leaving bt what a nightmare

[maghater]

Decided to leave BT after many years, support has just gone done hill pretty quicjkly

Anyhow, rang up to cancel on an agreed date (8th Oct). Woke up on the 9th , all services had stopped, great I thought

A few days later I got a message saying I owed them £70!!  downloaded the bill, and they were charging me for full month for broadband, land line, and sport. Rang up and spent over an hour on the phone, got passed through 3 different departments, and after much hanging on, and patiently explaining the problem over and over again I was assured that a correct bill would be raised.

Fast forward to this morning, when the new bill arrived, most of the £70 had been credited, but then they had the nerve to charge me £7.50 for late payment of the incorrect bill. Another lengthy phone call resulted. OK it was only £7.50, but there was no way I was going to let them off with that.

So with BT for decades and they end up treating me like this, glad to be away

[Anonymous]

Not defending them, they are in a mess, but I suspect most systems are set up to cancel your services because they have been notified you are moving to a new ISP who is taking over the line, rather than someone just cancelling in the way you did.

At least you have escaped!

[edbostan]

There is a one touch service, rather like leaving an energy company, when you contact the new broadband company and they do the rest. It supposedly came into effect during September. Would that method be smoother than personal contact. Time will tell.

[Paul608085]

@edbostan 

That process for changing providers has been around for a lot longer than last month!

Indeed, it is the only recommended way of moving ISPs, unless there is a change of network provider involved - ie from an Openreach based service such as BT, EE and Plusnet etc (and others), to an ISP using an "AltNet" eg CityFibre or Virgin Media.

The customer personally contacting the losing provider, when stayin on the same network, (almost), always inhibits a smooth transition.

.

[iniltous]

No doubt the late payment was for cancellation of the direct debit , you may think and even expect to not to have to pay for some days ( maybe almost 30 days in some cases ) after the service has ended and be refunded later for those days , ( in effect giving the company a small interest loan  for up-to a month ) but that’s the way it is , and it’s that way with pretty much every provider in every sector….,

The billing production takes place regardless of your notification that you are quitting, if the OP had done what is expected ( even if they think it’s a bit of a liberty ) , paid for the days after quitting up-to the normal bill date , and then be refunded for those days a little later on , then no late payment charge would have been generated…for those that ‘complain’ that they should not to have to provide this interest free loan for a week or two , you pay for rental in advance ( so you pay for something you haven’t yet had ) but pay ‘charges’ in arrears , so weeks after you consumed whatever it was , as an example, if you made a call that cost £1 , and it appeared on your bill 4 weeks later and you then settled the bill 2 weeks after that , the company doesn’t expect you to pay 6 weeks interest on that £1 ,so why expect interest on anything that’s to their benefit…..what does £70 for 2-3 weeks ‘earn’ in a current account anyway , not even a few pennies .

[maghater]

They were provided with 6 weeks notice, they managed to stop broadband, phone and tv on the nominated date, so why the problem over payments. I had been a customer for decades, and always paid up on time. Charging someone for something they have not provided is illegal, and whilst I accept that problems can arise, ~I think having to spend 90 minutes on two phone calls to "sort it" is ridiculous.

Not to worry going forward I can see that BT have much greater problems than me transferring my custom to Sky😊

[iniltous]

As stated , if you ever leave Sky , the chances of your leaving date and the billing production coinciding to have an accurate and final bill on the actual leaving date are slim to non existent, and no doubt you will be up in arms about that too…to completely leave notice only needs to be 30 days , not 6 weeks , and as stated , if you hadn’t decided to ‘usurp’ the process then you wouldn’t have needed to contact anyone , wouldn’t have had a late payment fee and although you would have paid in advance ( as you had done for every other month you were a customer ) any paid for days after the end of service would have been refunded to the same account the money was taken from….very rough but £70 taken out of your account and refunded 21 days later costs about 0.4 pence ….I suppose you could have put it towards your Sunderland season ticket , 

If you joined Sky you didn’t even need to serve notice  to BT they would have done that on your behalf