BT billed me £1,584 to use the internet on my mobile
WHEN I took out a BT landline contract for my interiors business in March last year, the salesman also offered me a mobile phone contract costing £20 a month plus VAT, which I took.
The plan includes just one gigabyte (GB) of data, so my employee has been very careful to only use the internet when there is a free wifi connection.
But in March we received a bill for £163, followed by one in April for £758 and another in May for £663. This adds up to £1,584.
My business is now alarmingly out of pocket. BT never warned us we were racking up such huge bills.
I want to cancel the contract, but BT says I’m tied in for 24 months. W. H., Surrey. This letter should serve as a big warning to anyone who uses the internet on their mobile phone.
if you have only a small data allowance, you have to be very, very careful — the charges for exceeding it can be enormous and my postbag is regularly brimming with complaints from readers who have also been caught out.
When you said your employee didn’t receive a single warning from BT about exceeding his data allowance, i found this most concerning. But when i checked this with BT, its engineers found the firm had sent more than 20 texts warning about charges.
i can’t stress enough how important it is to pay attention to texts sent by your provider. ignore them and the consequences are costly.
Your employee was billed an extra 50p for every additional megabyte he used. There is a spending cap, but for small business customers this doesn’t kick in until you’ve spent £500.
however, BT has agreed to waive the extra charges as a goodwill gesture.
it advises you to consider increasing the allowance to avoid any more nasty shocks, or ensure mobile data is turned off once the 1GB limit is hit.
A spokesman for BT says: ‘ We are continually monitoring our processes to prevent business mobile customers racking up large bills for data usage outside their monthly allowance.’ I READ an article in Money Mail about a top-up that could boost my state pension by as much as £25 a week.
The article gave a number for HM Revenue & Customs that I could call in order to sign up (0345 600 4270). I’ve rung on a number of occasions, but the staff don’t seem to understand what I am asking for. Is this number correct? J.S., Hendon, London. Yes. hM Revenue & Customs says that number is the right one. it is investigating why you have had so much difficulty getting its staff to help you.
experiences such as yours could be part of the reason why only 4,000 of the 265,000 people expected to sign up to the pension top-up, known as Class 3A national insurance contributions, have taken advantage of it.
The scheme, which is due to close on April 5 next year, is open to men who were born before April 6, 1951 and women born before April 6, 1953, who already receive a state pension.
You hand over a lump sum which boosts your state pension by up to £25 a week. This increase rises each year in line with inflation.
it would cost a 65- year- old £22,250 to gain the full £25 a week. This works out as much better value than buying an annuity.
however, if you have health problems and are unlikely to live for many more years, you may want to consider whether it is worth signing up.
The top-up is a sweetener for the 12 million people who have missed out on the new, flat-rate £155.65 a week state pension, which came into force in April.
For the first time, it allows savers who have already retired to buy extra state pension.
it’s also a huge boost for the selfemployed. Until now, many have been unable to build up additional state pension, which can be worth as much as £164 a week extra. instead, they’ve had to rely on the basic state pension of £119.30.
if you do decide to go for the topup, call 0345 600 4270 or go to gov.
uk/statepensiontopup. if there is any confusion with staff, say you want to make a Class 3A national insurance contribution. I WAS recently caught speeding and opted to take a speed awareness course instead of accepting three penalty points and a fine. I assumed my insurance premiums would stay the same or even fall because I would be viewed as a lower risk. However, when I came to renew, I was horrified to discover my premiums had increased. Why is this? A. D., Guildford. speed awareness courses are offered to motorists who are caught driving a few miles per hour over the speed limit.
For example, in a 30mph zone, your speed would need to be between 35mph and 42mph to escape the fine and penalty points and instead pay to attend a speed awareness course.
On motorways, you’d need to be travelling between 79mph and 86mph.
Anything over this, and you can’t avoid the penalty points and fine. On the half-day course you learn about the impact of speeding — usually by watching some rather bleak videos.
While going on this course won’t typically impact your insurance premiums, some insurers take a harder line. For example, a spokesman for Admiral says: ‘it doesn’t change the fact that the person has committed a speeding offence. Our claims statistics show that drivers who have committed a speeding offence could be a higher risk than drivers who don’t speed.’
so, the moral of the story is, quite simply, do not speed.