jansinherts:

Not convinced that the policy is exactly as explained in the BT letter. The policy used to be that 28 days (I think) prior to the expiry of the contract BT would contact the customer, in writing I believe, explaining the renewal options. Only then would an automatic renewal take place if the customer did not opt out.

Obviously I can't say that provision was in your particular contract but I would expect it to be. Cue some corporate "lies" that they sent you a letter, however their case is weakened in that it is not mentioned in the correspondence you quote.

In my case I received the reminder letter, informed BT I did not wish to renew (by telephone). This did not prevent BT from renewing anyway and then incorrectly billing me. I had good enough records of my contact to sort the issue but I have little confidence in BT, partly a result of their preference for offshore contact centres, but unfortunately even less confidence in the telecoms alternatives.

Im sorry to hear about your problems with bt, I used to myself think that they were an okay company but they tried to sting myself along the same lines. I would call ofcom and make a formal complaint, 020 7981 3040 is there number they will then give you a ref and a freephone high level complaints number.

BT normal complaints just read the book and stick to it, high level can look outside of it. I would ask for a copy of the eleged phone call, if thats all that they say its based on.

We have had a BT contract since June 2006 which we have had transferred to a few different addresses the last transfer in March 2008.

As both myself and my husband have mobile phones with lots of free minutes included we very, very, rarely use the land line. Therefore when we moved house again on 3^rd April 2009 we decided to cancel the BT account.

We have since received a final bill from BT with a “cancellation charge” for £83.50 for some free evening and weekend call scheme we were on.

We have contacted BT to say we hadn’t signed up for this service and as they can see from our previous bills we would have no need for it as we didn’t use the phone. We have received the reply below.

BT’s reply is saying everything is verbal and they automatically renew the contract unless you tell them not to.

Is there anything we can do about this? It seems very unfair that BT can just heap cancellation charges on you for something we didn’t even know we had.

The fact that they are saying it was all agreed verbally means they don’t need to prove we agreed to it.

Even if they had asked us if we wanted it, wouldn’t this be miss-selling as we had about 3 minutes call charges in the last 6 months so would not benefit from it anyway?

Should they be allowed to automatically renew a service you don’t use and then charge you to cancel it?

We have never refused to pay anything before and BT are threatening that our credit rating will be affected if we don’t pay.

I would be very grateful for your advice on this.

I am sorry to hear that you feel that you never requested the Unlimited Evening and Weekend Plan and that you are unhappy with the charge you have been charged for ending your contract before your term expired.

When you took service out with BT on the 07/03/09 you were placed on a special offer of the unlimited evening and weekend plan at no extra cost which meant that you were only paying the basic line rental of £11.50 a month with the benefit of getting your calls to all local and national numbers charged at no extra charge for up to an hour.

This special offer was a 12 month renewable contract, all BT’s renewable contracts do renew themselves unless the customer contacts us before the renewal date to state otherwise. All BT’s contracts are a verbal agreement. Therefore I will be unable to remove any of the cancellation charges as you did agree to the 12 month renewable contract when taking service out with BT.

I trust the above information is satisfactory to your complaint, however if you have any further queries regarding the above information please reply to my email.

You will shortly receive a survey via email asking how I personally dealt with your recent contact via bt.com. I would like to hear your feedback to help me improve my customer service skills. The questions relate to me personally but there is also a box for general comments about your experience with BT.

Thank you for contacting BT
Yours Sincerely

Natasha Martin
E-Customer Service Advisor.