How to cancel BT Caller Diversion

If you try to cancel this service online, you might well get trapped into signing up for another 12 months of line rental. Here's what to watch out for.

The cost of BT's add-on services for residential phone lines can mount up if you renew them blindly every quarter. I decided to cancel my BT Caller Diversion service (the only thing in my Caller Feature Pack), partly in protest at yet more BT line rental price rises.

One point about Caller Diversion is that BT also hits you with the on-cost of the diverted phone call. So you pay for the leg of the incoming call that's forwarded from your landline to e.g. your mobile. As I’m therefore paying for someone else to talk to me, Caller Diversion and my feature pack were something I decided to ditch and save myself at least £47.40 a year. Cheers!

At the time of writing, a single “feature pack” service like Caller Diversion or Caller Display (Caller Line ID) costs £3.95 a month. Having two to four features costs £7.95 a month and the full monty of five or more features costs £10.60 a month, which is pushing it.

And here’s another thing – BT’s separate so-called ‘Privacy’ pack, which displays the incoming caller’s number on a CLID-compatible phone. There was a time when CLID was available free but BT then decided to monetise this essential service by charging its subscribers £1.75 a month for ‘Privacy at Home’. All they'll do for free now is to register you with the TPS (big deal!). Even so, Privacy at Home is still cheaper than paying for CLID via a ‘feature pack’ including Caller Display.

Cancelling BT Caller Diversion online

The way to cancel Caller Diversion is counter-intuitive. In effect you un-order it by submitting an online order for nothing, and unticking your existing choice of features to cancel them.

Annoyingly, there’s no option to merely cancel Caller Diversion online because, as I’ll show, when cancelling Caller Diversion this way customers can also sleepwalk into taking out new 12 monthly line contracts at the same time.

When you log into BT.com and make out like you’re placing an order (a tortuous process in itself), you’ll find Caller Diversion is already ticked in your selection because you already subscribe to it. So you could simply untick it, and submit the ‘empty’ order...

The problem is this: the top of the BT order form starts with some options about BT Privacy, and – lo and behold – unlike your Caller Diversion feature that’s already pre-ticked further down the page (because the system knows you already buy it), even if you already pay for Caller Display, that option is not already ticked by default.

In fact you’re halfway to sleepwalking into a whole new 12 month package by default, whether or not you already have Caller Display.

Step 1: Start Your Order. As BT says, removing features [like Caller Diversion] doesn't show up in your order. [click to see]Step 2: Calling Features. BT Privacy at Home + 12 months contract is ticked by default [arrowed]Step 3: Create a Calling Features Pack - Caller Diversion is already ticked, so untick it.Step 4: Extra Messaging Features can be ordered here. Interesting there's a No Thanks Option here, why not one to retain your CLID without paying a 12 months lock-in?Here are the above order form’s Privacy options that BT wants you to choose from:

• BT Privacy with Caller Display free for 12 months, then £1.75 a month. A new 12 month line contract applies. This is the default choice. The ‘Privacy’ aspect only means registering with the Telephone Preference Service, so BT isn’t giving anything away and besides, if you want to unregister again, BT says you have to do that yourself. Not much of a service, is it?
• Renew Caller Display for 12 months. A new 12 month line contract applies. Then Caller Display costs £1.75 from month 13.
• BT Privacy at Home (free) merely registers your number with the TPS.
• Remove BT Privacy with Caller Display.

If you already have Caller Display at £1.75 (you're on month 13+ already) , there is no option to maintain that as-is. So if you simply untick the Caller Diversion option to cancel your Caller features, you can find yourself committing yourself to another 12 month line contract by default.

The net result is you get a Welcome email confirming a new 12 month line contract (eh? How did that happen?), with free Caller Display for 12 months (saving you just £21).

Question is, why would I want a new 12 month contract, when I’m already paying £1.75 a month (have done for years), and I don’t want to commit to a 12 month lock-in.

If this were a Payment Protection Insurance application form, then arguably BT is mis-selling a new 12 month contract as I did not need, want or ask for it, and BT should have known that I already have Caller Display on a monthly contract that I can cancel at any time.

It’s not just with online ordering that problems exist, either. Last year I cancelled 1571 (BT’s Voicemail service) on my private line, as it interfered with my BT8500 phone system. That time, I called BT to cancel it, but found that my BT Caller Display got cancelled by them as well! That disabled the 8500 Caller ID altogether. So BT re-instigated it and then I got an email welcoming me to a new 12 month line contract that I did not order.  It seems to me their call centre agents simply fill in the same order form, ordering BT Privacy with Caller Display and they fell into the same kind of trap about sleepwalking us into a new 12 month deal.

Bottom line, there is presently no simple way of cancelling a service and maintaining your existing Privacy services, without being locked into a new 12 month line contract that you might not want. I think I'm fairly astute but this happened to me, so I might take this further with BT who need upbraiding about this misleading omission.

Have you been caught out by this trap? Leave a comment below and I’ll post them online (anonymously).