Simon Read: 'BT Sport wants us to be couch potatoes on charges'

It looks like BT is up to its old trick of sneaking through a charge that could end up costing you a packet if you're not careful. The media giant has written to broadband customers who've received BT Sport for free since it was set up.

Not for much longer. The company has snapped up rights to show Champions League football and so will begin charging customers a fiver a month to watch the channels in future. That's a fair price, I reckon, but the way in which it seems to be signing people up to the subscription looks unfair. The email says: "If you do nothing, your BT Sport Pack will cost £5 a month from 1 August". That smacks of "inertia selling" to me – and to several of you who passed the message on to me.

James Trout simply said: "I found this sales pitch of interest," but added a resigned sigh of "Ho-hum" –, the sound of a man who's encountered such marketing tricks before.

John Haigh said he's been a very causal user of the service but BT's message has angered him. "I'm an assiduous reader of my emails, but to think it is legal for any manner of organisations to send an email 'notifying' me that they will start taking money from my account unless I tell them not to is alarming," he said.

So if you're a BT broadband customer, I advise you to check your emails and then contact the company to stop it taking a fiver every month from your account if you don't want the new service. You'll have to downgrade to the free Sport Lite service, which will give you Premier League football and other sports on the BT 1 channel.

s.read@independent.co.uk

Twitter: @simonnread