Cost cutting!

I have been on Plusnet 40/20, so have been reviewing my options to terminate early due to the potentially adverse change to a 55/10 product.

Unfortunately, Plusnet weren't prepared to offer me much, just a price of £11 per month to stay on this for a two year fixed period. (I tried customer options a couple of times.)

I don't really enjoy faffing about with switching suppliers every year, but nor do I want to be locked in for ages, or to pay significantly more than necessary.

Now, with the incentives offered by BT to new customers, I have been lured to Plusnet's parent, BT.

I signed up via Quidco to Broadband Infinity 1 Unlimited + calls + TV (£155 cashback) and BT offered a £150 reward card.

Price was £20/month for BB, with activation fees of £49 for Infinity 1 and £10 for TV, so I was looking at £240 +£49 + £10 +£7.95 (delivery) -£155 - £150 = £1.95 plus the costs of line rental and any call package and features.

That was last night!

Today, the price is £10.99/month for BB, same cashback, and £125 reward card, making £81.17 contribution to costs of line rental etc.

That's about £83 quid cheaper, and with lesser cashback risk!

So, can I cancel my effort from last night and rebook?

Also, since I have an existing VDSL modem (ECI?) and dual band AC wireless router (Asus RT-AC56U), is there any reason to hold on to the Home Hub 6 (aka Smart Hub), or should I just raise more cash by selling it on? I assume the Home Hub is locked so when I leave BT next year (presumably) I may need my existing kit. Looks like I could net around £50 for it.

I hope to sell the Youview Box as well (just the non-recording version), but again am anxious not to incur any penalty. It may fetch only £25 net of selling costs.

Otherwise, once I transfer I hope to sign up to the free BT privacy for 12 months, and afterwards do the Line Rental Saver, in that order to ensure I qualify for free caller display. I have an Answerphone, so will do without 1571 (£1.85 per month).

Any other tips?

Edited by sallust (Fri 29-Jul-16 10:21:17)

Given one order already I very much doubt even if BT cancel that the cashback would track, not sure how onerous they are, but others have had problems in the past.

As for cancelling if the order was passed automatically into the wholesale systems then cancelling and re-ordering may cause more problems than the change in pricing is worth.

Unlimited BT Infinity 1 was usually £12.50/m until this morning (at least that is what we had), maybe quidco had a different offer.

Thanks. Annoying though!

There have been various deals knocking around but the £155 Quidco with the full price (£20/month) Infinity 1 unlimited was what tempted me. Well actually it was more the £150 reward card that was due to expire last night. It did expire, but is still at £125, yet now the BB price is £10.99/mth.

I suppose the same difficulty may apply if I try to go through Topcashback.

When I switched from plusnet to BT (when they launched the 4K TV service) I ended up cancelling and reapplying (24 hours later) as I'd originally gone for the HD service but 4K was a similar price.

Topcashback tracked both transactions and correctly cancelled the first.

I guess it's up to you whether it's worth risking what you have now for the better offer.

If you were wanting to sell the new BT hub I'd be interested in buying it.

I have cancelled orders, then changed my mind and re-ordered. Cashback tracked just fine.

It is a risk though, and things are much more likely to go wrong. Also you cannot literally cancel and re-order, you need to cancel and then wait for your number to be released again, for me this took 3 days before BT could process an order again for me, in order to keep my number.

I've cancelled and re-ordered, however you have to be careful.

If you contact BT and cancel they will typically tell you that you can order again immediately. If you do that (re-order immediately) you will be able to complete the online order and get an initial notification and it seems everything is fine - it isn't.

The order will not progress and you won't be notified it is not progressing - you'll have to contact CS to find out. Further cancellations and orders will follow the same pattern with BT staff mostly not being able to tell you what the issue is - if you're lucky and find the right member of staff they will find the cancelled order did not reset/clean all the old order details from he system, once they manually do this new orders work fine.

I think the above may just apply to rapid(ish) cancellation and re-orders - but that was my experience.

In reply to a post by Kr1s69:

If you were wanting to sell the new BT hub I'd be interested in buying it.

I'm trying to understand the usefulness of the BT hub, but will probably sell it. When I get to that point, I'll pm you.

Thank you all for your experiences of cancelling and reordering.

For fault diagnosis BT require you to be using their equipment usually.

Also my HH6 range wise blows every other router out of the water. Even ones I purchased myself at over £100.

Interesting...

There are others who are not so sure about the HH6:-

Wish I had never heard of the HH6