notice no difference.

See link

https://www.bt.com/help/email/bt-email-products

[chrisjp]

BT claim in their advertising that "existing customers will never pay more then new ones" but this is highly misleading. It's only true if new customers sign up for the expensive "deals" that BT has slowly moved existing customers onto. Of course, new customers are never offered such "deals".
The only time existing customers have any leverage is when their 2 yr contracts come up for renewal and you then have to threaten the Retentions team by telephone (only) with leaving BT to maybe get them to offer you a better deal. This is quite hard to achieve because the telephone agents only get their commission if they upgrade you to a more expensive deal - there is no money in it for them if they downgrade you.
BT operates a "barrow boy" market I'm afraid as, of course, do all other broadband suppliers.

[WSH]

So the key in the future is clearly going to be to play one ISP off against the other and *** loyalty.  I can see the time coming when you do 2 years with one, then 2 years with another, then 2 years with the first one again.  I hope that churn is worth it for them.

Ten years ago I used to be with Sky.  I left purely because they had got greedy and it was time to upgrade from ADSL to FTTC.  Now, after 10 years with BT I'm afraid the same is true, so I'm probably off back to Sky for the upgrade to FTTP.

[gg30340]

The price promise for renewing contract customers is only if you have the Halo3 package and are renewing to the same package.

There has never been a renewing contract price promise for any of BT's other packages.

[WSH]

No offense gg30340, but Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha....  Classic, a price promise on a b****y expensive package...I love it.

[gg30340]

No offence taken. It isn't me that is giving a price promise on the most expensive package. Any one who takes out Halo3 must have more money than sense.