Recently I heard a story on radio 4 where a man had died whilst out driving his car and the AA had refused to help his family get the car started when they contacted them. The man had been a lifelong member. The AA then issued a statement saying that their operator had acted against their guidelines. The whole story was a PR nightmare for the AA.

Then the other day I found out a friend of my Mum's called Joan recently has been going through some bad times. She is a 59 year old nurse and her husband had a heart attack and died a couple of weeks before christmas. She then was told by her landlady that she should find somewhere else to live. This was because Joan's husband used to do some chores every week to reduce the cost of the rent. So my mum offered to take Joan in for a few months till she is back on her feet.

Joan told me that when she contacted BT Yahoo about cancelling her broadband they said that if she didn't transfer her account to my mum's house she would be immeadiately liable for the remaining term of the contract (£280 approx). Now it seems to me that BT Yahoo are contractually correct but that they could show a little compassion as events beyond Joan's control have left her not wanting her BT broadband account.

I am going to contact BT directly on her behalf on monday to see if I can get some sort of compromise out of them.

UPDATE: Well I submitted the above to the BT Website and one of their customer care staff contacted me today asking if I could forward Joan's Account Details to see what he could do so fingers crossed.