BT Broadband 'cold calling' sales pressure

I support an elderly local with her PC and Broadband. I had a call from her today to say she couldn't get online and there was a 'red light' on her router etc.

I offered to call round to take a look. The router was sync'd but the PPP/login had failed. She showed me some post she had received, a box from BT and a letter from Freeola (her original ISP).

She had a cold call just before Christmas and said she may have said "yes" without realising what she was doing, then left the country for 3 weeks to come back to this. She had agreed over the phone for BT to take over her broadband - without really realising it. This was easy for them to do as she was already a BT phone customer so they didn't need to ask for any financial details as they already had them.

The move had taken place and by plugging in the supplied BT Hub she was online again. But it's broken her email set up which was using services from Freeola - all of which she was quite happy with.

I charge her for my time, so BT's "money saving call" isn't quite as good as they would have made it seem...
No doubt we stood a chance of cancelling things using the 'distance selling rules' but this would have been more hassle, so BT have picked up a new broadband customer but their sales tactics look a bit dodgy to me!

So hard to say without hearing the call. Unfortunately it can be quite easy to get "vulnerable" people to sign up for things that they don't necessarily need or want. Without knowing exactly how it was approached and what info they gave it is guesswork as to how dodgy the tactics were.

Cancelling the move if they'd been around to get the letter at the time would have been almost no hassle as its contact Freeola and says the move is not authorised and the migration is blocked.

True. She seemed to think the call was about improving her phone package rather than broadband.

Yes, she realises the timing wasn't good for her.