£55.16 bill for 18p worth of calls!

[ASecretLemonadeDrinker]

Just got my BT bill, I will break it down.

£10 for a direct debit not being honoured (no idea what happened there, we always call when we get bill and pay )
£17.62 reconnection charge (probably due to the funny direct debit)
£1.00 minimum calls fee (didn't make enough calls so have to pay £1)
£12.79 Line rental and calling plan
£1.49 friends and family mobile (??)
£2.59 calling features pack (???)
£7.99 Broadband (fair enough )
£1.50 payment processing fee
£0.18 phone usage
_
£55.16 !

But it's BT, so can't say I'm surprised!

They are so much better than whoever I was with before, fixing my phone line and giving me broadband that works, but bloomin' heck! Hopefully next month we won't have the direct debit and reconnection thing, and I will try and take off some of these packages they have bunged on - we only wanted a phone line and broadband.

I would say get on the phone to complain but I have been there and it did nothing for my blood pressure

This is the reason I would never EVER go back to BT.

This might help you to get through a bit quicker.

I had mine cut off and swapped to virgin, then BT sent me a bill for cutting it off that was twice the amount of the last bill because I had to pay line rental for a line I no longer have. Tossers, as if I'm going to pay that. They sent it to a collections agency.

What the fuckety fuck is a 'minimum calls fee'?! And a 'payment processing fee'?! You've not used their services so you have to pay £1, and because you've paid for it you need to pay £1.50 to pay for the payment. WTF?!

I had to pay them £112 to reconnect my line and have to choice but to pay £12 line rental (soon to increase) and that's bad enough. Grr for you!

Another one that voted with her feet and left BT nor will return..

I would phone up querry the DD and ask what the charge was. I have managed to get them to change stuf but you need at least 1 hour to deal with it

Ah yes the lovely BT

They charged my late mother in law £65 to disconnect her line.

Shes dead FFS

Took 3 calls to sort it out and despite me telling them 3 times they keep sending bills to her house (with weird additions)

I am going to phone them the final time this afternoon pointing out

1 She is dead
2 As she is dead she cannot open her post
3 She does not live there anymore (as she is dead)so sending extra letters asking her to come back with special offers will not work (as she is dead)
4I have asked for the final bill to be sent to me (at my address) as I am still alive and able to deal with it. (so far they have sent 4 bills to her address)

Wankers

I won't go back to BT either. Not in a million fucking years. I had no end of problems with them. I am now with Sky and have had only one real problem with them in the last two years. Much cheaper and less hassle.

OTOH, we changed back to BT after 15 years with cable, because of Virgin Media's total inability to stick to their own terms and conditions. They stuck us with a £600 bill due to a fault at their end and charged us another £100 to disconnect an already disconnected line! We were only with VM for about 1 year after they took over the previous company, who had never given us any problems at all. Within a year of VM, we had changed to sky for TV and BT for phone.

I think that all companies have the potential to screw things up, what matters is how they deal with it when it happens and IME, BT have been better than VM!

Are you even with BT?

They do seem to charge more for using it less or rather; paying someone else for the calls (Sky or whoever), so that you go with them. Even that 'caller display' thingie costs if you're not paying them for the calls.

Oh crap stupid!
I am wondering why the twonks took £15 last month instead of £34 and want £76 this month

Presumably you made more calls, but they were in the calling plan? Our phone bills routinely contains no chargeable calls: the calling plan covers all geo and non-geo fixed numbers, and we use mobiles to call mobiles to use the contract minutes on those. The only things that would be chargeable are mobile calls from the landline and international calls.

Thank GOODNESS we didn't go with BT.

I too never understood charing £10 for the privilege of paying. They are obviously from the RyanAir school of customer service.

We went with plusnet, and got three months free broadband (because I cleverly googled "plusnet discount").

I got an e-mail from BT yesterday which was telling me about the upcoming changes in the line rental etc. One thing it mentioned in the e-mail was the 1571 answerphone. AS of next month I can record my own message,cool I thought. Then I kept reading and it seemed to say that if I didn't receive any messages on my 1571 or call people back directly from it, which I never do as they charge money for that, they are going to charge me £1. At least I think that's what it said it really confused me. Has anyone else had this info?

I also have the friends and family mobile package. I got it ages ago when my brother didn't have a landline and it made it cheaper to phone his mobile that way. Now he has a landline and we hardly ever phone mobiles but it's still on our bill I should really call and get it removed.

I've also had someone phone me from BT and offer me an evening and weekend package rather than just weekends oh yes good deal, we'll send you a letter all about it Mrs Linnet and it will start next month, I'm still waiting over a year later. I'm not that fussed as we don't use our phone that often anyway.

Watch out when they phone you about a new package, the feckers try to tie you into a contract, which is invalid as they only tell you you are now in an 18 month contract after you agree. This is why I 'owe' them money, it's the line rental after I had the damn thing cut off.

The guy on the phone said it would be a new contract and I said fine as I wasn't planning on moving but they haven't changed our package so as far as I'm aware I'm not on a new contract and had no paperwork either.

BT are terrible for tagging on loads of extra charges. They once tried to charge us for not using caller display (a free service if you do use it). Our phone doesn't have a display and we never asked for the service. DP phoned up and they said they'd cancel the service but couldn't waive the charge. When he politely insisted on talking to a supervisor they changed their minds

BT are quite possibly the worst company I have ever dealt with.

A cataogue of errors and shit customer service.

Can't wait until this contract is up.

I don't touch 1571 - it is not always a great idea for it to take a call when the line is busy. For a start, if speaking to one of my sisters, we can be talking for 90 to 120 minutes (for 5p with 1899.com).

If you have 1571 enabled, and happen to have a long call (but don't use 'Call Waiting' to get a buzz to inform you someone else is calling) then the caller will have been charged 9.9p (?) connection and something per minute to leave a message, and get charged again if they ring back after 20 minutes or more and line still busy.

Then, unless things have changed, the only indication for the recipient is that the dial tone changes, to indicate some message(s) waiting. If you don't notice, does the system call you to tell you ?

For calling a mobile, if you don't have your own mobile on contract, it may be cheaper to use an Asda SIM (8p/min to landlines or mobiles) rather than some additional package with BT or Sky or some other firm.

MoneySavingExpert e-mail says Primus charges 8.99 (but most likely only on DD, and there's a chance it could go up - today TalkTalk has announced plan to increase monthly fee by 55p ).

If someone is sticking with BT, then with the planned line rental rise in October, they could save themselves about 30 pounds by signing up for the BT "Line Rental Saver" (probably need to sign up in September to gain benefit). From October, line rental goes up 50p with BT to 12.04 (monthly, payment by DD) but a reduced rate of the equivalent of 9.49 is available if you pay the full year in advance.

Clearly, paying out 113.88 may be a big chunk for many, but there's no way most people could earn interest of 30 pounds on that small an amount. You would be locked in with BT for the 12 months. Leaving BT would have a penalty as you'd lose the rest of the line rental that you had paid. It's perhaps their way of discouraging anyone from switching to another company like Sky, TalkTalk, or even Plusnet (owned by BT).

I'm going to go and check my bill thoroughly now

I have to admit I never really understand it

I'm going to be the annoying voice of reason here and say that surely the reason your calls are so low is that you have the friends & family and the line rental/call plan and the calling features pack.

I get this on my mobile phone bill, the call charges/text charges are really low but that's cos my call plan which costs £20 includes 200 free texts and 200 free call minutes.

I'll get my coat now...

D

BT should be TB - short for Thieving bastards. id never go back to them. my DD ended up being something like £76 a month!

I could have started a thread about bt when I moved house!!! Would have been unanimous YANBU

However easily resolved when I called and politly pointed out I'm sure it was a computer error adding charges automatically, cutting me off then charging me to reconnect (when they owed me £165 still from a incorrect charge!) and the 'extras' etc would be refunded in due course. They couldn't argue without saying actually we did it on purpose!

After getting refund I then informed them I was withdrawing my custom