My Mum is 85 and lives alone. When I was with her last week, I noticed her BT phone bill on top of the fridge. I was horrified to see what was contained in it.

She was being charged £1.50 extra per month for not paying by Direct Debit, and £3.50 per month for the rental of a phone which had been in a bag at the bottom of her wardrobe for the past three years since I bought her a set of three wireless phones for her home.

With her at my side, I rang BT, and after she gave permission to the BT man for me to speak on her behalf, I arranged for her to pay monthly by DD, told them to collect the phone (only to be told to throw it away as BT didn't want it back), and arranged for her to have free caller display.

Please, please, please, if you have any elderly relatives, please check their phone bills to see if they are paying these needless charges and get them stopped. Last year, I stopped my Mum paying three lots of insurance via one of her Utility companies that she didn't need costing more than £100 a year.

These giant companies are ripping off many elderly people who don't have the knowledge that many on this and other forums have.
Last edited by poppasmurf : 05-03-2009 at 12:10

Another check; how many calls are made ?? If not many, BT have a scheme (called BT Light User Scheme) where the BT Line Rental is discounted (shown as a credit) on a sliding scale depending on how many calls are made.

For most folk this won't work, but for those that don't call out very often it helps with costs (my mother for example where we and family /friends ring her from our free calling time)

It all helps PS the scheme is for anyone - you do not need to be in your senior years!!!

MilnrowLad

LUS is being phased out (no new users accepted) and is being replaced by BT Basic - a scheme only for those in receipt of certain benefits.

watch out on BT Basic. The cost is £13.98 Line rental for 3 months which is cheap But the call costs are.
£4.50 allowance for 3 months at a rate of 9.73p per min +2,93 connection for each call,
after your allowance is used the charge will be 9.73p per min +2,93 connection for each call. So in the long run it could end up costing considerably more than a standard plan
More info Here:
http://www.btplc.com/inclusion/Needh...Basic/cost.htm

Well with all due respect, this wasn't BT's fault. BT rented a phone to your mother in good faith, it wasn't their fault that it was unused and BT do state on practically everything they charge extra for people who don't use direct debits.

Your mother might enjoy using the Post Office instead, I use them. They don't charge extra for people who don't use direct debits and you can get a budget payment card, to top up the account throughout the month, so when the bill comes in, there is very little left to pay.

I have to say I agree. I was with the OP until he started talking about 'ripping off' . How are BT to know that the phone is in a bag in a wardrobe? How are they to know a person is incapable of understanding a bill?
I agree that one should look after less able relatives, but its unfair to blame BT.

Yeah, but £3.50 a month for a phone? That's £40 a year. And the way BT said "just chuck it in the bin" implies it was a very basic phone. Bet the phone could be bought for less than £15 and if used would almost invariably last at least 5 years. They don't really break unless you abuse them, and old grannies don't tend to abuse stuff.

Charging a (relative) fortune for a BT phone on top of the line rental is an old BT blag, I suspect his poor old mother had it pushed at her as an upsell.

As for the non DD charge, that's a new blag, as I don't reckon it costs anywhere near £4.50 to handle a cash transaction at the Post Office. Although it's not quite as big a ripoff as the phone one.

I spoke about BT 'ripping off' as the phone concerned could probably have been bought in a shop for about £15-20. but also I know this company of old.

Before I retired, part of my job was helping old people understand their bills, such as the phone. I found lots of them who had had a phone call from BT telling them of new things like Caller Display, Choose to refuse, etc, etc. They all said the same things - offered free for a month or so, and told 'if you don't like it ring us and we'll cancel it'. Of course the old dears forgot and carried on paying it. Add to that the number who paid over and above their bills and were owed £100 or even more by BT.

BT should be classed among the evil of this world.

Its well worth renting a phone off BT, if you have a fault and it turns out to be caused by your own phone you will get hit with a massive bill, several years worth of phone rental cost. Also if you ask, BT will provide a phone with large keys, ideal for people with poor eyesight.

Help the elderly with understanding their bills, but leave that rented phone in place.

It's true that some people, particularly the elderly are happier renting a phone. However, after an initial period the rental should really reduce to something negligible as it becomes just an insurance policy in case the phone goes faulty.

However, to the OP, for someone who says
"part of my job was helping old people understand their bills, such as the phone. "

"I know this company of old"

"BT should be classed among the evil of this world"

"My Mum is 85 and lives alone"

"rental of a phone which had been in a bag at the bottom of her wardrobe for the past three years since I bought her a set of three wireless phones for her home"

you've got to wonder if you dont have some responsibility for the situation ?

For information, I was not aware she was renting the phone from BT or I would certainly have acted much earlier (3 years earlier). It was only when I saw her actual bill when I was sorting out her direct debit to save her £1.50 per month that I noticed it because her rental charge was higher than mine. The phone itself was hidden in the monthly rental figure.

And please remember that some elderly folk are still independent and astute, and dislike their offspring prying too deeply into their financial affairs, even if they fail to understand what a coniving bunch BT are.

BT's charge for non direct debit is £4.50 a quarter,Virgin Media is £5 a month or more then 3 times as much yet BT seems to get more stick...
Any thing rented looked at over a long period looks poor value, but BT didnt force anyone to take equipment rental and if the equipment did go faulty then it would have been replaced as part of the rental agreement

Well, I guess it's because BT have far more customers. They're the effective "monopoly." True, they're not a true monopoly, people have choice, but people stick with what they know, and via latency and fear of switching because of something going wrong, they stick with BT.

Personally I don't like DD in it's current form, as the companies have too much power to take whatever they like out of your account, and you only find out later if something goes wrong, when the bank sends you a letter telling you you're getting charged £30 a day or something stupid because you've gone badly overdrawn. So basically if some BT engineer decides to ring a £2.50 a minute adult chatline in god knows where, and decides to do it using your phone line ID, and you end up with a £1,000 bill and a load of bank charges and have to fight to get the money back. And of course BT's official line is that such things are impossible and it was someone in your household or you're lying, so you'd probably lucky to get the money back.

I'd actually like DD if I had more control to ok transactions before they happened.

As for Virgin, £5 a month is absolutely outrageous if there's only one transaction every 3 months, and stupid if you ask me, surely there's such a thing as pricing yourself out of the market? But it doesn't exclude BT from criticism, just because they try to profit less from their surcharge.

I have to ask, why you didn't check your mums bills, when you make a point of telling us this was part of your job before you retired.

If your mum had been paying by direct debit and paperless billing, I could understand missing the odd charge or fee. But your mum (at the time) DID have paper billing and DID NOT pay automatically by direct debit. The bill was tangible, in paper form, and the payments handed over manually in pounds and pence (or stamps/card scheme, which still have to be paid for at an agreed price with the cashier), therefore the bill payer has a physical bill and can view the charges on it, and hand over the requested sum of money to a cashier.

I also have to wonder, as these charges and fees were missed on paper billing and manual payments, how your mum will get on without a physical paper bill, and with automatic payments. Out of sight out of mind.

Apart from her living over 100 miles away from me, like I said, she is still independent and likes her independence. She is able to do all her own accounting, etc. It's just that she didnt't know about the BT DD charge. And, she will still be receiving a monthly paper bill before her DD goes out. She previously paid her bill quarterly by cheque in the post. She hasn't yet bought a computer and gone on the internet.

Many of the people I helped in my previous job usually didn't know if it was Pancake Tuesday or Christmas Day, and were mentally incapable of making financial decisions, which my mother most certainly is not. I hope that puts your mind at ease!

And long may she continue like that. Mine was financially capable up until the moment of her passing - at 92.

I had to cajole her into opting for BT's free Evening & Weekend Plan and switching to paying them by DD though - but the 5p per call saving during the evening (she was adept at using 18185 when appropriate) and the saving of the £1.50/month non-DD feee clinched that!

I wasn't worried???

And I thought you cared!!!

I am unemployed at the moment and was looking at the BT Basic and I feel that if I took that up then it would absolutely cost me a bomb to pay and in the end would get my phone cut off. At the moment I am only paying BT for the line rental as I am using it for my broadband and my calls are routed to equitalk which unlimited calls for a £10 per month.

I am getting fed up of DD especially variable and now trying to pay my bills cash when they come thu the post every three months.
I had a problem a few months back with my electricity company taking a huge amount based on an estimate without them giving the 14 days advance notice and I just missed not having to pay a £35 penalty to the bank for going overdrawn. I noticed on the Sunday on internet banking they were about to rob my bank account on Monday morning.

Older people can't be expected to know about every change and rule introduced by cowboys like BT and most other unscrupulous companies ( that includes just about every utility company) that introduce these rules to benefit themselves only.

I also like paper bills that I can keep in a folder.

I agree BT basic could be very costly unless you never use your phone, while it does not allow you to use an overider.

But £10 per month for unlimited calls is a huge amount, Bt do such a deal which includes 0845, 0870 numbers from less than £5, or AOL broadband as overider allows you free all day calls as long as you are on one of their broadband packages & are open to haggle them down if you phone them.

I pay £10.25 for landline with paperless bills & £9.99 for AOL silver (no loner available) plus free all day calls. If I was in a LLU area I could get cheaper, around £6.99.

You can always print paperless bills.

the thing about BT and paperless billing is that I had no idea at all that BT had put their charges up on the 1st of april.
I think there are certain things that they should actually put in the post to everyone, I still get somethings through the post from them such as the bit about free 0845 numbers but they said nothing about putting their chrages up.
It was actually thanks to Talk Talk trying to sell me their phone package that i found out the bill had gone up otherwise i'd still not realise to this day.
So after telling the talktalk lady that no I didn't want her service but thank you very much for informing me that my one have put my bill up something that I epect the other comapnies will follwo in a few months.

Its not only elderly people as well that need help with bills and things. I've got a friend whose been married all her life and just got divoreced and now almost every other time she comes round to see me she's asking me if she needs to take up the water company on the offer of this insurance or someone else on the offer of a service agreement. all of which are pointless but if she didn't have me to explain it all to her she'd probably pay it out as it makes it sound like the consequences of not having that insurence for in case the pipe between your home and the road burst is going to be catostrophic.

Hey you're right didn't think of that......silly me.