Greed in the guise of contracts
I have noticed a nasty new trait recently. I got the first hint when I went to renew my car insurance and the best deal required me to agree to something called 'continuous authority'. What this means is that the company in question (the RAC in this case) would assume that I wanted to take said insurance with them for ever and would keep taking money every year after that.
Forget that, thought I. Only all the others with remotely competitive prices had the same restriction. So with the RAC I went, thinking I would spot that coming next year easily enough if needs be.
Only, when the renewal date comes round I lose TWO lots of car insurance money. Turns out the Post Office, with whom last years policy was, had something similar and I hadn't spotted it. Fortunately, the ABI, who regulate such things, state that their taking the money does count as a new contract so one is entitled to a cooling off period and I could therefore get it cancelled with only the loss of a nominal sum for the two days it had been running. But I can't help thinking that they must have been pretty sly to get that one past me. I mean, I'm a geek and I actually read these things when I hand my money over.
Or at least I thought I did. Now we come to BT.
16 months ago, when Elaine left, I took out a new contract with BT for my home phone rental and calls. Usual thing, Option blah, 12 month contract etc. So I thought that switching to Tiscali for everything now would be fine. today I got a letter telling me it would cost nearly £60 to get out of my contract.
Eh???
Well, it turns out that BT automatically put you onto another 12 month contract when your first one runs out.
Now, the point of the 12 month thing is that they incur a cost to set your line up so they are entitled to ask you to use it for a minimum length of time. But what benefit to me, exactly, comes from agreeing to renew this tie in for no money off??
I have managed to persuade them to drop this charge but I would urge any of you who have read this far to check your dealings with BT. This is a Ryanair level of cynical customer deception and they should not be allowed to do it. I shall not be doing business with them for a good while after this one.
Forget that, thought I. Only all the others with remotely competitive prices had the same restriction. So with the RAC I went, thinking I would spot that coming next year easily enough if needs be.
Only, when the renewal date comes round I lose TWO lots of car insurance money. Turns out the Post Office, with whom last years policy was, had something similar and I hadn't spotted it. Fortunately, the ABI, who regulate such things, state that their taking the money does count as a new contract so one is entitled to a cooling off period and I could therefore get it cancelled with only the loss of a nominal sum for the two days it had been running. But I can't help thinking that they must have been pretty sly to get that one past me. I mean, I'm a geek and I actually read these things when I hand my money over.
Or at least I thought I did. Now we come to BT.
16 months ago, when Elaine left, I took out a new contract with BT for my home phone rental and calls. Usual thing, Option blah, 12 month contract etc. So I thought that switching to Tiscali for everything now would be fine. today I got a letter telling me it would cost nearly £60 to get out of my contract.
Eh???
Well, it turns out that BT automatically put you onto another 12 month contract when your first one runs out.
Now, the point of the 12 month thing is that they incur a cost to set your line up so they are entitled to ask you to use it for a minimum length of time. But what benefit to me, exactly, comes from agreeing to renew this tie in for no money off??
I have managed to persuade them to drop this charge but I would urge any of you who have read this far to check your dealings with BT. This is a Ryanair level of cynical customer deception and they should not be allowed to do it. I shall not be doing business with them for a good while after this one.