Cheapest Home Phones Article Discussion

incesticde

I'm currently with AOL call saver via a BT line.

I'm paying

BT Line Rental to BT,
A subscription of £8 to AOl for free local/national calls/discount off mobile calls
£4 (approx average) in override charges for calls to india,italy etc

With that AOL subscription we get free calls (less than 60 mins) to Canada. Which my other half uses to call her parents (so we can't lose this!!)

Can anyone suggest anything similar but cheaper? I've tried searching etc but can't find anything similar.

Thanks

purplestar133

saving_not_shopping wrote: »

hello all

I have just bought my first flat and trying to sort out all the boring stuff! i have rung BT who have said the phone number I was given was not BT and I get the impression that there hasn't been a landline for some time (it was tenanted previously).

Is my only option to pay the £125 to BT for connection?

I don't appear to have to pay this if I go with a phone and broadband package but that works out pretty expensive for any reasonable package.

Is another provider an option? I've just moved into a new flat and am paying £60 to Talk Talk for a new phone line installation. At the time I rang up through Simplify digital who were offering £60 cashback which would refund me, in effect, last time I checked that offer expired 31st Dec but they may have extended it. Without the cashback it is still a lot cheaper than BT though...

winston_1

Just had a letter from Talk Talk saying they are changing my Tiscali phone & broadband package to a new Talk Talk package. Was £14.67, now to be £18.49, thats a 26% increase (OK 23.3% if you take the VAT increase into account but still unacceptable). Phoned them and said I could do better, BT £11.54 per month plus free broadband from Orange as I have an Orange mobile. They then offered me 6 months half price if I agree to an 18 month contract. No way that still works out at an average of £15.40 a month and you have the problem of being locked in for 18 months. The lady on the phone said they had had a lot of calls about this. Why do they do it I wonder.

Anyway I've now started the process and am changing back to BT with no connection charge on 1st Feb. Be nice to get my free caller display back. Also e-mailed Tiscali for a MAC code.

BT_company_representative

Hello saving not shopping,

I am really sorry for all the problems you have had with your order for telephone service with BT. I will be more than happy to look into this for you. Please can you email your order number to me with your username and contact number to reach you on. You can find our contact details on our profile.

Thanks

Fionnuala

Ruseph

winston_1 wrote: »

Just had a letter from Talk Talk saying they are changing my Tiscali phone & broadband package to a new Talk Talk package. Was £14.67, now to be £18.49, thats a 26% increase (OK 23.3% if you take the VAT increase into account but still unacceptable). Phoned them and said I could do better, BT £11.54 per month plus free broadband from Orange as I have an Orange mobile. They then offered me 6 months half price if I agree to an 18 month contract. No way that still works out at an average of £15.40 a month and you have the problem of being locked in for 18 months. The lady on the phone said they had had a lot of calls about this. Why do they do it I wonder.

Anyway I've now started the process and am changing back to BT with no connection charge on 1st Feb. Be nice to get my free caller display back. Also e-mailed Tiscali for a MAC code.

I phoned up today to complain about the same thing, It seems I have no choice but to accept their prices increase or to try find someone else. The service as you say is going up by 23.3% but with no extra benefits, in fact I'm down graded to a capped allowance rather than unlimited, and they want to tie you in to for another 18months, which I think is just unacceptable.

I also had a rant on their customer questionnaire form about it too about their nonsensical reason for the increase, i.e like 'they need to align all their products', what a load of crock! That isn't a reason at all, but a poor attempt at an excuse for increasing charges.

I also complained because their website was also just as confusing due to the lack of info. like for example on the new rates what would you be charged for excess download or calls, there didn't seem to be anywhere easy to find this out, all they had were links to add-ons at £4.00/month extra for more data or speed etc.

The guy on the phone seemed to have little idea about what to do on the phone, his supervisor kept interrupting or so he said!, best offer I got was two months half price line rental and included 0845/0870 numbers, or the £20 amazon voucher. Big Deal! It no way makes up for the extra £3.49 a month for nothing!.

I am considering Plusnets ~17.49 a month just to not give business to TT who have just got far too big for their boots so-to speak in my opinion! Also with Plusnet the contract is only 12 months or no contract if you pay for or don't need a modem/router etc, or I might look to stay on temporarily and hop to O2's new deal expected in March which will also be better than TT being unlimited and without a contract. BT is a better phoneline company I think and might be worth getting their free re-installation, but Broadband wise is still one of the most expensive. I could get free broadband with Orange mobile too as my contract on that is due for upgrade and I wanted a new phone anyway so maybe I could kill two birds with one stone.
I guess I'll just have to ponder it for a while.

KZcomp

Can anyone please assist us. We are currently with Virgin for phone, broadband and TV paying £28.99 per month. HOWEVER we have just received a phone bill of £81 which is crippling for us. We are out of contract with virgin and just need phone and broadband even if it comes from 2 different providers. It's looking like BT freee installation deal and plusnet broadband but can anyone please recommend a cheap, reliable deal.
We do download a fair bit sometimes and make more than 10 calls per month. Too many to mobiles.

Any help gratefullly received as it's a minefield out there.

rosetta_stone_2

Well, I have bee with talktalk for many year and have thought them better than other providers, get a measured broadband speed of 4Mb/s

in the last few months I have noticed a large increased billing cost. I have the line rental / free calls option.
For an evening call lasting 1:31 mins I was charged £1.43p (first 60 mins free)
ie a 31 min phone call off peak is now 4.6p per minute. This used to be just 1p/min
You NEVER see the price of these charges listed.
I was NEVER made aware of the change in charge
I have not seen it mentioned in this forum

Heinz

Buy a kitchen timer and set it for 58 or 59 minutes when you start your calls. Then hang up a call again if you need longer.

sometimesintheblack

Been talking with Sky quickly today and they have mentioned their line rental is £11 per month with free weekend and evening calls! I am currently paying 35 pm with BT, I presume this is usage! What sort of deal is the Sky one anyone with good/bad experiences? I would like to hear before commiting to a 12 contract!

Cheers all!

MFWannabe

sometimesintheblack wrote: »

Been talking with Sky quickly today and they have mentioned their line rental is £11 per month with free weekend and evening calls! I am currently paying 35 pm with BT, I presume this is usage! What sort of deal is the Sky one anyone with good/bad experiences? I would like to hear before commiting to a 12 contract!

Cheers all!

I am with Sky for broadband, calls and line rental. I have never had any problems with them. You can also get Sky Talk unlimited for £5.00 per month which includes free day time calls aswell if you use these. They also have an offer online at the moment giving 6 months free broadband and calls and a £50 M&S voucher; offer ends 5th Feb.
£35 per month to BT is a lot of money any you'd probably be able to get all Sky products including TV, broadband, line rental and calls for this amount of money!
Hope this helps