- Britain’s largest telecoms company is in the spotlight because of its landline costs
- A campaign group has won the right to bring a class action against BT
- But BT says it has done nothing wrong and will ‘vigorously defend itself’
Millions of BT landline customers could be awarded up to £400 in damages as the company faces an overcharging lawsuit.
The class action case, which starts today, aims to raise £1.3 billion for more than 3 million BT customers, many of whom are elderly.
The group Collective Action on Land Lines (Call) claims that BT has increased its prices in the past while its own costs fell.
Now Call has taken BT to court over two groups of customers it claims were overcharged.
Landline row: BT has been accused of issuing customers’ landline bills without good reason
1) Those who had a BT fixed line service between October 2015 and April 2018, but did not have broadband from BT or another provider
2) Those who had a BT landline and broadband between October 2015 and December 2023, but did not bundle these services into one discounted package
The first group has more than 1.5 million affected customers and they were overcharged by up to £84 a year, Call said.
The second group consists of more than 2 million customers, Call claims.
The claim period runs from February 2015 to October 2018 for landline-only customers, and from February 2015 to December 2023 for landline and broadband customers.
Justin Le Patourel, founder of Call, said damages will vary depending on the customer’s individual case, but on average damages will be between £300 and £400 per person.
In 2017, watchdog Ofcom said BT had wrongly charged millions of regular customers from 2015.
At the time, BT agreed to reduce the price of its fixed-line subscriptions.
However, Le Patourel took the issue to the Competition Appeal Tribunal as he believed the telecoms provider was owed compensation payments, arguing that many customers were vulnerable and owed refunds.
Le Patourel said: ‘Time is really of the essence. More than 40 percent of our claimants are over 70 years old, and more than 150 of them die every day. It really is vital that BT pays them all back as quickly as possible.”
More than 500,000 of the customers who only had a landline telephone have already died.
However, if the case is successful, the estates of these deceased persons can apply for compensation.
The trial is likely to last eight weeks and the plaintiffs hope to receive a verdict sometime in 2024.
A BT Group spokesperson said: ‘We take our responsibilities to our customers very seriously and are doing everything we can to keep our customers connected, while helping those who need it most.
‘This claim relates to a technical issue with fixed telephony pricing that was resolved by Ofcom in 2017. We do not accept that our prices at the time were anti-competitive and are committed to vigorously defending our position during the trial.”
How do I register?
If you think you are affected, there is nothing you need to do now.
The case is being run on an opt-out basis, so affected BT customers will be included by default unless they choose otherwise.
If the claim is successful, BT customers will have to log in to Calling to get any compensation.
In addition, a legal battle against mobile phone overcharging was launched in December 2023 against Vodafone, EE, Three and O2.
Millions of mobile phone users could owe £3.3 billion after years of overpaying on their contracts, according to consumer champion and former Citizens Advice director Justin Gutmann.
thinks Gutmann that these companies overcharged their customers on as many as 28.2 million contracts.
Many are expected to have claims against more than one mobile operator and could therefore receive even more compensation, he says.