Millions of BT landline customers could get up to £400 in compensation as the firm faces an overcharging court case.
The class action case, which starts today, aims to win £1.3billion for more than 3 million BT customers, many of whom are elderly.
The group Collective Action on Land Lines (Call) claims that BT increased its prices in the past even as its own costs were falling.
Now Call has taken BT to court over two groups of customers it believes have been overcharged.
Landline row: BT stands accused of putting up customers’ landline bills without good reason
1) Those who had a BT landline service between October 2015 and April 2018, but had no broadband from BT or another provider
2) Those that had a BT landline and broadband between October 2015 and December 2023, but who did not bundle these services together into a single, discounted package
The first group has more than 1.5 million affected customers and they were overcharged by up to £84 a year each, Call said.
The second group is made up of more than 2 million customers, Call claims.
The claim period is Feb 2015 to Oct 2018 for landline-only customers, and Feb 2015 to December 2023 for landline and broadband customers.
Justin Le Patourel, founder of Call, said damages will vary depending on an individual customer’s case, but compensation is likely to be between £300 and £400 per person on average.
In 2017, watchdog Ofcom said that BT had unfairly charged millions of landline customers from 2015 onwards.
At the time, BT agreed to reduce the price of its landline deals.
However, Le Patourel took the issue to the Competition Appeal Tribunal as he believed the telecoms provider owed compensation payments, arguing that many customers were vulnerable and were owed refunds.
Le Patourel said: ‘Time really is of the essence. More than 40 per cent of our claimants are aged over 70, and over 150 of them are dying every day. It really is vital that BT should refund every one of them as soon as possible.’
More than 500,000 of the customers who only had a landline phone have already passed away.
However, if the case is successful, the estates of these deceased individuals will be able to apply for compensation.
The trial is likely to last eight weeks and the claimants hope to receive judgment during the course of 2024.
A BT Group spokesperson said: ‘We take our responsibilities to our customers very seriously and are dedicated to keeping our customers connected, while helping those who need it most.
‘This claim relates to a technical landline pricing issue which was resolved by Ofcom in 2017. We do not accept that our pricing was anti-competitive back then, and are committed to robustly defending our position at trial.’
How do I sign up?
If you think you have been affected, you do not need to do anything now.
The case is being run on an opt-out basis, so affected BT customers are included by default unless they choose otherwise.
If the claim succeeds, BT customers will need to register with Call to get any compensation.
Separately, a legal challenge against mobile phone overcharging was launched in December 2023 against Vodafone, EE, Three and O2.
Millions of mobile phone users could be owed £3.3billion after years of being overcharged on their contracts, according to consumer champion and former Citizens Advice executive Justin Gutmann.
Gutmann thinks that these companies have overcharged customers on up to 28.2million contracts.
Many are expected to have claims against more than one mobile operator and so could receive even more compensation, he says.
