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'Why have I paid £100 for a £45 phone from BT?'

My aunt, now 88, who keeps records of everything, spoke to a named BT employee on the phone in April 2013.

It was suggested that she buy a Graphite 2500 telephone for £45. It was then mooted that she could pay for it in six quarterly instalments which would be completed in October 2014.

Several months ago, while reviewing her bills, I discovered that the quarterly payment was still being charged two years after the completion of the contract.

We immediately cancelled the charge, but BT refused to repay the overpayments of nearly £60. This is a significant sum for my aunt, who lives alone and survives on a small pension. BT stated that the quarterly payments were due until such time as the subscriber requested to stop them.

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I have phoned BT on numerous occasions only to be put on hold and then kept waiting for more than 30 minutes until the line goes dead.

My aunt wrote a comprehensive letter six months ago to BT but received no reply.

DE, Surrey

There is certainly a lot of confusion surrounding this, as BT asserts that your aunt was renting the phone.

The charge was shown on her bills under equipment rental charges. It says an order was started to cancel the rental months before you wrote to me, but the call wasn’t completed to enable it to finalise the request. It has now contacted your aunt to apologise.

BT has refunded the £60 and paid £10 as a gesture of goodwill. Your aunt still has the phone.

As you say, while your aunt keeps very good records of her transactions, at 88 she finds the complex content of the bills difficult to understand. Had that not been the case, she would probably have picked up on what seems to have been a misunderstanding much earlier on.

  • Jessica Gorst-Williams tackles consumer problems for Telegraph readers every week. To contact her, click here. If you want to ask a general money question, email moneyexpert@telegraph.co.uk. The best of the answers are included in our weekly newsletter