BT drop to new low in candour and honesty

I've just wasted five minutes having been suckered by BT - and nearly cost myself a lot more, too.


BT tried to entice me to pay for a year's line rental in advance, and offered a juicy discount for doing so. I carefully scanned the list of features, looking to see whether this involved my routing calls via BT (rather than much-cheaper ICUK who I currently use).

Things you need to know about Line Rental Saver

• Only available with paper-free billing (view your bill online and receive no paper bill)
• You must set up Direct Debit to cover any call changes made throughout the year
• You need to make at least two BT calls per month to avoid monthly charge of £1.50 being added to your bill
• Line Rental Saver payment is non-refundable
• At the end of the 12 months you'll revert to monthly line rental unless you tell us otherwise
• If you currently get a discount for paper-free billing, this will stop
• Some calling plans aren't available with Line Rental Saver. If this is the case we'll let you know and you can then choose to change your Calling Plan or remain on monthly line rental

Nothing there about shifting my calls - two calls a month via BT is something I can live with.


So I waded through the screens declining all the extras BT wanted me to buy, and there at the final screen was a minor detail that they had forgotten to mention at the outset:

By completing this order you are agreeing to switch your calls back to BT.


Oh, didn't they mention that at the outset? They didn't explicitly ask me whether I was OK about this. How careless of them only to slip it in at the last minute along with a lot of other verbiage. 


When a company is gifted a monopoly, I reckon they need to try extra hard not to come across as taking advantage of that to bully their customers. 


BT seem not to agree. This reinforces my dislike of the company and makes it a long time before I will invest the effort in exploring any temptations they may try on me.