PAYG Mobiles per minute - per second more like!

2expensive

I bought my kids PAYG mobile phones from Orange and put £5 on them. They each had a £10 top-up. I told them the £5 was for emergency use only. So they called or texted their friends to tell them of their new number. Their whole credit was gone in about 60 seconds! I was annoyed to find that if you call someone and they don't answer, the mobile network answerphone kicks in and that's cost 15p. Not 15p per minute, 15p from the moment the call connects. So if you need to get hold of someone and try their mobile number several times that could eat through your credit faster than calling a premium rate line. It's worse on a landline. I got my BT bill recently and found loads of 4 second calls costing 16p. That's from people calling mobiles, getting the answerphone and hanging up. Even if they wanted to leave say a 20 second message it would still cost 15p.
Maybe it's me but I think it's a con. Surely they can charge per second. I don't know if its the same for contract phones. I've got 200 minutes per month on mine. So if I call someone and get their answerphone then hang up after 4 seconds - do I lose a whole minute - Hmmm.