Financial Team

This is Money’s Lee Boyce decided to perform a long-overdue MOT of his mother’s phone and TV deals. It proved more difficult than he’d hoped.…

For a while now, my Mum has been asking me to pop home, sit down with her and go through her household bills to try and reduce costs.

Last weekend she attempted to change the phone and broadband, which ended up in much confusion. So this weekend, I came home and had a chance to sit down and go through the bills with a fine-tooth comb.

It was time to give the household bills a once over and to try and save those vital pennies each month. Here’s how we got on…

BT

When it came to the broadband and telephone, she was on a bad deal.

She was being charged £11.99 for line rental by BT with calls on top; she was spending on average £20 a month on the phone.

The broadband was through Tiscali, which is now TalkTalk. The speed was a mind-numbing 2.3Mb, when the national average is 5.7Mb.

When I asked her why she had never queried this, she replied: ‘Because I thought they would get in touch with me to offer new deals and an improved service.’

Wrong Mother, they had you on a lousy deal and raking in your hard earned cash for a pittance of a service. For the ‘privilege’ of having such slow broadband, she was paying out £12 a month.

This meant she was paying roughly £32 a month on phone and broadband.

When I bugged her the weekend before last to contact TalkTalk, they offered her broadband that should average a mega 17Mb and line rental thrown in for £18.48.

BT counteracted and sent my Mum the dreaded ‘cancellation letter.’ £55.50 for breaking the contract and moving services over to another provider.

Then she received two letters from TalkTalk – One saying that she couldn’t go with them because BT said the line was disconnected.

The other letter came through a day later saying the Direct Debit had been set-up and there would be a connection charge of £29.99. It was all so puzzling that I don’t blame my poor Mum for not trying to sort out a better deal before.

We called TalkTalk who said it was going ahead and apologised for the letter saying it wasn’t. They also said the connection fee would be waived and they would credit the account the BT cancellation charge of £55.50

Next I told my Mum to call up BT and query the cancellation charge. For a fact, I knew she would be on a crafty rolling contract, as I used to work in the telecommunications industry.

When they sign you up, they tell you quickly it is a 12-month contract that is rolling and never inform you when the 12 months is up.

This means if you do not keep on top of your bills and don’t realise you’ve been with them for 12 months, they sign you up again without any authorisation. Of course this is what the BT operator was now saying on the other end.

But I know the consumers right, and once he’d said ‘you would have been told this when you signed up in 2008 by the person on the other end’, I told my Mum to ask for the call recording.

After going on hold for a while, he came back to say he couldn’t trace it at present, but will investigate and get back in five working days.

I’m interested to see if they have the call recording. If they don’t, no way will the £55.50 charge be paid and my Mum will be the winner – £55.50 credited into her TalkTalk account.

Estimated saving: £13 per month/£156 per year (plus a possible £55.50)

Sky

Next up was the Sky package she was on. Unfortunately we are in an area of Essex doesn’t receive Freeview or Virgin coverage. If you want a decent TV package, sky is pretty much your only bet.

My Mum spoke to the friendly man on the end named John, who informed her that her £23 per month package that she had been on for nine years was a good package.

This is a package that includes no movies, sport or a Sky+ box. In other words, it was a good deal nine years ago.

First of all, we queried which packages we had. They included music, knowledge and children. Why my Mum had the children package we’ll never know. So we removed these three packages, as they don’t get used.

That should hopefully bring down the bills. And it did. By £3 a month to £20 – £1 per package, hardly the saving we were hoping for.

If she had realised she was on these packages sooner she could have saved a bundle. Removing the children’s package nine years ago for instance, would have saved £111 up to this date.

I saw a leaflet that had dropped through the door for the same packages we were on and a Sky+ box for £18 per month.

‘Why can’t loyal customers get that?’ I urged my Mum to ask.

After some hesitance, she was put through to the next operator, probably someone in their cancellations team who gets commission for each person they save.

After some negotiating, he offered the Sky+ for a one off charge of £30 and we could keep the same package. Result. It might not have been money saving, but it was an enhanced package.

However, the phone cut off their end for no reason. Getting frustrated, my Mum called back. When she got through, there was apparently ‘no notes on the system to say we had been offered that deal or that we had even spoken to anyone.’

He said there was no way this would have been authorised and that we would have to pay a one off charge for £99 and take out the HD package for an extra £10 per month to get a Sky+ box.

‘We don’t even have an HD TV’, my Mum was repeating on the phone.
The man on the other end said the call was probably outsourced to a different company working on Sky’s behalf. There would be a ten day wait for them to be able to get the call recording.

We will wait and see what the outcome is when that ten day window is up.

Estimated saving: £3 per month/£36 per year (and hopefully a free Sky+ box when they retrieve the call.)

On a brighter note, I managed to sort her out a water meter to be fitted, which should save on her water bills.

As the majority of the time it is occupied by just one person, pay-as-you-use is probably the cheapest way. See our water metre guide for details.

We also looked at her gas and electric, but they seemed reasonable – plus after the torment of BT and Sky, I think that was enough bill axing for one morning.

Have you ever had customer service issues with industry giants? Are you hesitant about changing suppliers and if so, why? Do you work for BT or Sky and have a defence? We’d love to hear from you in the reader comments below…

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