Member Info for fleccy

Before I pop off to bed, I'll finish by saying that BT wont have to pay £600 million, or 600p, as there doesn't appear to be any case to answer imo.
As pointed out in previous posts:

Landline only service was unregulated in the period covered by the threatened lawsuit.
There were other cheaper options for customers unhappy with the rental cost.
Overcharging comes under the remit of Ofcom, not the competition authorities.
Since BT are accused of overcharging rather than undercutting rivals, no competition issue.

All of the above has been covered in previous posts, with links to relevant publications. It wouldn't surprise me if this doesn't even go to court.
I thought about the Significant Market Power angle, but BT were unregulated and Ofcom had previously concluded that BT wasn't an SMP in 2009, so changing their mind in 2017 doesn't really cut it, and BT will probably argue that there were other voice calling options anyway. If anyone can find links to relevant information indicating where BT did break Competition law, I'll happily read through it and attempt to understand it. I bet no one on here can find anything to suggest BT actually did anything contravening the law.

"I am personally disappointed. A rip off of the elderly just because they could, very poor show, almost to the point of saying I am ashamed to be a share holder."

You should sell then if you're that aggrieved by this, or just admit that you don't actually own any BT shares and this is just feigned indignation.

Everyone gets ripped off all the time. I go into the supermarket and the large jars of Nescafe are on offer, with the smaller jars next to them at the same price. Most of us are probably paying too much for our car and house insurance, because we can't be bothered to switch at renewal time. The same applies to our electricity and gas too. BT only does what every business does, so I don't see why they should be singled out by anyone. It's clear that there are a lot of BT haters, but BT's one of the few truly British companies left. it amazes me how many people want BT to fail, and see Goldman Sachs owned CityFibre, and Liberty Global owned Virgin Media win. The success of companies like Liberty Global and Goldman Sachs only really benefits US shareholders, successful British companies help UK shareholders. I can only conclude that people who crave Virgin Media and CityFibre's success, at the expense of BT, must be US shareholders, or UK haters.

"Consensus forecasts of analysts results as of 8th Jan below FYI"

I expect BT will take a hit from pubs and clubs freezing sports subscriptions, etc, but may see increased subscriptions from home viewers. I'm not sure if much can be read into the upcoming results.

There is some positive news out there.

"Meanwhile new network insights from EE are showing an increased appetite for mobile gaming. The launch of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S in November 2020 saw peak traffic for gaming services increase by more than 50% compared to the same time the month before. Mobile traffic for PlayStation alone increased almost three-fold between October and November 2020."

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2021/01/ee-starts-deploying-ultrafast-5g-in-13-more-uk-towns-and-cities.html

"BT has followed up its on its deal with the BBC to remove mobile data charges from Bitesize content by agreeing to do the same for the Oak National Academy, which offers nearly 10,000 free lessons and resources.
With the addition of the second partnership, EE, BT Mobile, and Plusnet Mobile customers will – by the end of the month – be able to access lessons in Oak National Academy’s virtual classroom or on BBC Bitesize without having to worry about their mobile data."

https://mobilemarketingmagazine.com/bt-oak-national-academy-ee-plusnet-mobile-data-charges

From what I've read, the Redundancy terms being offered is up to a years salary. I'm not being funny, but the statutory legal limit is much less. I was made redundant late 2019 and received a years pay and was happy with that. Virtually no company in the UK offers 2 years pay on redundancy, so the unions argument is nonsensical. As far as reorganising the business, all other telecoms companies have been doing the same, Vodafone has recently did similar in the UK I believe. The CWU should compare BT redundancy terms to industry standards and not try and protect jobs that are unsustainable. BT will just keep taking steps to erode union power and the workers will pay the price, with jobs being moved onto third party contracts run by non unionised companies.

"A group of 170 staff at Openreach received their ballot papers on Friday and will cast their vote over claims by the Communication Workers Union (CWU) that the company ignored consultation and hired engineers on different grade and pay structures."

“None of the 170 repayments project engineers in question is at risk of losing their job or seeing any deterioration in their pay, terms and conditions. In fact we’ve offered them all a better-paid, higher grade role within Openreach and we’ve given a cast-iron guarantee that they can stay on their existing terms and conditions – including an extremely competitive salary of around £45,000 a year – if they choose to.”

https://inews.co.uk/news/business/bt-strike-openreach-staff-vote-industrial-action-walkout-pay-dispute-837454

Our Vodafone Dividends come through on Feb 5th. We'll be topping up on BT at the current low price.

"If Royal Mail can do a 200% + rise from last year low, surely we can manage 100% spike."

The market will test retail investors to the limit on popular stocks. It's clear that BT should be much higher than its current price. I haven't changed my view on BT and telecoms in general, as telecoms providers are the arteries and blood supply that keeps the online entities alive. Google, Amazon, Facebook, Netflix, Apple would cease to exist without the telecoms, so Telecom infrastructure must be undervalued. The online giants are currently getting an easy ride, but that will change with legislation. The EU, US and others are eyeing taxation and competition rules for Tech giants, it's only a matter of time before they're nailed down as hard as BT is now.

"I see it as bad news, extremely poor publicity, morally reprehensible, and as news about BT goes, par for the course"

What do morals have to do with any of this? Many BT shareholders are pensioners, what about them? Do you really believe that this threatened class action is about helping pensioners with landline voice only service? Has Justin Le Patourel raised his own profile? I'd never heard of him before this. Are Law firm Mishcon de Reya litigating this as a public service, or are they getting payed for it? Are Harbour bankrolling this as a public service, or hoping to make money from any pay-out?
This isn't about morals, it's about what is and isn't allowed under the Law. When BT does something wrong OFCOM are all over them, in this instance it appears BT acted within the regulatory and competition regime, in my opinion.

"Fleccy, have you read the Ofcom Review of the market for standalone
landline telephone services 2017? it found BT overcharged landline customers . Here is a snippet for you"

OK, I've just read through the report and it's clear that BT's standalone telephone users weren't covered under OFCOM regulation, which probably explains why OFCOM didn't take any action. BT didn't do anything wrong, the voluntary changes was under threat of new regulation going forward.

"1.23 We therefore consider that BT’s voluntary proposal is sufficient to address our concerns in
relation to this review. Accordingly, we have decided against the imposition of formal
regulation at this time."

"1.24 We will monitor closely BT’s implementation of its voluntary proposal to cap prices for
voice-only customers. If BT fails to deliver on its commitments, we will consider imposing
regulatory remedies"

"Since 2009, when we removed all regulation on BT in the retail voice telephony markets,
many consumers have moved towards buying services in bundles, and this is where we
have seen the focus of competition. In 2017, 88% of households reported buying at least
two of their communication services in a bundle, with dual-play packages of landline and
broadband triple-play packages of landline, broadband and pay-TV being the most
popular.10 This percentage continues to rise."

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0015/107322/standalone-landline-statement.pdf

I'll again paste this:

"Since 2009, when we removed all regulation on BT in the retail voice telephony markets,"

That says it all, retail voice telephony was unregulated from 2009, so BT didn't contravene any regulations in hiking line rental charges for standalone voice only users. OFCOM didn't take any action against BT, because BT didn't do anything wrong. It's there in black and white within the document, so where are the grounds for a civil action. Bt acted within the rules, OFCOM decided to deregulate the retail voice telephony markets.

"From December 2009 to June 2017, line rental prices rose by between 23% and 47% in real terms. At the same time, the wholesale cost of providing landline services fell by about 27% in real terms."

I haven't read the report, because I don't need to. As I've already explained Wholesale customers and individual Landline customers are completely different. Wholesale buys in Bulk and individuals buy a quantity of one. Wholesale discounts are common in every industry supplying products. Because wholesale and individual landline customers are clearly different, you can't compare them from a competition perspective.
Any company offering a product can set their product pricing as they wish. Under competition law a company can't offer products below cost, in order to undercut and undermine competition. As I've already pointed out, BT might have fallen foul of competition law if they'd undercut rivals. As a regulated business, BT will employ lots of people responsible for ensuring that BT don't contravene competition law. BT wouldn't have raised their landline rental charges, if the OFCOM regulatory environment didn't allow it, so if BT didn't contravene OFCOM regulations, where are the grounds for the lawsuit?
Overcharging could be used in respect of competition law, if BT had a monopoly over voice calling and was guilty of abusing market power, but I've already given examples of cheaper sim only offerings that could allow landline users to bin their landline and move to mobile.
What do we know:
Wholesale is different from individual landline users, so no comparison under competition law.
BT don't have a monopoly over voice calling, as there are cheaper sim only offerings.
BT raising landline rental for individual users was likely allowable under OFCOM's rules.

We've established that BT is unlikely to have broken any competition laws, as they didn't undercut rivals, weren't part of a Cartel, and didn't abuse market power.
Disregarding all the possible competition issues, mentioned above, the other possibility is that BT may have broken Consumer Protection law, which normally comes under the remit of the Office of Fair Trading, or in BT's case OFCOM. OFCOM didn't fine BT, or force them to reimburse any affected customers. The 2017 agreement between OFCOM and BT was a voluntary agreement, probably because BT acted within OFCOM regulations and couldn't be fined. OFCOM don't have a history of letting BT, or others off, so my guess is that BT didn't do anything wrong. I'll be really surprised if there's a case against BT, but I wait in anticipation.

To add to my last post,.it could be argued that BT having dominant market power would have been referred to OFCOM for abuse of market power, for undercutting rivals telephone service. BT couldn't have reduced their Landline charges without OFCOM agreeing, had they dropped their prices independently they could have been accused of abusing their dominant market position. The current arguments being raised in respect of this class action make no sense in my opinion. You can't have it both ways.

Faultsman, your arguments are irrelevant. The fact is alternative options were available and widely advertised on TV and the Internet. Ignorance isn't a defence in a court of law. Even though I was an Engineer, I had to do online courses on Competition Law due to the exorbitant penalties for a breach, including a fine up to 10% of income. Competition Law involves actions such as price fixing through forming Cartels and abuse of a dominant position to undercut rivals. In this case BT are being accused of overcharging, but that can't be considered as anti competitive. The articles mention individual line rental charges going up for individual Landline customers, while wholesale charges were going down, but is this anti competitive?
The general definitions covered under anti competitive behaviour, in relation to treating customers differently, states:

"offering different prices or terms to similar customers without
objective justification, or
• refusing to supply an existing or long standing customer without objective justification"

BT aren't refusing to supply their long standing customers, under the law BT have to supply service.
An individual customer isn't the same type of customer as a wholesale customer. Every company on the planet offers bulk discounts, so you can't compare the two in this case.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/306899/CMA19.pdf

BT voluntarily agreed to cut Landline rentals, so OFCOM made a request which BT responded to. If BT had broken Competition Law, the CMA and OFCOM would have been all over them.

"“We welcome a balanced voluntary agreement with Ofcom, which means that up to one million of our customers who don’t have broadband will receive a substantial cut in the price of their line rental from April 2018,” said a BT spokesperson.
“We have listened to the concerns of our line-only customers and agreed to reduce the price of line rental for them by £7 a month – or £84 a year – which means they will only pay £11.99 a month for standard line rental.”"

https://www.computerweekly.com/news/450428937/BT-to-cut-charges-for-landline-only-customers-after-Ofcom-review

In summary:
BT didn't undercut rivals, so didn't break competition law on that.
Wholesale and individual customers are completely different, so not the same.
The excessive overcharging argument might have some legs, but unhappy customers could have walked and moved to cheaper options. I just don't see how any case could be successful on competition grounds.
Over charging is dealt with under consumer protection laws and OFCOM have fined companies for such things, since BT weren't fined in 2017 it suggests that over charging isn't an issue in this case.

"EE and Virgin Media fined for overcharging customers"

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/about-ofcom/latest/media/media-releases/2018/ee-virgin-media-fined-overcharging-customers

Lots of headlines yesterday, I wonder if we'll hear more about this ever again. I've added the CAT website to my favourites, but whether or not I remember to check this in the months to come, remains to be seen. As it stands, I can't see this case on CAT's website, with the latest case being "BGL (Holdings) Limited & Others v Competition and Markets Authority". If it is progressed, I'm fascinated to see what the argument will be, I don't see how the Plaintiff can argue on competition grounds, as there were other cheaper options. I suspect we'll never hear of this again, but we'll see.

"EMMJANE, I did see that on Friday but I didn't read the article until last night and I don't really understand the analyst's rationale."

He's just presenting a view predicated on the worst set of outcomes for the Pension review and the WFTMR. He s also bulling up the VM/02 merger and speculatively throwing in possible collaboration between SKY and the newly formed entity. He reminds me of Aus, makes me wonder if they might be one and the same lol. Generally speaking he's lumped together every possible negative thing he can think of, and based his estimate against it. Even if VM/O2 raise £10 Billion for investment in new network, it will take years to build and likely have to use BT ducts and telegraph poles, under the management of Openreach. I have to assume that the new VM/O2 entity wont be going out there and digging up the roads, so BT/Openreach should come in for a big pay-out on the back of the VM/O2 network build. VM/02 using BT/Openreach PIA is speculative I know, but no more speculative than Mr Tang's views. I wonder how much of the £10 Billion will go BT's way under my scenario.

"Fleccy. From your this money link."

Yeah, I noticed that myself, currently this is all just words. I can't remember the exact year, but I remember a work colleague mentioning that he'd moved his mother onto a sim only deal, and cancelled her landline. He told me she thought it was great, because she could talk to her friends when out and about. I realise that I have a vested interest as a BT shareholder, but I honestly don't see how a class action could be brought against BT on competition grounds.

"i might not have any legal knowledge.
but common sense tells me that-
bad publicity damages opinion, and deters investment, and creates negative sentiment.
however you look at it its not good."

Which may be the motive for this. Personally I've seen this on many occasions, not just with BT. Lets see how it progresses, I'm eagerly awaiting the case appearing on the Competition Appeals Tribunal website to see what section of the law the case is being raised against. It's common practice to bid for contracts with a high price, or raise prices to a point where it discourages take up. As I've already demonstrated in previous links, BT don't have a monopoly on voice calling, so where are the grounds for a class action lawsuit? There aren't any as far as I can tell. Usually companies raise prices to encourage buyers to look elsewhere. Since BT are legally obliged to provide a landline, the only way to discourage take up is to encourage people to move to cheaper options. BT didn't do anything wrong, they're a commercial business, not a charity. Other businesses do this all the time, and the customers take their business elsewhere, in this case BT's customers had other options.

"To me it’s just someone trying to manipulate the price lower before the results in couple of weeks. So they can get in cheaper imho."

From articles I've read, Justin Le Patourel has created this entity called "CALL" and is the one pursuing this case. No doubt this will raise his profile, and cause a short term hit to BT's reputation and share price. Personally I don't see any merit on competition grounds, just more of the same old, same old. BT employ their own full time legal representatives, who'll know if this case has any legs, in the meantime it's created noise.

"The claim is being made on behalf of Justin Le Patourel, the Claimant Representative and founder of Call (Collective Action on Land Lines)."

https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/wires/pa/article-9156575/Law-firm-taking-action-behalf-BT-customers.html

"It really doesn’t matter what the spin is or amateur opinions. This news isn’t good. It adds to the various other fines / payments from regulator, includes Italian fraud & payments to DT / orange. These unexpected costs keep raising all kinds of key questions"

I might not have any legal knowledge, but I've got enough common sense to see that there's no legal argument on the basis of competition. I've given examples of other cheaper options that were well advertised. In my opinion, there wont be any fines because there doesn't appear to be a case to answer. BT didn't have a monopoly on voice calling, as I've just given various examples of other cheaper options.

Check out the unlimited minutes sim only deals below, available in 2015.

"Best deals with unlimited minutes
Virgin – £12: Unlimited minutes. 2GB 3G data.
giffgaff – £18: Unlimited minutes. 6GB data.
EE – £21: Unlimited minutes. 4GB data. 12M contract."

https://www.mobilefun.co.uk/blog/2015/09/best-sim-only-deals-2015/

Haha, it seems to have fired me up this class action threat.

Sim only deals and Pay as you go Mobile deals were around in 2015, a landline only customer could have moved onto either of these options, probably at a lower cost.

https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2015/08/19/sim-only-march-consumers-hold-handsets-longer

https://www.mobilefun.co.uk/blog/2015/09/best-sim-only-deals-2015/

"Best deals under £10
ID – £7.50: 250 minutes, 5K texts, 1GB data.
giffgaff – £10: 500 minutes. 1GB data.
ID – £10: 500 minutes. 2GB data.
Tesco – £10: 750 minutes, 5K texts. 1GB data. 18M contract.
*6GB 4G data, then throttled to 3G speeds during peak times thereafter."

It appears that landline users had the option to take out sim only deals in 2015 for £10 a month, that included free minutes. Anyone who was unhappy with their landline line rental and call charges had other options. I think the no competition argument is blown out of the water.

Anyone remember this one, and hear anything else about it?

https://www.rosenlegal.com/cases-1035.html

https://www.rosenlegal.com/media/casestudy/849_BT%20Initial%20Complaint%20-%20web.pdf

I can't find anything relating to this after the big announcements in 2017. Did it just disappear?