Complaint letter: BT stole my Christmas shopping money
[Updates at the bottom…]
Today, I’m pissed off. I’m really pissed off. British Telecom, lovingly known as BT, is the largest provider of all things fixed phone line in the UK. Like a bully nicking your lunch money, BT has gone into my bank account, using our Direct Debit authorisation as an excuse to debit £233 instead of £10 this month.
Below is my letter, addressed to the BT Chairman. I expect that copying the Telecoms Ombudsman, Ofcom and BT’s own press room will get them off their butts, but if you know anyone in a position to help (since the BT call centre had no interest in our problem whatsoever), please feel free to do so. I’d really like to sort this out before Christmas.
BT, you’re messing with the wrong girl!
FAO Sir Michael Rake, Chairman
British Telecom Head Office
BT Group plc
BT Centre
81 Newgate Street
London EC1A 7AJ
12 December, 2007
Dear Sir Michael Rake,
REFERENCE: XX012345678 - Unauthorised Direct Debit from Customer
I’m writing to get resolution on an issue that was brought to our attention by our bank yesterday. On 20th November, BT took, without our permission, £233.59 by direct debit from our account instead of the usual £10.49.
The explanation given by BT customer service is that the funds were taken following OpenReach engineer visits to our property. This goes against any previous discussion we had with the Faults department and the engineers themselves.
Before each visit, we spoke to the Faults department and took very careful steps to ensure that it wasn’t our equipment that was at fault, to get confirmation that the problem was on BT’s side and avoid charges, should an engineer come by. Unplugging all equipment and removing the faceplate, we then asked BT to run the line test. Each time we did this, the Faults team ensured that we were not going to be charged because the system was flagging a fault on their network, “near our property”.
This required a total of three engineer visits, and as many days off work on my part or my husband’s which, needless to say, inconvenienced us immensely. The first engineer replaced the connections outside, making the line quality and our Internet connection abruptly get worse, introducing heavy static onto the line. The second engineer attempted to fix the heavy static by replacing the faceplate inside the property, to no avail. He claimed that the capacitor in the faceplate was faulty, but this turned out to be false.
Finally, the third engineer worked out that the crackling on the line was caused by the cable connections outside being corroded and could reproduce the crackling by simply moving the cable. He found water damage on the outside connections and stated that he was amazed the previous two engineers had not found that problem earlier.
He changed the connection outside to heavy duty silicon based connections and said that, as a precaution, he changed the cable from outside to the back of the faceplate. This significantly improved the line quality for both voice and internet connection quality.
Based on conversations with the Faults department, they reassured me every time that there would be no charge and that the line tests had proved as much. However, on November 20th, the direct debit of £233.59 was taken from our account, without warning, taking our account into overdraft. On investigation with your thoroughly uninterested customer service team, we discovered that the charge was for the engineer visits above.
We should not be covering the costs incurred by engineers’ incompetence and repeated attempts, especially when the work to rectify the problem was done outside of our property on the BT network.
I feel that BT has behaved unethically by charging us after guaranteeing over the phone that we would not be charged, and furthermore charging us without even notifying us! The £223 taken above our usual monthly bill should NOT have been added to the Direct Debit, as the agreed Direct Debit is for £10, not for BT to have a free for all at my expense.
According to the Direct Debit Guarantee provided by HSBC, “if the amounts to be paid or the payment dates change, HSBC Bank plc will notify you 10 working days in advance of your account being debited or otherwise agreed”, and BT did not follow this legally binding guarantee.
BT Customer service has our mailing address, home phone number, both mobile numbers, and email addresses and unquestionably should have notified us ahead of time to allow us to flag up that no charge should be taken.
I expect the full amount for engineer visits to be refunded immediately, as you’ve taken my shopping fund for family and friends this Christmas. For my faith in BT to be restored in any way, I need a confirmation that I will be able to limit the amount which can be debited without prior notification.
Please respond promptly, sending a copy of all communications via email, to ensure I hear back from you as soon as possible and receive confirmation that the funds are returned to our account.
Best regards,
Vero Pepperrell
CC: BT Newsroom
Otelo, Telecoms Ombudsman
Ofcom
[Update 13 Dec @ 10:50am: The Ofcom Watch blog has already picked up on my complaint letter. I’m sure that BT’s press room will be thrilled to see that the letter is reaching beyond my 26,000 monthly readers and onto other blogs within half an hour of being posted.
13 Dec @ 10:58am: The BT Newsroom has promptly responded to my email and said that the complaints department would be in touch soon. Must admit, impressed by speed of reply.
14 Dec: Less than surprised… I’ve not heard a peep from BT today. Is that going to stop me? Oh no it won’t! “Oh yes it will!” Oh no it won’t… Oh wait, I’m getting into panto mode here.
20 Dec: We hopefully have resolution. I’ve been promised yesterday that the funds would be in my account today and the full amount would be refunded. I’ll believe it when I see it but here is my follow-up post.]
December 13th, 2007 at 10:39 am
[…] here. The best […]
December 13th, 2007 at 3:16 pm
Go for it!
December 13th, 2007 at 3:48 pm
Go get em!
December 14th, 2007 at 10:18 am
You go girl!!! BT are beyond evil, it took my Mum 3 months to get a phone line installed as engineers didn’t show up not once or twice but *six* times!!! When one did show, Mum had left a friend at the house to see the guy in and he installed the phone line main point into the airing cupboard, as it was the most ‘direct’ entry point!! She now has her wireless router on top of the towels!
When she phoned their complaints line no one answered….so you go get ‘em!
December 15th, 2007 at 6:19 pm
They’re so evil! We gave notice and canceled our account before we moved back to Canada in August and just got an electronic bill from them, charging us for calls made in September and October! Any time I try to resolve it, they send me instructions on how to cancel my account and pay my outstanding bill!
December 16th, 2007 at 1:30 am
@Liz: That’s such bollocks! Can’t believe they can get away with stuff like that. That’s why I make sure I know EVERYTHING there is to know before anyone comes over, so that they can’t pass a quick one just because I’m supposedly a girl who won’t know. We shouldn’t have to, but they clearly will rip off anyone they can.
@Oana: Definitely go straight to the top and write to the Chairman and Press office. No idea whether it’ll pay off, but it’s more likely than dealing with the brain dead customer service people who a. aren’t interested in your problem, b. probably don’t have the power required to deal w your issue anyways.
December 17th, 2007 at 10:33 am
Pop into your bank and explain the situation. They should be able to issue a refund if you can prove the problem.
I had a similar issue with Three when they originally started. I asked to see my bank manager, told them that I wanted a refund under the direct debit guarantee, refuses to leave until it was issued.
Good luck!
December 17th, 2007 at 9:45 pm
BT also charged us for an engineer’s visit to fix a fault on their end. Fortunately, I don’t trust them enough to allow direct debit so simply refused to pay the bill until they saw sense and took the charges off - nearly £150. Rediculous. A lot of people won’t bother disputing it which is why BT get away with this - go get ‘em! They’re no better than Bell Canada, really
December 18th, 2007 at 10:24 am
Kill!! Go kill!!
Grr. You are welcome to set me on them, I am sure I can brew up my PMT reserves
December 20th, 2007 at 9:29 pm
[…] week ago, I shared my complaint letter to British Telecom with readers, and it seemed to have had an impact! Many of you seem to have had issues with either […]
December 27th, 2007 at 3:40 am
[…] December 11th, it was flagged up to me that our account had been debited by British Telecom for an unusually high amount. The cheeky bastards had helped themselves to £233 my money via Direct Debit, when the monthly […]
January 6th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
Sounds like my recent nightmare. I spent 4 weeks on the phone to bt because they cut my line of for no apparent reason. You can post your complaint along with mine at:
http://www.complainaboutbt.com
January 10th, 2008 at 9:17 am
Hello.
I’m a fellow victim of the bottomless pit that is known as “customer service” from BT. I moved, told BT, they took THREE MONTHS to install a line at my new address. I’m now waiting to see then provide a MAC code so I can enjoy Broadband.
These guys have to idea how to run a business. Their call centre staff are very poorly trained, and are resorting to hanging up when I call them. This has happened a total of 8 times ( and counting ) They actually took it upon themselves to cancel my original order for a line, then tried to deny I ever placed an order. Then when I HAD to place a new order they didn’t turn up at the address to complete the work. Eventually three van loads of “engineers” arrived to install a line. A line that their fault reporting dept informed me was “ totally fine, we’ve buzzed it through from the main exchange to the capacitors in the house” . Really? I thought, so why is a man connecting a line from the main telephone pole in the street to the house now? Or maybe because there is NO LINE connected to my house.
Then of course they try to charge me for their “ home moving service.” Yeah right.
£168 for them to mess me about for three months. I’m not paying have no intention of paying and am seeking compensation for time off work, waiting for them to show at my house, phone calls made from my mobile to them and of course I want them to love me up and pay me compensation for the total cock up they call “service “ .
It pains me to think companies can think they can get away with this stuff. They have picked on the wrong guy here I assure you.
Fight the good fight and I’m doing that too!
January 11th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
BT didn’t bill me for 6 months for my bb after i moved, dispite endless phone’s advising the fact of this. They even changed my dd payment so that it no longer included the bb even though they were providing the service at the new property. Every call i made over this 6 month period i was assured it would be started on the next quarter. Thanks to there stupidity im now paying off an old debt on top of the normal costs which are bloody excessive at best.
I refused point blank to pay the whole 6 months in a lump sum to them now they have corrected there billing issue. I had to call a further two times to set up a reasonable amount on the dd as they were being so unreasonible and wanting the amount repayed at that point or a stupid dd payment every month.
British Telecom = Bunch of Tossers
May 14th, 2008 at 1:54 pm
I too am very upset by British Telecom.Apart from the fact that their are numbers on my bill that I have definatly not phoned.When my father recently died on 14th March 08 they put his final closing of account bill of £5.57p to debt collectors? My fathers bills were all paid via direct.My daughter telephoned imediatly after my father had died and instructed for the amount to be debited from her account.Today 14th May we received notice from a debt collectors that my fathers bill of £5.57p was still unpaid.?We feel very upset.Have allways paid our bills on time.Never owed anyone a penny in our lives yet my father 2 months after his death is registered as a bad debtor.Would like to know if anyone else has experienced the dreadful customer service and disrespect that my family have been subjected to.?