Annual Line Rental nearly expired, so DD doubled.

I've just received my latest bill; the first thing it tells me is that BT is raising my DD from £32pm to £60.60. There are two reasons for this :
1. My annual line rental expires 19/2/13. Fine, I intend to renew it this weekend. However, I've been charged for line rental from 26/1 to 25/4 (with a credit from 26/1 to 19/2).
2. We've been paying about £15-20 per qtr for calls to our son's mobile. He's just had BT phone and internet installed this month, so they'll disappear.
My first reaction was to try to have the DD reduced, even if just to £40. Using 0800 443311, you go through a long series of options, the last two being "amend your DD" and finally "Increase your DD". No other option, no chance to speak to anyone.
So I then rang 0800 800 150. Alas, after finally getting through, we had difficulty understanding each other. However, it seemed to come down to :
a) The only way to decrease my DD is to pay off the £90 debit. I have no problem with that, except that I'd then be paying the £33 line rental.
b) If I renew my annual line rental, it seems I'll have the £33 credited - in my next bill.
Obviously, it would all work out, because the debit would disappear, including the line rental. The credit would then be applied against the total of the next bill (wouldn't it?).
Again, I'd have had no problems taking these steps, in either order, provided that I could have a revised bill sent to me fairly soon. Alas, I'd have to wait three months, until my next bill arrived, to ensure everything had gone through smoothly.
Does anyone with experience of these things have any advice on the best course of action?
Solved!
Go to Solution.

I've now read a few earlier threads on this, and I think I've grasped the situation (which probably means I haven't).
I'm happy to renew my Annual Lline Saver (ALS), and move to monthly billing.
Presumably, to move to monthly billing, I'd have to pay off my credit balance, which includes £33 line rental. There's no mention of outstanding balances in the ALS T&C.
The situation I want to avoid is that of paying the £33 twice; once when I renew the ALS, and again when I pay off the credit balance.
While I'm sure any problems would be resolved eventually, I'd just like to avoid them if I can.
Does anyone who's made this move have any advice? I assume that everyone whose ALS termination date didn't coincide with their billing date would have the same problem.

Similar Messages

Annual line rental saver

Just noticed the fee has gone up from £ 141 to £159.84.
http://www.productsandservices.bt.com/products/landline/packages

tickhill wrote:
Whilst this is specifically about line rental I look at the broader picture and BTSport for Free.
Nothing is ever 'free' (holidays for kids, meals for kids etc) ... so someone has to pay for free BTSport and this could well be the thin end of the wedge and to those (and I am one of those) who have no interest in Sport may well be paying via backdoor methods like increased line rental and line rental saver for a service we just don't want.
End of rant!!
All phone companies put up their line rental and add-on rates, even those who didn't spend money on acquiring sports rights.
Virgin Media, for example, put theirs up by £1 to £15.99 and increased call charges while Sky increased theirs to £15.45 on December 1st.

BT Unlimited Broadband & 3rd party Line Rental

Hi All
Just had my renewal notification through that my annual line rental expires at the end of January 2014. In a bid to try and keep costs down, I've searched the internet and discovered that a company called Primus offer a line rental only package (no calls) for £72 per year, opposed to the £141 that BT charge. Admittedly the Primus package includes no calls whatsoever, but we're a 3 mobile phone household now, so there's no need for us to make calls on our landline - the only purpose the landline servers is to provide us with broadband.
Therefore, is it currently possible to leave BT mid broadband contract as my line provider, maintaining my broadband contract? I did use to be with the Post Office, and there was a time a couple of years ago when my line rental was paid to the Post Office, and my broadband was paid to BT.
Anyone got any advice or experience?

You would be best reading this Multi Play Service Agreement (MPSA)
Its not very clear, but it seems to imply that you must maintain your BT line until the broadband contract expire, whenever that is.
There are some useful help pages here, for BT Broadband customers only, on my personal website.
BT Broadband customers - help with broadband, WiFi, networking, e-mail and phones.

Line rental increase from December to £14.70 witho...

I've seen in the press that line rental will go up by 90p this december. Also, oher charges will be going up too.
Well guess what, my salary has not gone up twice in one year. I will be switching my landline to o2 and keeping their broadband. I was waiting until my contract with o2 expired then get bt infinity however, that will not be happening now.
BT - do you really want everyone to stop using their landine? I cannot justify the increases.
If you're trying to get money back for the broadband roll out, then wack it on broadband.
Regards,
Martyn
Angry, soon to be ex BT customer

djh22 wrote:
I guess all the others will increase their charges in line just like the Gas and Electricity companys do
I hope you are not insinuating that they are all conspiring to rip there customers off.
toekneem
http://www.no2nuisancecalls.net
(EASBF)

How to sign up to line rental saver

i recently sign up with bt broadband and free w'end phonecall. at the time i wished to pay the annual rental in advance but for some reason or other i ended up with an agent and was unable to take the offer up - likewise F&F.
anyway, just spoke with an 0800 CS agent and have signed up for F&F but he said the system was blocking the annual rental option.
I have tried signing up for it online but no joy.
any thoughts as to why i'm being prevented from taking it up?
btw i've recently signed up for paper-free billing.
tia
geoff

Hi Southeastwalls,
Welcome to the forum. I would like to take a look at your account to see if I can add the Line Rental Saver for you. Please could you drop an email to the address found in my profile? Please make sure to include your BT account details and a link to this thread.
Thanks
Paddy,
BTCare Community Mod
If we have asked you to email us with your details, please make sure you are logged in to the forum, otherwise you will not be able to see our ‘Contact Us’ link within our profiles.
We are sorry but we are unable to deal with service/account queries via the private message(PM) function so please don't PM your account info, we need to deal with this via our email account :-)

Could someone explain line rental charge?

I was looking at BT Infinity deals and saw that it costs £26 a month which is a good price for up to 76mb speed, however it also says you have to pay £15.99 line rental too. So its not £26 its £41.99!
Is this correct? I have been with my current provider for nearly 2 years and all I have to pay is £15 a month for the service, no line rental rubbish.
Our house already has BT phone service, surely that is what the line rental thing is?
Solved!
Go to Solution.

Your line rental is what you presently pay for your phone line rental. It is not over and above that. You would continue to pay for that and add on the broadband cost of £26 or what ever it is giving you a total cost of £41.99. ie. no extra line rental.
You will find that all ISP's that use the phone lines to deliver broadband will have in their small print that a phone line is needed which means you would be paying the £15.99 with them as well either directly or by having to pay BT for the phone line as you are doing now.

Line Rental

All,
I currently pay GBP15.99 for line rental, GBP5.32 for broadband and GBP2.00 for payment processing. Is there any chance to cancel the line rental and payment processing fee? In addition, where can I see when the contract expires?
Many thanks,
Jurgen

You need a telephone line to get the broadband. The line rental covers the cost of maintaining the telephone infrastructure. So you can't cancel the line rental if you still want broadband.
The £2.00 payment processing fee is because you aren't using Direct Debit. If you switch to that method of payment, then they will stop charging you. If you don't, then you have to pay. Some other companies give you discounts over their normal fees for using DD. BT are different in that they charge you extra for not using it.
There is nowhere on-line that you can find out the contract expiry date. For whatever reason, BT do not want people to have ready access to that information. If you use the "Contact Us" icon at the top of this page, then find your way to the Live Chat, then that's the easiest way to ask.

Getting charged twice for line rental this month, ...

My previous line rental saver ended on the 27/11/13 ,due to a few factors including a line fault which got repaired on 12/12/13 I had not renewed the LRS anyhow late on the 13/12/13 I attempted to pay online to renew LRS due to the first attempt failing for some reason, took me 15 mins into the next day to complete the ordering payment process To cut a long story short in my account i have a bill which is including line rental @ the full rate, and under my payments i can see that £20.60 has been debited from the £141.00 (cost of LRS) so in effect it would appear that BT are charging me twice, So today i rang bt explained this problem to them, they checked my account and confirmed what i was referring to , I explained that i did not want to be charged twice in one month and then credited back one line rental fee next month, I was then told that this was changed to no payment taken from bank this month , but billed for Dec and Jan calling plan +any calls that aren't included next month , which i don't have an issue with, But i'm not convinced that this will happen, as the bill for line rental this month hasn't been amended as yet, so if someone could double check this that would be great , as i don't want charging twice for line rental nor do i see that i should be

Well from the screen cap of the below page i would say that it certainly looks like they intend to charge me twice
I have 2 options though ,i have 7 days from 14/12/13 to cancel LRS for a full refund as per the notice given during payment process,
or they can amend the bill and either not charge me for line rental ( ie per bill) or refund the £20.60 debited from the LRS cedit of £141 that i paid

Questions regarding how I pay my Line Rental Bill ...

Hi BT, I'm currently a BE Broadband customer, I was a BT Broadband customer back in the days when you had BT Home Hub 1.0 and 8mb packages which i was only getting like 5-6mb, 0.3mb upload and constant speed caps on my connection to 1mb. You guys didn't have true unlimited usage back then so being a gamer and someone that frequently downloads I changed to BE broadband. They gave me a steady 11mb connection with 1.3mb upload speed which I've been satisfied with. But now BE Broadband has been sold off to Sky which I don't think I want to be apart of as I've heard a lot of bad feedback and I really do not want to be forced into paying their line rental if I where to switch to Sky Unlimited.
So now I'm considering coming back to BT Broadband, knowing that you've probably improved over the years. I hope so. I know you have this whole BT Infinity going now but my area doesn't support fibre optic broadband and probably never will because I've looked on the BT Openreach website and it says there are no plans for my area to be installed with fibre optics which I would of wanted to have but oh well. What are the chances of my internet speed being the same as it is now with BE Broadband? I don't see why it would go any slower. Are your upload speeds around the same?
Also I have a question regarding the payment methods of your BT Line rental. I'm currently already on the BT line rental on the anytime calling plan. I pay the bill quarterly every 3 months, which I'm comfortable with. What confuses me is when I select the package to order BT Unlimited + Calls I only have the option to select Monthly Line Rental or Line Rental Saver. Why am I able to pay my phone every 3 months if those are the only two options? I'd prefrably want to stick to how I pay my phone bill. So further more how should I go about ordering BT Unlimited broadband without it interfering with my currrent BT line rental? I just want BT Broadband unlimited along side my current BT line rental method of pay. Would I still be eligible for the 6 months free and the gift card. Is the BT Home Hub 4 that comes with it free also? Also one more question, I'd need my MAC code from BE Broadband right?

This is a community forum. The people on here are other BT customers.
The speeds have certainly improved but only if BT's equipment at your exchange supports ADSL2/2+. If not, you'll get what you had before. While the speeds have improved, the same can't be said for the customer service. Upload on ADSL2+ can be up to about 1.2M. On ADSLMax, it's still capped at 448K.
BT like to combine broadband and phone on one bill. So if you get line rental and broadband, they will send you one monthly bill for both. You might be able to get them separately, but not through the web site. Try sales on 0800 800 150.

Increase in monthly line rental charges without no...

I have been with BT for a year now on the Unlimited Evening and Weekend plan. When we signed up a year ago, we just wanted basic line rental, but for some reason were given the Evening and Weekend plan at the same cost. Knowing that our year's contract was due to finish soon, we thought about leaving last month to go with a rival company charging us less, but decided to stay with BT to avoid the hassle. We have just recieved the first bill for the next year of our contract, and found that we are now being charged £3 a month more than last month (£16.60 instead of £13.60). It seems we are now paying the full price for the Evening and Weekends plan, despite never having requested this service in the first place.
Frankly, we cannot afford this increase. We were not given any notice of this increase, or sent any information warning us that if we wanted to leave it would have to be done before 25th March. I do not want the Evening and Weekend plan, but I know that BT will not let us out of our contract until next March. How can i change our contract so we are paying the same line rental as we were before?
I would like to say that I think it is extremely unethical to enter people into new contracts automatically without making them aware of the costs and terms.

Seems that the 1st contract would of been an package offer of some sort, when you renewed they simply continued the same package but put you onto full (normal) prices. Standard practice if you don't try and negotiate a deal, worth trying to speak to sales. Thaye should of talked you through the new contract price if you phoned them to renew. if it was a auto renewal advised (iirc) one month in advance then I would of thought it would have the new contract prices on the paper/email (that they should of sent)
edit: or even contact the mods to try and help http://bt.custhelp.com/app/contact_email/c/4951
Check your exchange or major service outagesIf someone has given a helpful answer, please click on their Ratings star on the left-hand side. ***

My calling plan and line rental are not shown in M...

When I look in My BT at 'My Services' under Phone, it shows Unlimited Weekend Plan - correct.
There is no mention of the Anytime Calls package that I am actually paying extra for, although this does show up on my previous bills. There is also no mention of the Line Rental Saver package that has also been paid for.
WHY?
Dave

The two telephone companies I use (no names) are probably equally awful for their not giving an accurate picture of what they do before putting a corporate hand straight into my bank account. The obvious inference is that they are dishonest which would, I might think, impact on their image and sales. What I have learnt to do is to complain immediately when there is an unexpected charge. People who operate by stealth usually withdraw the hand pretty smartly when they are challenged.
Good luck,
Art

Why do I have to pay line rental when I have FTTP?

I don't understand why am I paying for a phone line when I have FTTP (Fibre to the premisies)? that's over £160 a year and I don't even use the copper wiring, and I certainly don't need or want a phone line.

lowrider007 wrote:
I don't understand why am I paying for a phone line when I have FTTP (Fibre to the premisies)? that's over £160 a year and I don't even use the copper wiring, and I certainly don't need or want a phone line.
I've come to this thread a bit late but felt that I had to comment. The OP has a perfectly valid point. If he has FTTP, BT should not be forcing him to take an expensive, cash cow phone line. It's robbery IMO.
Virgin Media do not force you to take a phone line with their broadband. A lot of rubbish has been written in this thread about Virgin Media and the bundles have nothing to do with the OP's question.
My credentials on this are a Virgin Media VIP Bundle user and a BT Infinity/2 user.
The OP should raise this at a higher level in BT, IMO.
john46 wrote:
the line rental covers the install and ongoing maintenance of the line and exchange equipment
If John46 has been briefed by BT to provide this answer, then IU'm astonished. The FTTP exchange equipment has nothing to do with the telephone exchange equipment and the FTTP user should not be expected to subsidise the telephone user by being forced to have a BT phone line.
If John46 has made the answer up, or is a BT sycophant, say no more.
Seph
My advice is at your risk.

Incomprehensible bills after taking line rental sa...

On 2 August 2010 we paid for one year's rental to start 24 August 2010, with unlimited calls at £4.99 a month to start from the same date. Our bill dated 12 August correctly showed the advance payment for the year, but also included advance payment for calls at our previous rate of £5.99 a month. When we emailed about this error, BT put us on £4.99 a month for calls from the arbitrary and wrong date of 6 September, and started charging for friends and family mobile. We emailed about that, and were assured the friends and family mobile was a mistake, and we would be credited for the wrong monthly call charges on our next bill.
This next, 14 November, bill is incomprehensible to us and to numerous BT staff in the call centre. Instead of just charging us for calls (because we have paid a year's line rental up front), BT charges us for a morass of rental+calls packages for various periods, less a morass of credits for rental, plus a mysterious charge (yes, charge) for 'line rental saver 1 Oct to 11 Nov 10', plus a (small but particularly irritating) charge for mobile saver. Numerous emails have resulted in numerous staff in the call centre trying and failing to explain how any of the charges and credits are calculated. We have however been offered a credit (on our next bill) of £14.97 - corresponding to the only item on the November bill which is both correct and intelligible, three months anytime calls 12 Nov to 11 Feb. This would indeed (I think!) ensure that we are not actually being overcharged overall, but we want an intelligible bill, and some compensation for the hours I have wasted attempting to understand the bill and talking to BT staff who don't understand it either.
I have attempted to complain about this following the complaints procedure on the website, which says you can complain by email. However, the (most courteous) chap in the call centre who has been admitting that the bill is incomprehensible has just phoned to say that such emails just go to the call centre, and to complain I must write to Durham. That also is irritating.

Hi NicolasL,
I can have a look here and decipher the bill for you.
Could you send an email in please with your BT account and telephone number along with a link back to this thread.
Just send to the email address in my profile and mark FAO Craig please.
Thx
Craig
BTCare Community Mod
If we have asked you to email us with your details, please make sure you are logged in to the forum, otherwise you will not be able to see our ‘Contact Us’ link within our profiles.
We are sorry but we are unable to deal with service/account queries via the private message(PM) function so please don't PM your account info, we need to deal with this via our email account :-)”
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If someone answers your question correctly please let other members know by clicking on ’Mark as Accepted Solution’.

Linesaver Line Rental

Today I have signed up for BT Linesaver following the receipt of a letter from BT. I have paid the £113.88 upfront online today.
Linesaver gives you a reduction in the line rental if you pay 12 months line rental up front. I addition to saving a couple of quid on month I also won't get the increase in line rental applied to my account in October when charges rise.
I received my phone bill a couple of days ago which included line rental at the old price up to 14th October 2010. This bill will be paid by Direct Debit in the next few days.
What I would like to know is whether BT will amend that bill to the take into account the reduced line rental or credit my next bill with the overpayment.
I know I can phone them and ask but it's such a pain calling their call centre and pressing buttons and listening to endless messages before you speak to someone.
Has anyone experience of Linesaver?
Solved!
Go to Solution.

Hi George, this isn't really solved, because BT have a very clumsy, outdated payment procedure. Yes, you will get your old line rental back, but not until your next bill. So you will have paid them twice for the month, for no good reason or benefit. I have taken them to task about this, and Lord knows the service staff are lovely, but BT refuses to have a dynamic payments system which reflects your status in real time. It makes me wild, and if I weren't getting a decent deal, I wouldn't put up with it. Please complain strongly, because they won't do anything about it if people put up with it. My Line Saver is due for renewal, so I followed the auto-link, but it is trying to get me to pay by debit card, and I want to pay by credit card, and it is sending me round in circles. I now have to contact them to get it sorted. Honestly, with today's technology as well!
Sincerely,
Carol.

Line Rental Charge Rise - if already on a one-year...

I have a ONE-YEAR Unlimited Anytime Plan with BT which commenced on 16th July 2010. On renewal, the letter stated unequivocally that calls would cost £4.99 per month and line rental £12.79 per month 'for another year'. There is, therefore, no way BT can increase line rental for this contract, which does not end till July 2011.
Do others in this position agree?

I agree - have you spoken to them as if you have paperwork saying the cost will be a certain amount for a certain period they they're in breech of contract if they increase it. However, please check the small print as they usually get around it this way.

Annual Line Rental nearly expired, so DD doubled.

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