invoice error from BT: when they discover it will I be hit with a massive bill?

J

jackthelad

Guest
I signed up for broadband with esat BT about a 18 months ago, and after about 3 months, they cancelled the line by mistake. Anyway I negociated compensation of 6 months free use, and they credited the account by value of 6 months payments.

So now about a year later, we still aren't being charged and the invoice shows exact same thing month after month, it appears they have made a mistake and 'frozen' the billing.

My question is this; when they discover their error will I have to pay all the time they were not billing me for, and end up with a massive bill?

The reason I ask is that the rate with Esat BT is very uncompetitive and if I was actually paying then I'd change to another provide, however since I'm not paying, I'm not rocking the boat!
 
Jack

I would assume that once the error is discovered you will be billed for the service, after all that is what you agreed to.

Better to raise it now rather than wait for a bigger bill. You could contact your account manager and try to negotiate a better deal as I am sure they would rather not lose a customer

C
 
I had a terrible problem with them some years ago. I cancelled their service and they sent me a new bill around 2 years later. They got very tough in their attempts to collect it. I sent them a great( if I may say so myself) letter telling them that I would happily pay the bill if directed to by a judge. But I would be doing a significant discovery of documents relating to their billing systems in defence of my court case.

They wrote me back a nice letter saying that they would not be pursuing the case.

Brendan
 
Their billing systems certainly seem to be all over the place. The last company I worked for received (leased line and analogue line) services for free for ages because esat failed to bill them. When esat discovered the mistake they tried to bill for the services but the person responsible for accounts convinced them not to pursue it and they waived the outstanding charges. He's a good haggler though.
 
To original poster - Shhh! :D

Exactly the same happened to me. They must be losing money hand over fist.

At one stage I was getting negative bills where they owed me over a grand! - it's great getting negative bills for a change.

I tried to rectify the situation but their support system is dire. (Ironic considering they are a communications company). Their own fault, so now I'm saying nothing and regarding it as compensation for the This post will be deleted if not edited to remove bad language they put me through.

They're too in competant to even notice, so I wouldn't worry about a massive bill.
 
Unregistered said:
To original poster - Shhh! :D
Click to expand...

That's more or less what the haggler mentioned above told other people at an esat focus group meeting which he was invited to when they started complaining that esat were often sending inaccurate bills which undercharged them. He kept saying that he was very happy with their billing system and they should leave well enough along! :)
 
Had lots of similar experiences with ESAT re broadband... no bills for a year, followed by a nasty letter from their "credit controllor" ... I rang looking for the actual invoices which never arrived, and I heard no more.... until I wen looking fior another ESATBT service to be told ( or rather my outsourced technician was told) that there was an outstanding bill that they had had toi write off and so I was blacklisted and wouldnt be getting anything from ESAT again so try Eircom"!!!

Havnt decieded where to bring it ... yet!
 
Actually - I just remembered that they were also invoicing my employer twice under slightly different names and failed to correct their records when contacted by the haggler. I think he gave up trying to sort it out and just told them that he was not paying or something like that. This was a couple of years ago.
 
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