I didn't say they were...but thanks for your input. I was merely asking if a letter confirming refusal was a requirement.

I was turned down for further lending by my mortgage company last summer, but have never received a formal letter explaining this.....I was lead to believe that a letter should have been sent explaining their decision and "what to do next" many thanks

All refunded. Dealt with someone in the CEO's office. Called me the following day and agreed charges where not fair as i now a BT customer again.

Sent a letter to a contact I dealt with least year following another cock up by BT explaining the situation and wishing to hear her comments. I wait with baited breath!

hi there, I have recently moved house. At my previous address, I had a standard phone which was never used, it was purely there in order to receive BT broadband. When I moved at the beginning of October, I rang home movers and requested my line to be moved to my new property. Because i was going to use Sky Broadband, I requested that when they move the line across, they cancel the broadband....Which they did. However, I have just picked up some mail from my old property and in there is a Debt collection notice for £44.07. I rang BT and they gave me the breakdown for this amount. £16 odd for the months service of broadband - FINE £2.60 for cancellation fee because i cancelled three days short of the 12month period. £25.00 for not requesting a MAC address. I queried what this is and was informed that because i wasn't migrating my services over, which I would have if Sky got their act together, BT are charging me £25.00 Now, because sky ****ed me around for so long, I actually have gone back to BT, and when i informed them of this, they STILL would not refund the charge. At this point i got angry and told them I was still within the 14day cooling off period so cancel broadband.....i was told Broadband and telecommunications are exempt from this?????!!!!! Are they. Any advise on how I should tackle this?

My respose! Dear Sorry for the delay in responding to your email sent *** I believe your misunderstanding my complaint as I never queried the amount of the charge, or infact stated it was incorrect. I merely requested a breakdown of this fee. i.e. - Labour, materials etc I require this information to ensure that I have not been over charged. It may be a national charge, but I cannot see how I can be charged for work that may or may not have been completed. For example - I pay the charge for the technician arriving and reconnecting one wire, whereas my neighbour pays the same for the complete rewiring of telephone points throughout the house. Turning to your comments regarding the payment of my bill. Again, you either misunderstand my complaint, or are choosing to skim over the fact, that I was informed by a member of your team, that the "billing date had been changed, and therefore for so has the payment date. What I would like to know is, WHY???? I never instructed anyone to change anything in regards to the billing or paying of my bill, so why was this altered. You also mention there are three methods of direct debit but only go into a small amount of detail for one of these methods. I would have thought it may have been more appropriate to give me the information for all your direct debit methods as I do not want to get charged for paying by other way. Which leads me nicely on to your comments regarding the “payment processing fee” or other words “penalty/illegal charge” Please explain why internet payment via your website or via online banking incurs this charge? They require no manual invention and are credited to the account of the customer within 24hours. By applying this charge, you are in effect dictating the way in which customer should pay their bills. I will be contacting Trading Standards in regards to this fee to see what the legal position of it is. You mention that BT is undertaking a transformation of their computer systems, and this is the reason why my activation date for my broadband was delayed – however, you fail to explain why no-one from BT was instructed to contact customers. Bear in mind your have my telephone number, mobile number and email address. Furthermore, the letter I received on the 2nd October from BT informing me of the activation date was dated the 29th September 2008, which is the same day I called you to complain that I was still without broadband. Somewhat coincidental wouldn’t you think?! The only transformation required at BT is your staff. They simply do not care about customer service; otherwise I would have been contacted by your manager, Sue Perry. I don’t believe she just choose not to call me, I believe your staff failed to pass on my callback requests. They need to stop passing the buck and see the issue through to closure. Your offer of compensation is far lower than my expectation especially considering the catalogue of cock-up’s that I have endured. I do hope your comments above, “BT must treat all customers the same, at all times.” is not true, as I pity the poor souls that have to go through this suffering just to be able to use the internet. I’m assuming this is why “BT does not offer compensation for time spent trying to resolve issues” as I’m sure you’d be paying out more than you were receiving. In closing, I will of course help you shape for the future by completing your online survey, however, whilst I complete this, I would request you revisit the offer of compensation and come back to me with a more suitable figure. I look forward to your response in due course. Yours Sincerely,

I like your point, however, it was change of address? And charge was for re-connecting the phone to the house (even though it was already here!)

Hi - UPDATE! I received several replies from BT that evening, the last being the one below. I will post my response on here shortly. Dear I am replying to your email of 24 October addressed to BT’s Chief Executive Ian Livingston. I have been asked to investigate your concerns and respond to you directly and would firstly like to apologise for the problems you have recently encountered. BT’s prides itself on providing excellent customer service and it is clear that we have let you down. In view of your concerns regarding the connection charge billed to your account, I checked the orders details and must confirm that the fee has been correctly raised. When work is required to activate a line, the standard connection charge of £124.99 is applied. In common with other large service organisations, most of the work we do, including connection of service, has a standard national charge. This charge is based on the average costs of a large number of similar jobs throughout the UK. Apart from being a condition of our operating licence that we publish and adhere to standard national charges for our services, it would prove administratively difficult to assess each individual installation. Indeed, such an approach would be likely to increase our overall costs and may cause delay whilst jobs were surveyed. It would be a breach of our licence to remove this fee; BT must treat all customers the same, at all times. Turning to your comments regarding payment of your account, our records confirm that you were previously paying your account by whole bill monthly direct debit. Payment of the bill is taken from customers’ accounts 10 days after production of the bill. This may lead to a slight variation in the date that payment is deducted. The direct debit agreement on your telephone account has now been cancelled and once payment of the outstanding balance has been made, a new direct debit agreement can be set up. BT offers three methods of direct debit; you may find that our Monthly Payment Plan better suits your needs. A set amount is deducted from your account each month on a date specified by you. This method can also be used to pay your broadband account. I would like to take this opportunity to explain that the payment processing fee has been introduced because some methods of payment are costly to process. But it’s not just about the cost of taking the payments; following up when customers forget to pay on time involves spending time and money. If you choose to pay by direct debit, we try and give you up to 10 days from the time of receiving the bill before processing the direct debit, giving you plenty of time to ask questions and we tell you on the bill when the amount will be taken from your account. There is also a direct debit guarantee which protects you and your money. If any error is made by BT or your bank or building society, you are guaranteed a full and immediate refund from your branch of the amount paid. If, however, you choose to pay your bill by any method other than direct debit, a payment processing fee will be levied. We are currently transforming our systems and processes and it appears that, on this particular occasion, we have let you down. We did, regrettably, experience problems with our systems that lasted for nearly a full week and this clearly impacted on the level of service we offered our customers. I trust you are now enjoying a trouble-free service and hope you will accept my apologies for the delay in activation of your broadband. BT does not offer compensation for time spent trying to resolve issues but I do appreciate that your recent experience has not been a good one. In recognition of this, I would like to offer you a goodwill credit of £35.25. This equates to one quarters line rental credit, please let me know if this acceptable and I will credit your account accordingly. Your comments regarding the poor customer service you received have been noted and I hope that future dealings with BT will have a more positive outcome. We are keen to improve the experience we provide to our customers who contact us to complain. With this in mind, would you be interested in taking part in an on-line survey? It will only take a couple of minutes to complete but will allow you to provide us with feedback and help shape future customer service. Please let me know if you are agreeable and I will arrange to have a link sent to your email address. Thank you taking the time to let me of your recent experience, customer feedback whether good or bad is always welcome. My contact details, if I can be of any further assistance, are shown below. Regards

yep....all numbers on there!

I will now - their complaints have had it, Ofcom (or whatever there called now) have had also! Cheers Jim

Following a number of problems with BT since a change of address, I thought I would write a letter!!! It goes a little something like this........... Dear Sir or Madam I write to you inform you of the abysmal customer service BT offer their customers. I am sure you are already aware of this, as I cannot believe I am the only one to suffer at the hands of yourself. I arrange to have my services moved from ***** in Kent, to ******* in Gloucestershire. You would think this to be a relatively simple thing in this technological age. However, below you will find a catalogue of errors by BT staff that leads me to believe incompetence runs through the veins of the company. Wednesday 10th September 2008 – Telephoned “Customer Services” to arrange relocation of services to new address. I was told that my new address has not got a BT line present. Wrong – a BT line has been present and was active for 29 of the 35 years the property has been standing. Friday 19th September 2008 – Technician arrives to “install” line. This is the only member of staff that I have dealt with that should be commended in all of this. He was very polite, arrived early and got to work. Monday 29th September 2008 – Called BT to enquire why broadband had not been activated. After speaking to five different people and spending 26minutes on the phone, I was informed it would be the 2nd October before it was working. When I queried why so long, the gentleman I was discussing my case with informed me, it was only inputted for activation on the 26th September and can require up 5days. Spot the mistake! Installed Friday 19th and not inputted until the 26th September???? I then asked why it took a week to be inputted and I was informed that BT had suffered technical problems! For a company the size of BT, I’m sure a technical problem lasting a week must have been cataclysmic. So forgive me if I think I’m being lied to at this point. Thursday the 2nd October came and bingo, my broadband worked. On this very day, I receive a letter from yourselves informing me of the activation date. Its comical as I sit here and type it all out, and I appreciate you may be thinking this is unbelievable, how can a company get it so wrong? But, unfortunately for BT, it’s true and there’s more to come! Friday 17th October 2008 I receive my bill from BT, for £146.35. The charge for installing this phone line of £124.99 is present and all seems correct. If technicians are earning this sort of money for 45minutes work, please do enclose an application form with your response. In the traumatic financial world that exists today, I could do with a higher salary. However, I don’t believe they are, and I would very much appreciate a breakdown of this fee to ensure I’m not being over charged in anyway shape or form. As I finish reading the bill, I spot that the amount £146.35 is to be debited from my account on or around the 27th October 2008 – this is not something I agreed to or indeed set up. So once again, I call “Customer Services” where I’m informed my billing date has changed and the payment date has been brought forward as it cannot be more than 10 working days after the bill date. This is not acceptable. Like the vast majority of the British public, I get paid the last working day of each month, and therefore I arrange all my direct debits to be taken from my account on the final day or the first day of each month. Following a heated discussion regarding this, I was informed a manager named Sue, would return my call within 48hours. My point which seems to be misunderstood is, if I did not wish to pay by direct debit, then I get charge a payment processing fee. We all know is an illegal penalty charge which you cover up by classing it as a service. I would choose to pay from bank transfer if my billing date cannot be moved, which to my knowledge requires no manual intervention and therefore should be exempt from this charge. If I do pay by direct debit, BT dictates when they take it, and if I don’t pay by direct I get charge. So I’m in a no win situation. I am the customer, as long as you receive the payment before the due date, then I decide when and how I pay, not BT. Monday 20th October 2008 Following the failure of the member of your management team to have the courtesy to fulfil the promises made during my last conversation, I call back to BT and speak to Shab. Once again, I get the normal cold hearted apologies, but she did suggest I cancel the direct debit, pay by debit card and then once the balance is cleared, the billing date can be changed and the direct debit re-instated. Quite a simply thing to undertake I think, but why wasn’t that suggested Friday and why, seven days on from being informed a manager would call me, am I still waiting for that call??!! Your team of receptionists, which in effect is all they are, lack compassion, understanding, courtesy. It seems clear that this attitude is present throughout the company and therefore, I can only assume that it must be something that is instilled in your employees on their induction day. These people are your advertisement, your front cover and urgently need to be overhauled after level of incompetence I have received in recent weeks. In an attempt to resolve my grievances and restore my ailing faith in BT, I would like to receive the following from yourselves:- · A written apology · A billing date which enables the direct debit of both accounts to be taken on or after the 1st of each month. · A breakdown of the £124.99 fee charge for reconnecting a telephone line. · An offer to compensate me for the lost of time and money spent on the telephone. I hope the above will be forth coming and from this we can move forward. Yours Faithfully

Hi there, I wondered if someone could help? I signed a "Assured Shorthold Tenancy Agreement" on the 26th of April and it states it runs until the 4th November. However, I have now been requested to move by my company and take a new position. With that said they are not willing to pay any costs so I wondered how I can go about terminating my lease agreement and what financial penalties I will incur? I paid a £700 deposit, will i just lose that or will I also have to pay the rent until the end of the lease or until they re-let. Please can someone clear this up for me?! Many thanks Jim

Surely then that also applies to the bank charges. When you use it, you are accepting those terms that they have set out in their T & C's. Wouldn't you class these charges as a penalty charge, which are not allowed and any charges levied to cover costs cannot exceed the true amount.

Hello all, after a spell away from the scene, I've decided to tackle my last company, that being VM for late payments fees and non-DD fees. I could find a template for this, so I cut and pasted from various other peoples that I found when reading through many threads. What do you think of the below?? Dear Sir or Madam, I am writing to request repayment of charges that you have applied to my account since November 2003 by the way of “Non Direct Debit Fee’s” and “Late Payment Fees”. I fail to see how this can be a fair charge and, as you are aware, unfair charges are prohibited under UK contract law. Given that your penalty charge is unlikely to be a true reflection of the cost of processing my payment, it must be deemed to be unfair. As a customer, I pay via your epayments system, which I imagine will not incur any manual intervention. Please correct me if I am wrong! In relation to the unfair late payment charge, I have tried several times to arrange payment by direct debit, however I require the payment to be taken on the first day of each month, which coincidentally is my date of salary payment, however, I have been told by your staff, that because of my billing date, the latest date in the month the payment can be taken is around the 25th, which is absolutely no use to me whatsoever. So by your system fault, I get illegally penalised by way of a penalty charge. I would expect Virgin Media to be able to demonstrate that the charges that have been applied to my account are justified, and I would like you to demonstrate that the charge is a fair and an accurate representation or a pre-estimate of its costs in processing non-direct debit payments. If you choose to argue that this is a charge for a service and not a penalty, I challenge it to demonstrate how this can suddenly be the case after years of it not being so. I look forward to reading your explanation. If you are unable or unwilling to provide such or proof of your actual processing cost or a genuine pre-estimate of such, you will no doubt understand my refusal to pay it The Trading Standards has stated that the charge appears to be unfair and as a customer of Virgin Media for over 5 years, I urge it to reconsider its position on this unreasonable charge, and return the amount of £416.00 that has been applied and paid within 14days of the date of this letter. If this repayment is not forthcoming, I will instigate proceedings through the county courts to retrieve this monies that have been unlawfully extracted. Yours

Hi there, This is on behalf on my sister, who is moving house next week. When she contacted VM to advise them of this, they told her they can't offer all the services she currectly has because the area in which she is moving to is a non-cabled area. They told her that she can't have the television and phone from them, she'll only have Freeview and the phone has to be through BT, but they service it (like Sky etc) So she thought, well the no point having services from two companies, she rather just go to BT and get it all through them. However, because in December she re-negotiated her contract, they now want £198.60 to settle the contract early. Or she can get BT to install a line, let VM service and only have freeview for the same monthly cost, but they'll refund the £198.60 after 30days - but if she does this, a new contract will begin now, and not carryon from December. Surely, they cannot do this. They are unable to provide the services that was agreed to in December, how can they hold her to a contract, and insist she stick with them or will be charged nearly £200.00 Your help would be greatly appreciated.