​BT caller display: Company 'makes up the rules as it goes along'

If you don't apply for the deal separately at the time you agree to pay for 12 months in advance, you won't get the free offer

Free or not? BT's caller display deal is still confusing consumers (Getty Images)

I hate having to return to the subject of BT's so-called "free" caller display offer. However, many of you appear to have missed the fact that if you don't apply for the deal separately at the time you agree to pay for 12 months in advance, you won't get the free offer.

More readers have written in this week with evidence backing that up. Graeme West reported: "Exactly the same happened to me on the bill I received earlier this week." Luckily, he was able to resolve things quite quickly with BT.

Roger Blunt hasn't enjoyed such a positive outcome. "I have fallen foul of the tricks of BT," he said. In December 2014, he contacted the company to get it to drop the caller display charge and reminded BT that it was part of the deal of paying line rental upfront.

"They admitted it and refunded me the payments they had taken. But on my December 2015 bill I found they had started to take it again – although my line rental payment for the year does not run out until August 2016."

He contacted BT again and was told that free caller display is nothing to do with paying line rental upfront. (Sound familiar? Regular readers will recall stories of the frustration of others at being told conflicting things by BT call-centre workers.)

Roger was told that if he wanted to have free caller display, he needed to agree to his contract with BT being extended for another 12 months. "It appears to me that BT are making the rules up as they go along," he not unreasonably concluded.

Bryan Cadman manages his mother's account, so, after reading my story last week, he was ready when the invite to renew the "free" service came through. "Had I not been doing this, my mum – who is 93 and with failing eyesight and has an innate trust in BT – would have just ignored it, thinking [very reasonably] that as she had paid a year's line rental in advance, this did not apply to her," he said.

"I have no doubt that BT's thinking is that many people will think the same as my mum, and quite simply let them get away with it." That's an understandable view.