BT Kickstarts Campaign On Mis-selling Telecom Practices

Telecom giant BT has joined forces with the Trading Standards Institute (TSI) to kick off a campaign against what it refers to as ‘mis-selling’ by a number of fixed-line telecom companies.

The campaign is urging the UK communications regulator Ofcom to come up with new rules and procedures to put a check on scams that let rogue companies hijack users’ phone lines.

BT estimates that a whopping 800,000 of its users have complained about such a practice, whereas Ofcom’s own stats suggest that around half a million homes fall victim to mis-selling every year, costing customers a hefty £40 million in total.

John Petter, managing director for BT’s consumer division, expressed his concerns over the issue by saying, “It's criminal that this has been going on at this level for more than five years. I can't think of any other industry where this would be considered acceptable. It really is time that this was stamped out”.

The campaign is proposing Ofcom to introduce a pin code system, which would see customers asking for a code from their existing service provider and passing it on to the new one, thereby ensuring total compliance with the new contract.

The new code would be similar to MAC code, and the process has already been a notable success with broadband services when users want to migrate from one ISP to another.