BT responded to my complaint in record time, usually it takes them at least 4 weeks. However their response was less that thrilling

Dear Mr Jamieson

Thank you for your email dated 28/2/08 regarding Bills and Payments.

I am very sorry to hear of the difficulties you have experienced.

In response to your query, the rental charges are £96.98 Excl Vat every quarter and that is including line rental charges for BT Together Option and Broadband Service Charges. You have been charged £24.50 as Payment Charges in which £4.50 is for Payment Processing Fee and there has been a charge for £20.00 which is charged for Reconnection Charges. The last quarter payment was made after the due date and you had your outgoing calls restricted for which BT has charged you a reconnection. For the whole outstanding amount, there is a VAT charged for £18.37.

Hence you have an outstanding balance of £127.81.

With all the difficulties you have faced with respect to your Direct Debit and paying a fee for reconnection, I would strongly suggest you to set in up a Direct Debit Monthly wherein we send our customers the monthly telephone bills and directly debit their bank account for whole of the bill amount. The required bill payments are claimed 7 calendar days after bill production. Monthly Billing is now only available to customers with Direct Debit Monthly.

Should you have any further queries do not hesitate to contact us again.

Obviously that’s not acceptable and has represented the final straw. I replied with this:

Let me get this straight, you’ve charged me £24.50 in payment charges, £4.50 payment processing fee and £20 for reconnection?

None of this was actually explained to me and I wasn’t notified of any of it. I wasn’t disconnected as my Internet worked uninterrupted throughout the last few months. My last bill was paid late because of your error with the bill in the first place and your taking several weeks to respond to every query… all of which is documented by me.

You have hit me with hidden charges and not even notified me of such. That is not on my friend. You expect me to set up a direct debit? So you can take money from account without even telling me what it’s for, without any notice? Do you think I’m stupid???

I will not be paying any payment charges, processing fees or reconnection fees.

You either rescind those charges so that I can pay for the service I am getting or you can consider this my written notice of cancellation.

I will not be held to ransom by you like this.

If you think you can take me to court for the money I remind you that I record all of my phone calls and keep all of my correspondence, which means I have the original phone calls with your salesman and the customer service reps who both lied to me about the direct debit charges. This is all displayed on my website www.mrdaz.com for download. I will gladly produce this as evidence and for the Trading Standards Authority.

So you have two choice, rescind the hidden charges you have unlawfully added to my account or cancel my service and we can call this a day. I’ve had nothing but bad experiences with BT since the day I joined you and would gladly be shot of your lying, deceitful company.

Again I look forward to your reply.

If I don’t get a satisfactory reply I’ll just sack BT off and go to Vodafone. I could use one of their packs then on my laptop wherever I am. I never use the landline for BT anyway so I’m wasting money having the line rental.

I think this could be it for me and BT.

Darren Jamieson

Darren Jamieson, aka MrDaz, is the Technical Director and co-founder of Engage Web and has been working online in a career spanning two decades. His first website was built in 1998 and is still live today.

    

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