II had an Internet service provision account with BT Internet which I asked BT Internet to cancel on 3 June 2002.

BT Internet's Terms and Conditions (http://www.btopenworld.com/helpnb/terms#terms) clearly state:

"Ending this contract
This contract can be ended by:
(a) us giving one month's notice to you; or
(b) you giving ONE DAY's notice to us"

However, I received an e-mail from Jules Saunders stating my account would be closed on 19th June 2002. A second e-mail from Ian Wood failed to change the company's position, or to clarify the situation.

Further correspondence with both the company's billing dept and its complaints dept met with the following reply:

"The Anytime account is primarily a monthly service. As such the customer is in fact buying in bulk, and receives 1 months Internet calls at a much reduced tariff. Should these calls be purchased individually (as per a Pay as You Go arrangement) the total charge would be considerably higher.

As such we are only able to offer this package on the basis that a whole month is used. As I believe you will appreciate, it would not be viable for us to offer 1 week of calls at the same pro-rata price of a months.

Therefore when a customer closes an account we are unable to offer a part refund. Instead we will inevitably close the account at the next billing date to allow the customer full use of their months payment."

I cancelled my account on the understanding that it would be closed after one day's notice (and presumably any overpayment made would be refunded to me) on the basis of the company's published terms and conditions.

I made arrangements with an alternative Internet provider to commence service on the same basis. As such I simply could not see why I should be charged fees between June 4th and June 19th when the terms and conditions clearly state acounts can be cancelled with one days notice.

After raising the matter with OFTEL and Trading Standards I was informed by BT that a full month's subscription had been refunded to my credit card account. However it is extremely disturbing that a company such as British Telecom should resort to practices.