Hello all,

I opened a restaurant in April and in March I arranged to have 2 phone lines and broadband with BT. In April I switched my energy supply to BES energy as their rates were about half of what British Gas wanted. Shortly after this I got a call from BES telecom and this is where it all went wrong.

They wanted me to switch both of my lines and my broadband to them as they were cheaper. I told them that I was in contract with BT and if I moved I would receive a bill with cancellation charges which would remove the whole point of me moving as I wouldn't save any money. I was assured by the salesperson that as the contract with BT was so young I would not get any cancellation charges. I asked him to repeat this and he assured me it was the case, saying if he was wrong I could just stay at BT and there would be no harm done.

Imagine my surprise when I then received a letter from BT with cancellation charges of around £700! I called BT and explained the situation for them to tell me that the only way I could not pay the charges with BT was for me to keep BT as my supplier. BT told me that one of my lines had moved to BES but nothing else had. BT would now move that line back to BT.

I called BES and told them I was no longer moving to them and they tried to talk me out of it but I just told them and put down the phone as they wouldn't stop going on.

Move on a few weeks and I'm still getting reminders from BT about not paying the £700 bill. I called them and explained the situation and they told me it was their mistake and that the charges would be dropped. This same scenario has happened 7 times with BT. My line gets restricted, I call them to complain and explain the situation, they say they will get the charges cleared off and reinstate my line, then it happens again approx 10 days later.

Last week it happened again so I called BT and spent 90 minutes on the phone with them. They told me that the reason the charges weren't being removed from my account is because the line they were supposed to get back from BES was still with BES and therefore I had cancelled it! I explained that they were supposed to move the line back and they admitted they had forgotten. Looking at my bank account I now see that I have been paying BES £23.99 per month for this line.

I told BT to move it back once and for all and they told me it would happen within 14 days. Now here is where it gets interesting.

I just received a call from BES who told me that there had been an application to remove one of my lines back to BT. I said yes that is correct. He then informed me that there would be a £600 cancellation charge for this which would need paying within 14 days.

I explained the whole situation and that I only moved as I was assured by their salesperson that I wouldn't receive any cancellation charges from BT. He then asked me what proof I have of his salesperson saying this. Of course I don't have proof.

He then went on to tell me that their '3rd party sales people' were not regulated and that no matter what was said, I had to pay the £600.

I told him that I was mis-sold and he said 'prove it'.

I said 'so basically your sales people can say whatever they like to get someone to sign up and they can lie to people and you allow this?' He just kept repeating 'its up to them what they say'

So, I believe I have been mis-sold and I'm in a bit of a predicament. Not only has all of this been a major hassle and cost me hours on the phone, it looks like it might end up costing me £600 too. I'm a new business and we are struggling, I can't afford to pay this bill.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

oh dear lots of horror stories on here about them in the utils forum too

dx

One of the reasons that this has all happened is because like so many other people you do important business on the telephone without recording the calls.

Why do people do this? It's crazy. For the sake of about £50 or about £100 for something completely automatic like a TrueCall, none of this kind of thing would ever happen. You would expect businesspeople to be especially careful because they are dealing with higher value and also they can set the cost of a recording device against tax – but they don't.

I think you are going to have a difficult time because you have no independent evidence to support what you say against BES. The only thing that I could suggest would be that you install a call recorder and then you call BES and pretend that you are an interested customer who wants to move away from British Telecom that you are worried about the cancellation charges. If you can trap them into making the same claim about no cancellation charges – then you have them and frankly I would then go ahead and rip their heads off – and we will help you do it.

If you can't do this, then unless you can find sufficient similar other stories on the Internet then you have a very slim chance indeed of getting a County Court judge to accept your story if you decided to begin a County Court claim – which is probably the only way.

You could of course try to ask BES for recordings of the calls – but I expect that snowflakes in hell aren't in it.

I'm very sorry, I don't really know what else to say. You've been turned over. Get a call recorder

Having been conned, lied to and bullied by a broker into signing up with BES Utilities for our gas and electric earlier this year and having had an almighty battle with them to escape a 5 year contract we were surprised to receive a phone call from Ben from BES Telecoms yesterday saying that as we were a customer of BES Utilities we were entitled to receive a really good deal on our internet and phone lines from BES Utilities. Take it from me they do not like hearing the truth about what an appalling company they are!

Needless to say we declined Ben's offer and are now in the process of submitting a formal complaint to BES as we do have it in writing that they will not contact us by phone.

As an aside to this I had to smile with amazement that BES were a finalist in this years Telecoms and Utilities Awards for Treating Customers Fairly!

For some reason they didn't win the first prize but perhaps they will have better luck next year!!

Having been conned, lied to and bullied by a broker into signing up with BES Utilities for our gas and electric earlier this year and having had an almighty battle with them to escape a 5 year contract we were surprised to receive a phone call from Ben from BES Telecoms yesterday saying that as we were a customer of BES Utilities we were entitled to receive a really good deal on our internet and phone lines from BES Utilities. Take it from me they do not like hearing the truth about what an appalling company they are!

Needless to say we declined Ben's offer and are now in the process of submitting a formal complaint to BES as we do have it in writing that they will not contact us by phone.

Similar situation here, offered really low rates on calls and fibre optics compared to bt on two lines, also told no cancellation fees due to new government regulations.

Ended up transferring from bt to bes, but discovered we now had no fibre optics just ADSL ! fibre optics were part of the deal, like for like service, I was furious we have all our security cameras working on fibre optic connections. bes informed me that service they could not provide , first a bill from bt for £1,800 pounds cancellation fees, I contacted bes, they said they were not responsible for what I was told by the canvassing company commercial telecom, loads of hassle for three weeks.

The result I had was, went through the complaints procedure to stage three, had a copy cd sent to me of the conversation with it all edited, got a call saying if I moved back to bt they would drop the termination fees that bes would charge (£1900) so moved back to bt.

Later had a bill from bes for £900 termination, called them and they said I had to be fair because they had cancelled one termination fee so I should pay the other.

They denied that the termination fees were to be voided on both lines !

Calls from their collection office very rude indeed might I add, and threatening.

Moving back to bt cancelled their termination fees.

void

Made a complaint to CISAS within a week bes contacted me to void all the fees.

BES telecom are a complete sham. Managed to sort it out though not a nice experience .

For the attention and information of everyone on the forum please be aware that Ofgem are now investigating several issues re BES. If you want further information about their investigation then please check out the Ofgem website and look under the investigations tab. You can also register on their website for e-mail updates on how their investigation is progressing.

For the attention and information of everyone on the forum please be aware that Ofgem are now investigating several issues re BES. If you want further information about their investigation then please check out the Ofgem website and look under the investigations tab. You can also register on their website for e-mail updates on how their investigation is progressing.

We are happy to comply with Ofgem and always have been, following an almost 10 year untarnished record as a supply business. Investigations are common place in the energy industry and this is one of 16 live investigations across all energy suppliers currently including many of the ‘Big 6’. We treat all Ofgem intervention seriously but we also see it as an opportunity to seek guidance on how to improve our processes and in this instance, as every other, we will be looking to Ofgem to help us tweak our processes for the future. I would encourage people to respect that an investigation is neither admission nor an accusation of any wrong doing, it is simply an opportunity for the regulator to understand in more detail how we approach compliance against a small handful of the many supplier licence conditions which are in operation in the market. Any outcomes of this process we therefore intend to use to strengthen for future growth as we look to continue to take the fight of the smaller independent suppliers to the wider market and in particular, the ‘Big 6’.

Ben Jones – CEO, BES Utilities