BT - Late Payment Charge & Payment Processing Fee

[TheWatcherxx99]

Hi I've had a good search through the forum for answers and don't feel that anyone has addressed this issue properly.

 

It regards:

 

BT's Late Payment Charges of £7.50 and the Payment Processing Fee of £4.50.

 

In short. I don't want to pay it. I'm happy to pay my bill. But where do I stand legally on this issue? Do BT have a right to make these charges?, if not, is there a letter template I can send out to them? Or can someone tell me how I can go about challenging this trumped up charge?

 

I am willing to go to court over this. So if anyone could answer the above I would be most grateful to use your advice to stand up to BT.

 

Thanks.

[buzby]

BT have alreadt won a court case, where the judge agreed the fee was reasonable, and the sill solicitor who raised the action did nothing to put up anything other than a low-key pursuit - and had an unsympathetic judge.

 

Because of this BT are taking this as full judicial acceptance that their policy is fair and reasonable, as such you're most welcme to give them a run for their money, it it's going to be a challenge!

[Desperate Daniella]

I had been looking out for that court case, and missed it.

 

It's a bugger that they lost the case. How can they justify £4.50 to process a cheque? My business (a small one) gets charged 28p per cheque, and all of these firms say they have bulk clearing so they are probably paying about 5p.

 

What an opportunity lost. Why did she bother in the first place? For a solicitor to screw this up is unbelievable.

 

I always just knock them off, and pay for the charges I have actually incurred. They carry it forward and I knock it off again.

 

I had another situation with BT - unfair charges when I went from one ISP to another and the charges went through BT and it appeared okay, and then they billed charges two quarters' late. Obviously if I had had the correct charges, I wouldn't have stayed with the ISP. Screamed and yelled, paid the actual call charges, and this went on for over two years, and then they backed down. It was about £400.

 

Send letters, say you still don't agree with it, and keep on and on and on. If you get calls, tell them to respond to your letters. Tell them you will change phone companies. None of these companies, BT, British Gas, etc., actually ever seem to send a proper letter.

 

Good luck!

 

DD

[grobian]

By way of protest i pay this charge on a seperate cheque.

At least i can cost them an extra 28p that way.

[buzby]

My bank also charges me per cheque, so I'd be shooting myself in the foot if I tried it this way.

[locutus]

Someone posted an idea a while back... set up a standing order for 5p per day to cover that charge.... you're still paying it but getting real value for money

[buzby]

An urban myth. Banks will not permit a daily Standing Order - which they will see it for what it is, a juvenile prank in which they won't be prepared to join in.

[InformedSearcher]

BT woes....

Just to add and what happened with myself.

If you do not pay by direct debit they charge you £4.50 a quarter as an administration fee. This fee has been mentioned as I believe around a year ago there was debate on it. The end result is that there is a 'cap' of £5 agreed with Ofcom on this (for any phone provider). The BT payment page is here: How can I pay my bill? | Help | BT.com

Personally it seems to 'only' way to avoid the admin fee (for BT) is to either pay by direct debit or in full.

Then we come to the late payent fee for BT (also on the link above). It would seem that Ofcom has agreed all this. In my case I am now unemployed and have had the most horrendous argument in that the 'catch 22' situation occured. Last quarter the man said as long as I paid by the next bill it would be okay however he never mentioned it as a 'one time offer' nor did he mention the £4.50 charge. Today's argument was simply if I don't pay the bill within the month (to the bill date) then £7.50 would be charged and 5 days later the phone be put to 'incoming calls only'.

I think the whole thing is grossly unfair and have escalated by complaint to the Ofcom BT referred helpline.

What shocked me more than anything is the blatant attitude of 'If you don't pay then sevices get cut and eventually restricted and removed'. For years I have paid my bills by DD till my bank cancelled them all (their excuse was they were helping me!) at the begining of February. For that to happen just about all services and suppliers then charge penalties.

Michael

[anotherguy]

purely for information.

These outrageous fees have angered me since they first began. It is MY choice how i choose to pay my bills and I do not for one second trust BT will deciding how much they take from MY bank account each month.

I used to also subtract their PPF fees (since i always pay online BACS which costs nothing to process) from the bills prior to BT amending their T&C's which then made them legal.

Anyway, Ive now managed to leave BT. The other week I logged in to my online BT account one last time to discover it said they owe me £23 and that it would be paid by 3rd June by cheque.

Well the cheque has now arrived (late).

Just to prove the point i am now sending BT a bill for £4.50 to cover the cost for me to process the payment they have sent me, and an additional £7.50 since they sent the payment late.

I have no doubt they will try to ignore my demands but it will quite clearly demonstrate to BT their charges are utter BS.

 

BTW Ive now moved to Orange as they offer 20Mb broadband for just £17 per month and that INCLUDES the monthly line rental which BT charge £12 for anyway!

BT YOU SUCK

Edited June 8, 2010 by anotherguy

[buzby]

Sorry, this is pointless grandstanding.

 

I agree with your sentiments, but if the public are willing to accept their treatment in this way, more fool them. Do remember, BY has a published price list that their customers can either agree to. BT, in sending you a cheque is providing you with your own money back. Since you did not advise BT that you made such a charge for processing cheque payments, it would be unreasonable for you to attempt to extord money in this way. A prior agreement would give your claim 'legs', but without one you;ll come across as unstable.

 

No point in shooting yourself in the foot, as you'd need to take them to court, and you'd lose. (A Shame, but there you go).

[anotherguy]

Im glad you used the term "extort" since legal or not that is what BT do to their customers, and yes im quite aware BT are not going to pay it and are under no olbigation to do so (goes without saying) it simply gets the point across. They are thieving money grabbing ****, charging unreasonable fees for nothing.

I just thought it would once be nice to allow them to be on the receiving end of their own BS. I even made sure to use as much of their own pre-scripted rubbish that Ive had to endure from them explaining just how reasonable the charges are.

BT have such an unfair monopoly we have no choice but to bow down to them or face their barrage of charges. So as i say, its just my parting shot at them to make the point.

[buzby]

Unfortunately, your letter/invoice will only be seen by CS and routinely ignored. However, if you're going to the bother, why not sent it to MD Ian Livingston? A minion might just be tickled with it enough to pass it on as a costomer's concern...?

[45002]

I had been looking out for that court case, and missed it.

 

It's a bugger that they lost the case. How can they justify £4.50 to process a cheque? My business (a small one) gets charged 28p per cheque, and all of these firms say they have bulk clearing so they are probably paying about 5p.

 

What an opportunity lost. Why did she bother in the first place? For a solicitor to screw this up is unbelievable.

 

I always just knock them off, and pay for the charges I have actually incurred. They carry it forward and I knock it off again.

 

I had another situation with BT - unfair charges when I went from one ISP to another and the charges went through BT and it appeared okay, and then they billed charges two quarters' late. Obviously if I had had the correct charges, I wouldn't have stayed with the ISP. Screamed and yelled, paid the actual call charges, and this went on for over two years, and then they backed down. It was about £400.

 

Send letters, say you still don't agree with it, and keep on and on and on. If you get calls, tell them to respond to your letters. Tell them you will change phone companies. None of these companies, BT, British Gas, etc., actually ever seem to send a proper letter.

 

Good luck!

 

DD

 

March 2008

 

Think this may be the Case BT: court action for bill charges? - Channel 4 News

[buzby]

I attempted to contact her on two occasions, but I didn't connect. The last I heard (at the time) was that she was 'considering an appeal', but of course, this did not happen. As I recall she was a PROPERTY solicitor, and had not planned the action on a multi faceted level, just the single complaint, and the judge felt BT had fully advised its customers adequately, and as such were entitled to charge providing the charges were 'transparent'.

[hightail]

What are they actually charging for? I pay my bill through online banking so it goes straight into their bank. Nobody has to handle a cheque and presumably the references mean the whole thing is automated. Is there any human intervention in such payments and if not why do I get charged the processing fee?

[Guest Mrs Hobbit]

I too pay by internet banking and still get charged the £4.50 fee every quarter. No cheque involved here. I have thought about withholding the fee when I pay my bill and I pay it in full every quarter, also bear in mind we are paying for a service not yet used, three month line rental in advance. I wont allow a DD after the fun I had proving my innocence regarding a DD set up back in 2006, but that is another story.

[Mark_Blackpool]

With regard to the late payment charges: the bills appear to be back dated so that they're generated on day 1, arrive on day 8 or 9 and are due for payment on day 10 - pretty well impossible. However this then means that BT can charge another £7.50. Hence the payment processing fee is, in effect, £12.

 

That's been my experience on two separate occasions when we had BT and was the main source of the dispute which led to us abandoning our line altogether and going with 3G for broadband, which for us is about 50% faster than ADSL was anyway. Hardly our loss

 

Why not change to the Post Office, who don't rip you off to the tune of £4.50 just to pay a bill?

[Guest Mrs Hobbit]

The Hobbits are off to the Post Office, hope they don't want a DD to pay the bill.

[anotherguy]

What are they actually charging for? I pay my bill through online banking so it goes straight into their bank. Nobody has to handle a cheque and presumably the references mean the whole thing is automated. Is there any human intervention in such payments and if not why do I get charged the processing fee?

 

I also used to pay in the same manner. The way BT USED to charge the PPF wasnt legal since it was a penalty for not allowing them DD, I used to withhold the PPF payments and sucessfully got them written off after a lot of arguing with BT. BT some time ago reworded their T&C's which now makes the PPF perfectly legal since its no longer a penalty for not allowing DD, they now in effect do not charge you extra for not paying by DD but instead give customers who do pay by DD a discount.

In effect its exactly the same, theyre penalising you because you dont want BT having access to your bank account but its perfectly legal - hence why Ive left them the moment my 12mth contract was up.

 

Not great business sense really, their stealth charge of £4.50 per quarter or £18 per year has just cost them a minimum of £144 per year in line rental alone (I never actually used the phone line for anything other than internet access). If more people voted with their feet they'd soon get the message.

[Guest Mrs Hobbit]

The Hobbits have just used their big feet and walked over to the Post Office. Bye bye BT

 

Now to cancel with Talk Talk, because the Hobbits calls from Middle Earth to the world of Humans are going to get cheaper.

 

Mrs Hobbit can afford a new cloak with the savings

[buzby]

What nobody has mentioned yet - you are NOT paying BT, but their 'Payment Processing arm'. Now, this means they have another cost centre, and to ensure it doesn't operate at a loss, these spurious charges have been rolled into the offering so that those who do not comply or who are innatentive, pay.

 

Since the government of the day see nothing wrong in firms charging you for the fact they have to send you a bill, instead of this being (as previously) part of the cost of the service, is broken off, airline style, and provides a valuable cash flow.

 

There's no mystery - you either jump over their hoops, or pay the price. What it actually COSTS them is on no consequence, and an irrelevance in the scale of things

 

Until this is outlawed, the consumer is screwed, and royally so.

[InformedSearcher]

Unfortunately I believe Ofcom (you know yet another quango) allow all these things. The fact someone has to tap in amounts on to a screen means a 'charge'. I fought my mini battle and lost with the consolation of BT's threat to cut me off being averted. Not the best customer services but trying my best to be positive, it's the norn these days. Like many places they could well lose their humans and simply have machines telling to to look at their T&C's!

 

Michael

[Guest Mrs Hobbit]

The Hobbits talk the talk, so decided to walk the walk. Got a letter from BT this morning, absolutely galling.

 

Background the original Mr Hobbit died several years ago. Mrs Hobbit notified BT of this fact, but the bills still came addressed to the late Mr Hobbit. Mrs Hobbit has remarried and guess what, the letter from BT arrived addressed to the Late Mr Hobbit. Umm the letter from the new phone service provider arrived this morning addressed to the new Mr Hobbit.

 

Oh new provider is happy to let the Hobbits pay the bill quarterly, no payment processing charge, now just have to get the number withheld service from them. Don't want those tricksy DCA's getting the phone number by mistake...

 

Sorry Uncle Ken, your boys and girls still wont get the number.

 

An aside to being ex directory. Several years ago we had a death, youngest son drowned and the police in the land we came from could not get hold of us, so Interpol had to intervene and get the number for the overseas police. I wonder has Uncle Ken looked at using Interpol for the information?

[Mark_Blackpool]

What nobody has mentioned yet - you are NOT paying BT, but their 'Payment Processing arm'. Now, this means they have another cost centre, and to ensure it doesn't operate at a loss, these spurious charges have been rolled into the offering so that those who do not comply or who are innatentive, pay.

 

Since the government of the day see nothing wrong in firms charging you for the fact they have to send you a bill, instead of this being (as previously) part of the cost of the service, is broken off, airline style, and provides a valuable cash flow.

 

There's no mystery - you either jump over their hoops, or pay the price. What it actually COSTS them is on no consequence, and an irrelevance in the scale of things

 

Until this is outlawed, the consumer is screwed, and royally so.

 

One other subtle aspect -

 

If the way it works is that you have a contract with "Telephone supplier" and in order to do so, you have to have a separate contract with "Telephone supplier payment processing" to pay them:

 

This might in theory mean that the payment processing charge could be raised to £100 per payment, but the consumer cannot then terminate the contract with "Telephone supplier" citing material changes to contract, because "Telephone supplier" has not made any material changes to contract.

[Mark_Blackpool]

Unfortunately I believe Ofcom (you know yet another quango) allow all these things. The fact someone has to tap in amounts on to a screen means a 'charge'. I fought my mini battle and lost with the consolation of BT's threat to cut me off being averted. Not the best customer services but trying my best to be positive, it's the norn these days. Like many places they could well lose their humans and simply have machines telling to to look at their T&C's!

 

Michael

 

With a BACS payment nobody need do anything manually.

 

I can however understand why suppliers would want to disincentivise people from sending cheques in the post.