I've had my bt email for nearly 20 years and it's my main account. It's also a really great address I don't want to lose. I'm well pissed off at the price hike and not sure if they can do it by dumping your account after 30 days?

Anyway I've called the number and it's been quite a long and complicated process. I called and then got told they can cease it there and then! I then said about the 12 month offer of current price and he put me through to the Premium Mail dept. After going through it all again, I was told I'd have to be put through to retentions. Finally got through to them and they wanted my account number. No where does it say it on the webmail site. It didn't say it on my bank statement either even though they said it should. Finally found it on my online banking direct debit info. Anyway I've got it extended and it the next 12 months will be using that time to gradually go over to another address

This story has been picked up by the moneysavingexpert site.

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/....php?t=5438993

This happened to me. I just rebooted the computer and it sorted itself out. This was before I received the price hike letter from them, so I took it just to be a glitch rather than anything to do with the account.

On the general matter of the price rise. I phoned them yesterday to enquire about this as I've been paying the 1.60 for a year now, even though I am a BT Broadband customer. For business purposes I kept the email when I went over to Sky, and they told me that I would no longer have to pay for it when I went back to them. I only realised I was still paying for it when they sent the price hike letter. They said they would now rectify this, but refused to refund me the 1.60 a month I'd been paying, claiming that I was to blame for not noticing this.

I'm now out of contract so told them to go **** themselves, in slightly politer terms than that. It wasn't the 1.60, it was the principal of the thing. So I signed up with Sky yesterday, then I received an email from BT telling me that they had just been told I was moving but as I had renewed my contract with them I would have to pay BT 10 months of broadband and telephone line fees. I had no intention of staying with them much longer, and disputed this, and they said they had sent me an email about it a month ago.

I found this email, and as it turned out I had phoned them to complain about the Netflix service and to cancel it. During the phone call they asked me if I'd like to receive another year of BT sport at no cost as a way of smoothing things over concerning some other problems I'd been experiencing. I said why not. Tucked at the bottom of this email confirming my no cost BT sport for a year - and in small print - was the assertion that I had renewed my broadband and telephone rental.

I've now cancelled my direct debit, told them I'll pay my final two weeks when they bill me for it, told them they can sing for the 10 months they claim I owe, demanded the recording of that phone call and reported them to Ofcom.

Steer well clear of these a-holes.

Wrote to my MP, I have had BT/YAHOO email for at least 20yrs, I paid the £1.60 a mth grudgingly but a 300% increase is just extortion. I will cancel the D/D & see what happens.
I will not subsidise expensive TV football rights that I dont use...

Abewest - I know you are annoyed but it is not a good idea to just cancel your direct debit until this is resolved.

BT may put a note on your credit file - for breach of contract owed - and that could cause you all sorts of issues.

They are a very sneaky company with very dishonest billing. Sky bill based on actual spend on a monthly basis - BT generally bill quarterly but add the expected costs for the next three months but not the payments you are likely to make so it always makes you look like you owe them money.

If you contact them about anything it takes for ever to get through and then you get pushed from pillar to post.

I would never ever use BT again - because their customer services is dreadful and they just don't play fair. This outrageous hike is a prime example. Sky at least are easier to contact and their website is far superior.

Thanks Marty.

I've rethought that one. Although it has now been cancelled, just before they come in for the last payment, which is in about a month's time as I've just paid this month's, I'll claim it was a mistake and I'll reinstate it, but only if they admit their own mistake regards the 10 months they say I owe.

They now say they're carrying out an internal investigation into it, but I didn't trust them not to just come into the account and take the 210 quid regardless of whether they were right or wrong.

Like you I won't ever go near them again.

Seems quite a few people have been successful - based on other forums - in keeping the £1.60 monthly fee for 12 months if they agree to a 12 month contract.

I also believe BT can link an existing BT email to another BT account - provided the receiving account holder agrees. So if you have a friend or relative with BT broadband could you not move your premium email to their account - as you can have 11 free emails with any account. Is this another possible route to avoid the charge.

This is explained here - but when you click on the contact link it doesn't give you a number to contact. How very BT.:

http://bt.custhelp.com/app/answers/d...her-account%3F

I phoned the 0800 number in the message we got, explained our position and they were friendly and easy to deal with.

They immediately offered unprompted to keep the fee at £1.60 pm and we agreed.

Happy to report this on here.

Hopefully they have realised they pushed things too far with a 312% increase in one go.

And that keeping ex broadband customers on board with just e mail is a way to secure them as return customers in the future, whereas pricing them out will probably lose them for good.

I got the email and just come off the phone, 1 more year at 1.60 for my btopenworld email.

Guy on the phone was nice as pie no haggling , told him the truth either you keep it at 1.60 or I leave.

Did you get the £1.60 retained rate confirmed in writing?

I was told that I would get an e mail with confirmation of this when I had my (same as you) very friendly call with them (see above) and am still waiting a week later.

It seems sensible to have this agreement in some form you can refer to.

So I tried today to get it in writing via the on line chat help on BT assuming they could easily access it on my account.

As if. I spent a long fruitless debate with someone in India who could not seem to understand that I did not have a BT phone number to give to them. I just paid for BT e mail for which I gave the address because I had no phone line at this address..

Does not compute apparently. You have to have a phone.

After half an hour of going round in circles I just asked for him to forward my request to the relevant department and politely ask that they send or resend the e mail confirmation they had promised a week ago to confirm I was still paying £1.60 pm for just the e mail service.

He went away for ages and after a further 10 minutes I just politely signed off and copied the conversation to my e mail address.

The My BT site only seems to have your past bills and no data on forthcoming ones so I cannot tell that this has appeared on my account without the promised e mail. And if I recall the original e mail tells you that if you do not contact them after a date this week then you will be charged £5 in future.

I don't believe - despite the promise - that any email is sent or order raised. You just have to accept their word in the phonecall as accurate.

It should be covered in the next monthly bill you get - as with other offers you get charged the full £5 with a £3.40 credit for your 12 month discount? At least that is how it should work!

Hopefully your next bill is imminent?

Just got off the blower with BT. Staying at £1.60 in exchange for committing to 12months .

Would suggest anyone affected that wants to keep their account does this. Its a standard offer so you don't need to haggle or threaten to leave etc. Just ask for the offer to be applied to your account.

As others have mentioned, you will need to know your account number. If you don't know what it is check your direct debit and the reference will be on there.

Just to update my new bill has just gone on My BT and shows the discount - though via two minus deductions for odd amounts that are rather confusing.

But at least it is staying at £1.60 pm for another year.

Yahoo seem to have completely abandoned spam filtering though as for the past couple of weeks around 200+ messages are day are getting though - far more than used to be the case.

So maybe they are trying that tactic to get people without BT Broadband away from paying for their ongoing e mails after the huge price rise did not do this.

Just a word of warning about this. I extended the £1.60 a month for another 12 months and I've now suddenly been billed over £7 this month. I've called them twice, First time the lines just went dead and second time I was on with an adviser for 45 minutes whilst he tried to resolve the billing problem. He couldn't and said it was a glitch on the system for this and would escalate it to another person who he promised would phone me back Monday (yesterday). And guess what? Yep no phone call. The discount is applied and then it gets knocked off again. Check your bank statements just to see if BT are ripping you off.

I'm now beginning to think I should just cancel the DD and download my old emails to Outlook and swap all my logins to another email address

You are only just beginning to think that might be a good idea?

Do it, and get yourself a personal domain name so you are never tied to another provider again. You setup email redirection for all the yourchosenname@mydomain.com to your new email provider, and then if you ever have to move to another email host - all you need to do is update your redirect and all your new email will automatically be delivered to your new host. You are not locked in.

I actually take this a step further but most people won't want to bother with this:

What I do is setup unique aliases for everything I register for so if a site gets hacked, the hackers get an email alias I can just delete and stop receiving junk email. So:

digitalspy.co.uk@mydomain.com > secretname@mydomain.com > mygmail@gmail.com
sky.com@mydomain.com > secretname@mydomain.com > mygmail@gmail.com
ebay.com@mydomain.com > secretname@mydomain.com > mygmail@gmail.com

The secretname is the actual redirect.

This way I don't have to update all my aliases if I move provider. I just change secretname@mydomain.com to mynewemail@outlook.com and all the other aliases (digitalspy.co.uk@mydomain.com, sky.com@mydomain.com, ebay.com@mydomain.com) automatically get delivered to mynewemail@outlook.com.

For some reason I just noticed today that I am not being charged since the price change, my bank account is showing no fee since May. What gives ? Not sure if I should stay stumm or say something to BT as I don't want to suddenly be charged for multiple months at once.

I had a couple of months of no charge then £1.49 followed by the expected £1.60.

Not sure what's going on but I have the feeling that speaking to BT would likely cause more problems

I checked my bank statement and they had been charging me 5.00 instead of 1.60
I rang them up, first time the line went dead, second time took ages for the guy to sort it.
Blamed a glitch!!!