Why does an 80 year old need such expensive Broadband???

[naylor2006]

I think sometimes there is an overwhelming feeling of being hard done by when on balance perhaps objectively....actually its not that bad. We are all human and can get emotionally invested leading to Ofcom this Trading Standard that and the ISP becomes the enemy.

You want to hear about horror stories then Virgin is the place to go, there you can literally get signed up for a new contract you never even agreed to then get asked to pay the termination charge, that was a dark week in my household, no it wasnt an automatically renewal.

Back to this post though, I'm kinda yet to see the huge deal apart from perhaps mis selling Halo but we do not know the conversation that took place on the phone with BT between the 80yo folks, on the face of it having tech support and a backup internet is probably quite good for the vulnerable. I would never get Halo though or recommend my parents do! Sadly I have to take care of their stuff most of the time.

No one operates a company to try and save people money, sure there are savings masquerading as incentives to join a given ISP but they are playing the long game, most people cannot be bothered to switch and end up paying extra to avoid the hassle when it comes to renewal, sales agents on the phone will be pushed by their leadership to sell certain products, which will be linked to their KPI's and so on. BT are not the only company in the world that do it. 

[Edinburgh-wg]

Your parents can request a transcript or recording of the calls they had with BT to identify whether or not mis-selling took place, even if it's in relation Halo. This should be accessible via a Data Subject Access Request (DSAR).

[Crimliar]

You might want to refer to:

https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/consumer/changed-your-mind/if-you-were-misled-or-pressured-into-bu...

Sometimes things get missold, and companies are legally responsible for correcting things.  Saying it's not possible to correct such an event is not lawfully acceptable!

[RichieRichie]

Hi. I’m about to get involved in a similar scenario for a client of mine who is 92 and paying circa £70 per month for complete WiFi broadband.  She has a single old laptop and a landline. 
I note that she seems to also get additional call charges each month which amazes me seeing as she’s paying a huge amount per month just to be able to do some browsing and see her emails on the net. 

She has no idea what package she is on but knows that she was told she had to switch to digital and she no longer gets voice messages to her plug in answering machine but instead has to dial a number to see if she has any messages. It appears to me to be a huge functionally backwards step for a doubling of price. 

I will be pursuing BT about it including the delays to respond to her such that the cooling off period expired before she could cancel. 

[Linzi_H]

Hi @RichieRichie 

We'd never want to leave customers feeling confused about what they are paying for, and I think you're doing the right thing by contacting us directly to discuss this.

I'm really confident the team will be able to help further.

Please let us know how you get on.

Linzi 

[marco806]

she should be paying no more than 40 pounds per month..jesus , you can get 900 speeds and all inclusive calls for that in many places.

[chrisjp]

"BT don't set out to manipulate older folks into buying things they dont understand, they are not scammers."

While it may be true that BT corporately are not scammers, I'm afraid some of their agents on the telephone, seeking to maximise their commissions, do sail pretty close to the scamming wind.
There have been many posts on this forum of people being told highly misleading information to get them to agree to an upsell.
Halo in particular is just a device to enable BT to charge around twice the price offered to new customers for the same service, while claiming that "existing customers will never pay more than new ones". This is only true if new customers sign up for a Halo deal, which is normally not offered to them.
BT also makes it near impossible to downgrade from a Halo deal once you have unwisely agreed to it.
This may be not scamming in the illegal sense, but in my view these sales practices, while maybe appropriate for a street market, are not appropriate for a major supplier of broadband and telephone services.

[naylor2006]

Incentivised to upsell is the problem, this leaves the agent in the position where they may consider their morals against what they stand to gain, like the way sales has been in many areas forever. Also, it seems alot of the time the agent doesnt actually know how a certain product will or will not actually benefit a customer so its just selling it blind anyway.

When I worked in technical support we were incentivised based on how many calls we could take in a day, whilst I am a pretty nice dude generally (I hope), given I was on minimum wage and the only way to stand out was to be top of the table, it certainly swayed me sometimes to get someone off the phone quicker. I was 21 though, nearly 20 years later I have a completely different head, the problem may also be that someone in their early 20's just starting out has different priorities.

Its a shame anyway you look at it.