BT FTTP price reduction glitch (<£24.99 for 330mbps)

Saw this post yesterday on HotUKDeals where people found a bug with BT getting FTTP (150-330) for £9.99-£24.99.

If BT doesn't honour this (and increases it to its original price) then I guess we can leave our current contract without a fee as-well-as Ofcom will probably go on to them about this.

https://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/bt-glitch-ultrafast...

They will just probably refuse the order.
Sure BT by law has to sell it at that price shown, BUT they can refuse the order as well, just like shops can refuse to sell an item to a customer.

So my guesses would be the order will get cancelled due to the users WERE exploiting the bug.

Sure the bug shouldn't of been there in the first place (assuming its all legit), but after reading that article it seems that people were abusing an exploit or was just modifying the output of the page to say that.

It's very easy to modify a page to say you will be paying less, doesn't mean you will.

Paul

In cases like the accepted recourse is for the service provider to cancel the order before the service goes live. In cases where people have gone live unlikely they will change the pricing since people can then leave at will.

As with other services and ticket based sales if you try one of these 'offers' never bank on it actually happening, but be nicely surprised if it does get honoured. Talking about them in an online public forum is usually enough to get the deals shut down quickly.

For all those that managed to get the amazing prices via the glitch BT have agreed to honor them.

Well done BT.

That is good. In a court of law if pricing is wrong it is usually down to whether it was "obviously" a mistake. For example, if a new car was advertised for £150.00 instead of £15,000 then it would be obvious to a consumer that it was a mistake and therefore would not be honoured.

The posting on forums like in the OP suggest people would reasonably know it was a mistake so the fact BT have honoured it is quite possibly going to be better than they might have got in a court of law but obviously we won't find out as it won't be going to court.

In a court of law if pricing is wrong it is usually down to whether it was "obviously" a mistake.

I'd love to see that law.

In a court it's what the contract says.
A mistake being obvious or not has little to do with it unless such a clause is in the contract.

With a physical shop they do not have to honour a misprice on the shelf, ever.
Once it's purchased though it's yours, contract complete.

With an online retailer it depends what their t&C's say.
With Amazon the contract is complete upon dispatch. They don't recall deliveries if they notice a mistake.
With John Lewis contract is complete when you receive the goods.
They do recall items out for delivery if they notice pricing mistakes.

If BT have in their terms and conditions that they have the right to cancel the order before it goes live (they do have this) it matters not how obvious an error it is.
BT have zero obligation to honour this deal.

Credit to BT for honouring this deal.

Citizens Advice have a web page about this here (my bold)

If you have a contract, the company can�t usually cancel your order, even if they realise they�ve sold you something at the wrong price. They�ll only be able to cancel it if it was a genuine and honest mistake on their part that you should�ve noticed.

I'm guessing that as it was posted online in the way it was then the customer "should've noticed"

A rather selective quote there. Why not quote the whole section? It's not much bigger than what you posted.

The preceding sentence basically says what I said above.
It's what's in the contract and their t&c's that counts.

Shopping online
Your legal rights depend on something fairly tricky in the law: whether or not you have a �contract�.

Depending on the company�s terms and conditions, you�ll have legal rights (and a contract) either:

once you�ve paid for the item
once they�ve sent it to you
You�ll need to find the company�s terms and conditions to find out where you stand. Contact the Citizens Advice consumer helpline if you need help. It may be too tricky to work out yourself.

If you have a contract, the company can�t usually cancel your order, even if they realise they�ve sold you something at the wrong price. They�ll only be able to cancel it if it was a genuine and honest mistake on their part that you should�ve noticed.

If you don�t have a contract and someone realises they�ve told you the wrong price, they can cancel your order.

https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/consumer/something...

"The company can't usually..." is a simplification/generalisation on the part of citizens advice to try make things easier to understand.

They make it clear above that part that it's what in the companies terms (your contract) that matters.

A £15k car for £150 would be worth a company arguing in court over it.

300Mb broadband for £25 is not an obvious mistake, with some competitors pricing in that ball park.

Edited by j0hn83 (Fri 24-Jan-20 12:28:10)

I quoted that part because it was the most relevant part of the page.

EDIT : And this from the OP "Saw this post yesterday on HotUKDeals where people found a bug with BT getting FTTP (150-330) for £9.99-£24.99." suggests it was an obvious mistake as everyone would appear to believe it was a bug rather than a serious/correct price.

Edited by ian72 (Fri 24-Jan-20 13:10:22)

In reply to a post by j0hn83:

It's what's in the contract and their t&c's that counts.

The three magic words are "offer", "acceptance" and "consideration". Once you have all three you have a contract and it's difficult for the seller to get out of. The grey area is what constitutes consideration.

Hi Paul,

I am the OP from that deal which was posted on HUKD.

wasn't exactly an exploit as that sounds like it contributes some kind of modification to their system, everything that was done to get those prices was something that any tom/dick/harry could have done (by accident).

How i found out was that i was trying to see if i could sign up as a new customer, even though i already had a BT account, and then that screen came up with the 100's of options. that could have been done by pretty much anybody and its just one of those 'stumble upon' moments rather than an intent.

The reason i think BT are going to honor those deals is if they had read through all the comments, a bunch of us realized that there was a data breach that happens when you go through to get the deal. because i was logged out of my account, all i did was type in my postcode and landline number and suddenly it recognized me and took me through to my upgrade options and checkout (at no point did i enter my email address or BT account password)

So all you needed was someones BT landline number and their postcode, and you could effectively find out their name and whatever else was on their BT account which if they were with BT could have been their mobile number, their recent calls, data usage etc etc. Probably not useful for normal average joes but assuming you found a politicians/celebs landline and their postcode then you could have found out what numbers they have been calling etc.

If they had refused to honor the deals im sure the data breach thing would've been brought up further into the conversation and it wouldnt have been a good look for them. for them they discounted a few hundred quid for a lucky few of us who managed to get it but saved themselves a PR nightmare because if i found out by accident it was only a matter of time before anybody else would've found it.

In reply to a post by jabuzzard:

The three magic words are "offer", "acceptance" and "consideration". Once you have all three you have a contract and it's difficult for the seller to get out of. The grey area is what constitutes consideration.

Exactly how it was explained to me working in a customer services role in a shop in the early 1990s. If something is mis-priced, and the customer notices, they offer to buy for that price, and we decide to not accept, we took the item off sale for 2 days. This was accepted by trading standards as both parties then lost out from the sale. I assume similar practices are applied today.

In the virtual world of websites, this is why Dell and others now send automated "order request received" emails, and not "order acknowledgement" emails, until a human being has checked the pricing!

In reply to a post by dect:

For all those that managed to get the amazing prices via the glitch BT have agreed to honor them.

Well done BT.

But it will hurt BT dearer! I do think all these people's knew it was a glitch but if the order went through - tough luck BT.

I wish I have seen this then I would grab it if I could.

Edited by adslmax (Sat 25-Jan-20 01:17:38)

It�ll cost them less than a week�s petty cash for the CEO�s incidental expenses when travelling.

Group profit before tax for 2019, £2.7bn.

In reply to a post by adslmax:

But it will hurt BT dearer!

Hi Max

It will be peppercorn to a company worth nearly £17 billion

In reply to a post by dect:

In reply to a post by adslmax:

But it will hurt BT dearer!

Hi Max

It will be peppercorn to a company worth nearly £17 billion

This is true, they will just raise our costs to cover it LUL

Paul

In reply to a post by PaulKirby:

they will just raise our costs to cover it

Sadly they will raise your bills whatever happens

In reply to a post by dect:

In reply to a post by PaulKirby:

they will just raise our costs to cover it

Sadly they will raise your bills whatever happens

This is true, just like they did back then to cover BT Sports that a lot of people didn't even have.
I expect it to go up even more now that they have acquired the rights to air WWE on their Sports channel.

But so far the increases haven't been that much, every time the contract is about to expire I op for haggling for another very good deal, and I have always got one.

Paul

In reply to a post by PaulKirby:

every time the contract is about to expire I op for haggling for another very good deal, and I have always got one.

This is really good advise to anyone who is near to the end of their contract, I had been guilt of not doing this in the past before I joint this forum.