Sales & Marketing Code of Practice

BT Code of Practice for sales and marketing activity

For some time BT has been concerned at the number of complaints where customers' fixed line or calls services were being transferred to another telephone company without their knowledge or consent and we made every effort to alert Ofcom and the industry to our concerns.

Ofcom consulted in 2004 on whether existing consumer protection measures were sufficient to deal with the problem of misselling in the fixed line telecoms industry and concluded that the measures in place were not sufficient and that mandatory guidelines should be introduced for ALL companies who engaged in such sales and marketing activity.

The Ofcom guidelines have the following key objectives:

• To ensure that Communications Providers give their residential and small business customers standards of protection over and above those provided by law;

• To ensure good practice and responsible selling in the marketing of fixed line services, and to help customers understand the service and behaviour to be expected;

• To provide a clear framework within which reasonable providers should be working, providing reassurance to customers and consumer representatives as to what constitutes good practice in the sales and marketing of fixed line services. 

Using Ofcom's guidelines as the framework, BT’s code sets out the standards of behaviour that BT will adhere to in marketing and selling our services to our residential and small business customers. As well as setting out the standards of behaviour customers can expect from us whenever we contact them for sales or marketing purposes, BT’s code also describes some of our internal procedures regarding the recruitment and training of BT salespeople, including agents who act on our behalf. BT has voluntarily extended it‘s code to also apply to the provision of new or additional lines and also the provision of new broadband-enabled lines, or transfers of existing ones to BT.

We hope you find the BT code useful, if you wish you can download a pdf version of the Sales and Marketing Code of Practice (463Kb).