Web design & FOSS
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Thursday 9 April 2009, 11:29 AM
For what, exactly?
When I moved to the northern Kentish environs, I switched telephone providers to TalkTalk. However, I received a disconnection bill from BT for £70, because I'd switched before my 12 month minimum contract had expired. £70, ow, for a fee I'd never heard of.
So, I wrote to the BT Correspondence Centre (no to ask for a breakdown of the bill, as £70 seemed a lot of money for somebody flicking a switch.
Nobody from BT deigned to write to me, despite my writing to them 4 times; I just received 4 threatening letters from their debt collectors and solicitors. And then finally, after counter-threatening them with legal action, a zero balance bill arrived.
The heavy-handedness of wading in with demands and threats seems to be the first course of action for many large corporations. This isn't a manifesto to bring down capitalism but just a call for BT to play fair and actually communicate with their customers. Seems like plenty of other people are having the same experience…
PreviousComments on this post
It isn't only BT. It's a sign of the times. TalkTalk tried to dupe me into a new contract the other day as, presumably, after a few years with them I am no longer tied to a contract duration.
I'm a council leaseholder, bought in the open market - big mistake! Some years ago our roof was repaired and the cost was many times any sensible figure, not all the work was carried out and the work was unsupervised. The council's only responses were threats and ultimately they added the cost onto my mortgage at short notice while I was on holiday. I only had a small mortgage and this unreasonable expense for roof repairs very nearly doubled it.
Currently I am aware of ongoing work on a council estate which is going to cost leaseholders, many of them retired with small means, up to £50k. What is very clear is that they are nowhere near to getting value for money and, in this case, leaseholders are also being charged for the council's errors. The council's response - 'tuff'
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