What the latter part of this discussion is overlooking in my opinion is choice. Those of us who dislike DDs for the reasons I have listed previously, which are the usual ones (not anything to do with credit rating or wealth as some have wrongly presumed) will not choose to be a patron of any dictatorial enterprise which makes additional charges for not paying by DD, if they have a free choice. For instance I have chosen my electricity and gas supplier principally because they are one of the few who charge the same price per unit however you choose to pay them, even if you do not want to pay using DD!

It is all about freedom of choice. Just as the issue with non-09 NGNs being used as disguised premium numbers with unlimited chargeable call queuing is about there being no choice for consumers, if entities do not publish their underlying GN to which the revenue-collecting calls are directed, so it is with true line rental, and as it happens also with current water and sewerage services! There is no choice. For me a company which states their honest pricing and does not resort to tricks like attempting to make more revenue from the use of call centres using disguised premium numbers with call queuing will be the one I will choose, and I will shun the others!

Any student of even elementary Economics learns early on that monopoly is a bad thing in a Market Economy, simply because any commercial entity with a monopoly can hold consumers to ransom; it has total control over the price of the product or service which it markets. This is the continuing problem with water, sewerage and line telecommunications services. When they were privatised the implementation was decided upon by complete idiots like Thatcher, who was in reality only interested in panic selling of the nations family silver to try in desperation to reduce the enormous UK budget deficit caused by her government's total economic incompetence. The issue of monopoly was not properly considered for water, sewerage and line telecommunications and that is how we got into the total mess we are in now.

So this issue is really about the continuation of BT's virtual monopoly and SMP which has never been properly addressed, and is used by Ofcom to continue the status quo with their buddies, particularly in their freeing BT from price controls, although they still have virtual monopoly and SMP. Anyone with any business and economic understanding could see that this fatuous and corrupt move of Ofcom would lead to what is now emerging. BT still have in reality a complete monopoly of the PSTN. The fact that they sell some capacity to other providers on a supposedly wholesale basis in reality makes no difference whatsoever, since they can now set virtually all of the prices for their monopoly services on both a wholesale and retail basis. This is why there is hardly any difference in line rental cost between BT and any of the other providers; the other providers cannot compete effectively because BT in reality still control the PSTN pricing base, and use this to distort call pricing. This is why as soon as BT increase their prices for line rental (in the form of their supposed obligatory "Option" packages, now attempted to be disguised as "free calls" packages) all other providers charges for line rental immediately increase by virtually the same amount. BT continue to control the whole pricing structure.

So, the issue of DDs or not is part of this scenario. If there were real choice and real competition a consumer could decide to become a patron of a totally different service with its own independent pricing structure and a policy of not victimizing those who may choose not to pay by DD. (Any related true accounting and collection cost differences can easily be covered by charging interest on late payments.) However there is no such true choice in line telecommunications in the UK, because Thatcher and her puppet ministers clearly did not understand the first thing about real Economics, nor care what they were doing. So that is why some of us resent a dictat of paying by DD or otherwise being charged more - where there is no effective free choice. In my opinion the PSTN should be sequestered from BT and run as a service like TRANSCO. BT should be made to offer a telecommunications service to customers on the PSTN on the same basis as all other providers with no virtual monopoly and no SMP advantage. That is the only way now that the current distortion of competition can be ended. Other providers could then compete on the basis of a true level playing field and some could choose not to penalise their customers in the way in which BT are doing if customers do not agree to what BT dictates, and are able to do only because of their continued virtual monopoly and SMP; we would then see proper competition and BT would have to change their attitude or become a very much smaller player and a relatively unsuccessful company.

This is what is at the base of the true issue here with paying by DDs or not - freedom of choice. There is none effectively in line telecommunications in the UK!

Looks like this judge is an establishment yes man with no concept of consumer rights.

What is alarming about the judicial system is just how unpredictable the interpretation of the law by different judges can be.

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You appear to have missed the workaround.  Set up the Direct Debit payment system but still pay, a few days before, by electronic transfer.

The balance is therefore zero at the time the DD should be called, so it's not called.

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Can you quantify how much less work is involved in processing Direct Debits compared to electronic transfers or, putting it the other way, does the extra work handling electronic transfers cost £18/year - or perhaps only measurable in pennies?

Has anybody a view on how a court would look at a challenge similar to Dennis Andrews's if the issue raised was payment by electronic transfer rather than cheque? How might BT actually justify the £18/year penalty charge?