What constitutes as a contract with BT?
Discussion
Ok so we (wife and myself) have been BT customers for 3 years. The "bill payer" is my wife its her name on the account. So i get a call about 2 months ago telling me of a fantastic deal. If we sign up for 12 months we get 30% off. So i say yes. Now over the last 3 weeks my broadband speed has plummeted to 3mbps from the 18mbps i previously had. Multiple calls to the friendly Indian call center and its still not resolved. So i say "ok enough is enough, im moving to Richard and his super fast mob". Only to be told i cant as i still have 10 months of a contract. Now it was me not the bill payer who agreed to this, also my wife still has her own second name. Also no contract was singed,and they cant send me proof of my new contract. So my question is how are we contracted to BT and there piss poor service for another 10 months?
andburg said:
Is your name listed on the account as being able to make decisions?
He said he was married. No court in the land would believe him able to make decisions. 
The trouble with all these 'offers' is that they are the tool used to roll your account over into another contracted period and lock in another 12 months revenue that can be forward booked to the accounts.
Rule for everyone is to treat any call about an offer from a company you currently use is to treat it as a heads up that you are out, or about to be out, of contract and to go shopping. Thank them for the heads up, tell them you are going to look elsewhere and do so. Chances are they will revert with a better deal.
Back to this one, isn't there a defined 'cooling off' period for verbal contracts?
Plus, you should lcertainly log speeds and check what the minimum is in your deal.
We had the same thing but in reverse - my wife agreed to a new 12 month contract after a cold call offering to "save you money". My name only was on the BT contract, but they asked her if she was allowed to make decisions about it, and she of course said Yes...
Since we were moving shortly and I knew I wasn't going to take BT in the new house, I called them up and complained that they'd acted in an improper way by getting my wife to agree to something that she didn't fully know about. They said "well, we asked her and she said she was empowered to make decisions...". Anyway, after a bit of back&forth, in the end I did get them to back us out of the new contract.
I suspect though that you have probably gone past the point where you can get them to change anything - worth having a try though. I think it's sharp practice to say the least.
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