A woman was charged £1,000 by her broadband provider after failing to notice fine print snag
A BROADBAND customer has told how the small print in her renewal contract ended up costing her £1,000 in fees and fines.
Joanne Batty, 54, was coming to the end of a two-year broadband and landline phone contract and called to renegotiate the arrangement.
Joanne Batty was charged a shocking £1,000 by her broadband company.
She had hoped to carry on as she was – with three landline handsets.
But she claims she was told that she’d need to swap her three landlines, for a newer updated cloud-based model with three new handsets.
After reluctantly agreeing, Joanne was sent a document to sign which she says was “not user friendly” and “around 60 pages long” – and keen to get on with her HR job, admitted that she wasn’t able to read it all the way through before she signed it.
She says a customer service agent – prior to signing the agreement – told her the phone installation cost would be £65 per handset, including installation.
But actually, she found out it was £150 per handset, plus £150 installation fees – a total she hadn’t noticed in the contract.
The new service failed to work and engineers were sent to her house on two separate occasions to try and fix the problem – incurring another £150 per visit.
When the service still failed to work, a third more senior engineer was sent out for another £150 and again left without fixing the problem.
She didn’t notice the £150 fees in the contract she signed.
After six months of limbo and close to £1,000 worth of engineer visit fees, installation fees, monthly payment costs, and “threats” because she hadn’t paid, Joanne decided to escalate things.
She emailed the managing director of her provider and within 24 hours received a call from the CEO who agreed to wipe all charges and pay compensation of around £100.
Her new service was also fixed “within 20 minutes” after they were able to remotely set things up.
But the stress of the ordeal was enormous and Joanne – who runs an HR firm – says she missed out on business during the time her phones weren’t working.
She says she would never have agreed to the contract and terms if she had understood and read them properly.Joanne, from Leeds, said: “I suppose not reading the terms and conditions didn’t help but the document was so un-user friendly.
“When you’re running a business, time is money.
“This contract was in my name so they wouldn’t speak to my partner when they came round to try and sort things.“They kept saying I’d signed it so I had to follow it through.
“The contract was very long and excessive and repetitive.”
Joanne was told her broadband and landline would be cut off if she didn’t pay the hefty £1,000 bill.
She said: “It had gone on for 6 months, they were threatening to cut us off because we weren’t paying.
“But they weren’t able to install it properly and we couldn’t make any outgoing calls or receive calls for a period, until they were able to temporarily re-route landline calls to my mobile.
“The bill had got up to about £1,000 (for visits and paying £150 each for the phones and the monthly charge) at this point which we thought we hadn’t signed up for.”
Joanne, whose situation was eventually resolved in December 2024, has teamed up with Adobe Acrobat to share her story to highlight how AI can help simplify complex small print in contracts.
Abhigyan Modi, senior vice president of Adobe Document Cloud said: “Customers open billions of contracts each month and AI can be a game changer in helping simplify their experience.
“We are introducing new capabilities to deliver contract intelligence, making it easier for customers to understand and compare these complex documents and providing citations to help them verify responses, all while keeping their data safe.”
How to save on broadband and TV bills
HERE'S how to save money on your broadband and TV bills:
Audit your subscriptions
If you’ve got multiple subscriptions to various on-demand services, such as Amazon Prime, Netflix, and Sky consider whether you need them all.
Could you even just get by with Freeview, which couldn’t cost you anything extra each month for TV.
Also make sure you’re not paying for Netflix twice via Sky and directly.
Haggle for a discount
If you want to stay with your provider, check prices elsewhere to set a benchmark and then call its customer services and threaten to leave unless it price matches or lowers your bill.
Switch and save
If you don’t want to stay with your current provider check if you can cancel your contract penalty free and switch to a cheaper provider.
A comparison site, such as BroadbandChoices or Uswitch, will help you find the best deal for free.
Do you have a money problem that needs sorting? Get in touch by emailing [email protected].
Plus, you can join our Sun Money Chats and Tips Facebook group to share your tips and stories
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