After you get a phone bill from BT, how long do you *really* have to pay it?

BB?

No, they'll unplug you from the DSLAM.

If you don't pay it by this time frame, they will automatically charge you an extra fiver - late payment charge - on the next bill.

If we phone them up and tell them the tennancy has changed, will they still make us responsible for the electric bill?

But I do like the "send Dom money" idea. A lot.

I got a letter from BT a few months back telling me that my line was being cut off because someone else had requested my number. The letter arrived on the 2nd of May and stated that if I wanted to keep my number I had to call them BEFORE the 2nd of May.

I called them from my home number and told them that I obviously wanted to keep my number. The girl on the phone asked which number I was dialling from, I told her, and she said "That's impossible, this number has been taken out of use." we argued back and forth for about twenty minutes, eventually a supervisor confirmed that I was indeed calling from my home number.

She apologised and told me that a final bill would be sent as the account was showing as being ended (nothing she could do about that), but she would open another account on the same number. Very good.

I said I wouldn't be paying the 'final bill' until my next bill was due as I budget for it quarterly, she said "that's not a problem," apologised once again, and that was that.

Two days later I received the final bill. Very well. My bill wasn't due for another four weeks, so I filed this one.

One week later I received a reminder. I called BT to tell them the bill would be paid when the bill is normally due. The guy said "fine - I can see what's happened on the system, that's okay.'

I came in from work a few days later, picked up the phone and dialled my mum. I didn't get through, instead my phone transferred me to the payment department at BT. I got some ratsy little git who told me that there was nothing on 'the system' (the fucking system, eh?) he said I had been cut off due to non payment of the final bill.

I went mental at the guy, I had to explain everything from scratch but the dick wouldn't budge. He said the line wouldn't be back on until the bill was paid. I told him to 'shove it up his arse' (I was shaking by this point, I'm shite with people like that) and hung up.

The following day I lifted the phone and dialled out without thinking, and lo and behold the line had been reinstated. Three weeks later I got another bill in (at the correct time) and paid it in full.

The moral of the story is, well, there isn't one. BT do what they want. You're on borrowed time.

There is also some kind of direct debit system, where you pay so much each month and hope it isn't too little.

House sharers! How do you you divvy up your Friends and Family numbers?

We were sent a TELEGRAM by Electric Company last month when we were late paying our bill. I was so delighted to get a telegram (which only the day before we'd been moaning were extinct) that I didn't care that it was threatening legal action. Woo!

If we phone them up and tell them the tennancy has changed, will they still make us responsible for the electric bill?

This happened to me - except in my case, the amount was about 10 times that.

If you tell them the tenancy has changed, they'll definitely ask for at least a supporting letter from your landlord.

I *have* had the TV licence people turn up on my doorstep when I didn't have a TV licence. I escaped a fine, because I didn't actually hear them knocking at the door - the TV was turned up too loud.

Apparently (at least according to the Guardian) there has been a rash of threatening letters about lisences for non existing televisions. Seems they've changed the database or something so that now every household who doesn't have a license gets a letter regardless - on the assumption that only freaks and skivvers do not own tellies of something. Dunno. My housemate pays the TV Liscence so I'm not bothered. (He also owns my TV but that's another story.)

I don't know! It was just put through the door when we were out. But it said 'this has been sent TODAY' and stuff. Carrier pigeon?

Our TV licence letters sometimes say 'if you tell us you don't have a TV we will not contact you for another 3 years' but this doesn't seem to be the case.

This scares me, given that when I moved out of my last flat that was in my name - over a year ago now - I was in the middle of a big debate over council tax with the council. They claimed I owed them around £7000, of which about £1000 I actually did (the rest was from my student days). After I moved, I gave them my new address, and I've had letters from other departments of that council at my new address, but I've not heard either the tax collection division or their debt collectors since. I'm too scared to try to get back in touch and say "um, about that money I probably owe you...?"

they exist, believe me. oh, they exist. and (x-post) i found this out the hard way because of a council-tax fuck-up that wasn't even my fault. god damn, i can feel the bile rising already.

No.

i sent them a very polite letter back pointing out that they were total chumps and could fuck off. i never heard another peep out of them.

IIRC i did actually owe them 150 quid. hah.

In my experience, it’s better to phone up and tell them you forgot, are struggling or have been away rather than ignore. They can be helpful sometimes.

All the time that I lived there, these letters kept coming; and after the council tax fiasco started I realised from the return address that they were from the same debt collectors that the council used. Finally, I opened one. They were trying to recover almost £20,000 of credit card debt; and over five years after they'd started they were still sending the "unless you contact us immediately we will be forced to start proceedings" letter.

xpost: I stayed in Edinburgh University accomodation service flats for a couple of years, and they fucked up my rent several times. I think I probably still owe them a fiver or so, because after forgetting to charge me for a few months they "recalculated the remaining payments", but didn't manage to recalculate it *correctly*.

the completely non-standard hoovers! j0hn thingy and his woollen ties! the washing-machine cards! oh, the misery. the woe. the bleakness.

I'm sure we've had a TV licence thread before.

Secondly, they routinely send people round to addresses of people without a licence in the hope of catching them watching an unlicenced TV (there's a £1000 fine for that)

you get a discount if you're blind, too

I don't know about deaf people

nothing at all

xpost you ought to be able to buy a telly that blocks all BBC channels, so you don't have to pay the licence. but no.

(the UK actually has three state-owned TV networks, but only the smallest receives government funding)

but I get amazing channels like GAS

!

you pay $60/month for cable, then?

According to the 2004/5 Annual Report, last tax year the BBC's licence fee revenue was £2.9b; the BBC's commercial divisions raised only £151m (which seems to include both profits and payments from commercial to non-commercial divisions - £145m of that was contributed by BBC Worldwide, but Worldwide's profits were only £55m)

amazing!

FP, i'm missing something here: it does?

(c) is the only one that receives direct government funding.

BBC Worldwide has been sold to 2 Entertain. I think. Michael will fill in the gaps.

S4C gets funding because of language issues, doesn't it?

I had no idea C4 and S4C were state owned.

As far as I know, you can't get black and white televisions any longer. Otherwise I would have one to fit in with my (imagined) lifestyle.

Btw, there is no discount for deaf viewers. After all, they get the great privilege of half-arsed subtitling AS WELL as the pictures...