A BT customer was charged £32.99 a month for a landline that had no service from May 2025, when the company moved the line to Digital Voice, until it was finally activated in September.
The broadband connection was not affected, but the monthly bill continued regardless, the customer said.
According to the customer, weeks passed after the switch and each call to BT meant at least an hour on hold answering security questions before being transferred between departments.
Two engineers attended last December and found that a wire had been severed during the upgrade. They said a cherry picker would be needed to reconnect it at its original position and that they would return. They did not.
BT says it was not aware of the problem until the customer complained last December. The customer insists the fault had been reported earlier, but has no records showing when. The case was closed in December following the engineers’ abortive visit.
A second complaint was lodged in January. BT admits it closed that case too, saying that by then the landline had been taken off the account — even though the customer was still being billed. BT says it heard nothing more until the Guardian intervened in July.
The customer said they had relied on assurances that a repair was in progress.
After contact from the Guardian, a complaints manager called the customer, who was offered £6.46 to make up for the company’s failings. The line was eventually activated in September.
Ofcom requires providers to pay £10.34 a day in compensation when a reported fault is not corrected within two working days, which would put the customer’s theoretical entitlement at more than £4,600.
BT has declined to pay that amount, arguing that the problems went unreported for months. Because the customer cannot produce evidence to contradict that account, the claim cannot be argued.
The customer, who is on the priority register because of serious illness, said they had been reduced to tears of helplessness.
They have now accepted £689, which covers the 60 days without service that BT acknowledges fall within the compensation rules, as well as the company’s mishandling of the two complaints it holds on record.
A complaint to the Communications Ombudsman remains an option.
Consumers are advised to keep a timeline of their interactions with a company and to follow up unaddressed complaints promptly and in writing.
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