I had to pay the phone bill today and duly went online to use the convenient online payment service that BT provide. As a side issue, the web interface to your account with BT is very good on the whole, providing access to bills, including details of phone numbers called, and the ability to download your bills too.

Unfortunately, some aspects are less friendly. The payment form itself for example, as with so many web forms that seem to about today, had data entry restrictions that seemed a little excessive.

For example, I had to enter a contact telephone number (yeah, I know, to pay my own phone bill I had to provide a contact number - shouldn't they know that already?). Now in the UK the format of the phone number is typically area code, then a space, then the phone number, i.e. 012345 456789. That's how it's written, that's how it's quoted by BT on the account summary page. However, the web form flatly refused to accept a space in the field for the phone number?