My elderly father (aged 92 and not tech-savvy) was charged £155 in his July to September 2018 BT phone and broadband bill for going over his monthly data allowance. He had been charged £1,314 over 18 months. He doesn’t use the internet, but his lodgers do use streaming services.
It transpired that BT left him on one of its old broadband packages: £40 a month for an ADSL connection with 15 GB data. I see that an ADSL package, with unlimited data, is £25 a month on its website.
This is grossly unfair. BT only offered a £200 refund, saying it is up to the customer to check. I disagree: it should have automatically moved him to a current package and discontinued the old one.
If not, he should have received a phone call or letter to let him know he could save by changing packages. Instead, he was notified by email to his BT address (which he doesn’t use) and given a breakdown of charges on page six of his quarterly bill.
TS, London N10
BT looked at your complaint in more detail and has now moved your father to a plan that includes unlimited broadband. As a gesture of goodwill, it has also refunded the excess usage charges.
BT insists it notified your father he was exceeding his data limits on several occasions, and even spoke with him in June 2018 to explain that its unlimited fibre package would be better due to the usage on the account. Apparently he didn’t want to change. However, as there were additional factors, such as lodgers using data, of which your father may not have been fully aware, BT has agreed to remove the excess charges. You are both happy with this resolution.
BT says: “We’re sorry for the distress Mr S and his son have experienced. We’ll continue to follow up with him to make sure that he’s happy with the plan and the service that he’s receiving from us.”
It’s good that BT (finally) took this complaint seriously but it really shouldn’t have been as a result of our intervention.
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