BT recently faced legal action from Ros Fernihough, a 62-year old solicitor over the additional fees the company charges customers that do not pay by Direct Debit. Referred to as “administration cost” by BT, currently customers who pay over the counter are charged an additional £4.50 per quarter.

At the moment, almost half of BT’s 13m customers don’t pay by direct debit and prefer to settle their bills by cheque, cash or electronic transfer, meaning they’re charged an additional £18 per year. Altogether this gives BT an additional annual revenue of £100m.

Fernihough expanded on the reasons for taking BT to court:

“As soon BT wrote to me as a customer, saying I had to pay £4.50 I wrote back saying I’m not paying £4.50 and I’m not paying by direct debit. Please refund my money or I’ll sue you.”

“Now, if BT wants to charge people for collecting the money, i.e. 15p for an electronic transaction, 25p for a cheque, fine, nobody would dispute that. But what about the profit they’re making? We’re not here to help shareholders, we’re not here to subsidise bad debtors. It cannot be right, for the old and the sick; somebody has to stand up for those people.”According to reports, Virgin Media also has a similar scheme in place, charging non-direct customers up to £60 per year.

However, although it was was recently confirmed that Fernihough lost here case, Ofcom is currently consulting on the direction it should take to tackle non-DD penalty charges.

Source: ISPreview

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