Cheapest Home Phones Article Discussion

YoBear

Great article on how to save on land line rental but alightly flawed.

I'm with BT and just came off the 12 month rolling contract that gave me free evening and weekend calls (no extra calling plan charge) and mainly used The Phone Co-op as a call override provider.

I've been looking to change away from BT and looked at Primus which appears great for price, like-for-like however the article omits additional charges you get for extra services standard with BT i.e. I need CLI (Caller Line Identification) which is a whooping £2.50pm on top of the Primus rental which is more than paying up front to BT for 12 months! The Post office also charge £1.75pm on top of their £12pm rental. Looked at the other providers suggested too and they all appear to charge.

Must add these guys look interesting for the extras you get as standard if one remains with BT:
http://www.voipfone.co.uk/Voipfone_For_Your_BT_Line.php

So after all that searching it looks like BT are actually going to be the best for me if I pay for 12 months up front; switch on the 12 month rolling contract again to get free eve and weekend calls (incl. 0845 & 0870) from 7pm and continue to use the Phone Co-op and other call override providers unless someone can advise differently?

lnx

JerryW wrote: »

I have been with Primus (Home Saver package) since April and everything was fine until my line failed last month.. dead, no dialling tone or anything. I then discovered that:

- Primus staffs its call centre with operators who haven't got even basic English. On two occasions I was unable to carry on any sort of a conversation at all.
- the technical support team are friendly & sympathetic (and do speak some English) but take forever to get anything done. It took them 10 days to divert calls to my mobile phone.
- BT Openreach are very slow to respond to requests for action by Primus. Maybe it is the same for everyone, or maybe BT give their own customers priority. Who knows?

My line started working again yesterday - a fault in the overhead cables was found - but I reported it as faulty on 27 September, so I have been without any broadband or telephony for 23 days!:mad:

I had the same problem around the same time - coincidence I think! I rang Primus - expecting the worst. They were actually quite helpful and it was clearly a BT openreach issue. BT came out on 3 separate occasions and did eventually fix it. Primus rang me every day or two to update me or ask if I had any improvements in the noisy and disconnecting line. They were happy to ring me back on my mobile (because of the noise) and then immediately set a divert for free to my mobile during the few weeks of trouble.

ALSO....

!!!!Beware!!!! Primus have quietly increased the costs of their extra services. I was switched to the £8.99 per month phone saver through this website in July 2010 and now find that they are now charging £2.50 per month for caller display it was 56p/month that's an increase of 446% !!! (on BT it is free). So basically this was now costing me £11.50 per month - not such a good deal after all. I rang and complained then they refunded me back to the previously advertised 56p/month for caller display until the end of the contract.

Also beware, you have only a VERY small time window in which to cancel the one year contract with Primus near the end of the first year that they tie you in for. ***Check the small print*** - if you don't cancel then they will tie you in for another year...

daz1807

Who said that TalkTalk customer service has improved? I have moved house and told by TalkTalk that I am now a new customer and can't have the free local calls I had before. I sent a long list of complaints and examples of the poor customer service I have received and they have never even replied. Avoid at all costs!

redglass_2

daz1807 wrote: »

Who said that TalkTalk customer service has improved? I have moved house and told by TalkTalk that I am now a new customer and can't have the free local calls I had before. I sent a long list of complaints and examples of the poor customer service I have received and they have never even replied. Avoid at all costs!

Hear, hear!!!! For ten days until last night I couldn't access my TalkTalk email via Outlook but had to use webmail - a pain when I have a system of carefully organised Outlook folders for my work. This was supposedly the result of TalkTalk migrating accounts and repeated promises that this was being fixed appeared on the website (but then ominously disappeared). Last night I happened to open Outlook Express to see if anything was going in there, by any chance. I was asked did I want this to be my default email account - answer, NO - and the whole email backlog immediately downloaded in there, where I didn't want it. :eek: I now remember that when I first went with Tiscali (as it was then known) i had a lot of trouble because one of their call centre helpers insisted on linking me up to Outlook Express, evidently because he didn't know how to connect me to Outlook (that was several years ago and I'll admit I wasn't very savvy myself, but then I wasn't working in a call centre 'helping' people). Last night I phoned TalkTalk and got a bad line and an operator with not very good English whose brilliant solution was that I should delete the Outlook Express account (with all my mail now in it, yeah, right) and then 'go to my vendor' (to pay for a mess which resulted from their chaos). I explained that I had followed their instructions several times over, linking up Outlook NOT Outlook Express, and was still unable to access my mail via the correct software, even though before the migration of accounts I'd been doing it for years. :wall: No answer to that one. I then asked for my MAC key so I could go to another provider....and was promptly cut off! :mad:
Strangely enough, I still intend to leave them.
Like Daz said: AVOID AT ALL COSTS
Edited to add: mind you, having read some of the thread and realised the complexities of changing over, perhaps I should just shut up and get on with it... some of you guys have had even worse experiences elsewhere....

YoBear

lnx wrote: »

!!!!Beware!!!! Primus have quietly increased the costs of their extra services. I was switched to the £8.99 per month phone saver through this website in July 2010 and now find that they are now charging £2.50 per month for caller display it was 56p/month that's an increase of 446% !!! (on BT it is free). So basically this was now costing me £11.50 per month - not such a good deal after all. I rang and complained then they refunded me back to the previously advertised 56p/month for caller display until the end of the contract.

Also beware, you have only a VERY small time window in which to cancel the one year contract with Primus near the end of the first year that they tie you in for. ***Check the small print*** - if you don't cancel then they will tie you in for another year...

I didn't know they had increased costs but yes, caller display is £2.50 for Primus and on Post Office service it is approximately the same which is why in the end I went with BT for another year, prepaying for the year which gets me the equivalent of £9.49pm PLUS free evening and weekend calls which includes 0845 & 0870 after 7pm and will continue to use my carrier overrider (The Phone co-op) who charge no setup and calls cost from 1ppm.

The other thing is this 'time window' - BT are no better: last year I upgraded to the free evening and weekend calls for a year - they promised they would get in touch to warn me they were going to automatically renew the deal - did they ****

PUT IT IN YOUR DIARIES! :cool:

MORPH3US

Hi guys, I am currently with BT for my landline paying £12.49 a month.

I NEVER use my landline except for broadband (with O2) and so I just want the absolute cheapest line rental.

Is Primus the best bet? Have people had good experiences with them?

Frith

Hi, there.

I have been in a contract with BT for home phone and broadband. The wireless broadband is excellent (I use my laptop in my neighbour's house!) but was wandering if there was a cheaper option?

I use the laptop A LOT so it has been getting quite expensive. I don't make many phone calls. The phone bill has been £30 or so per month with the Broadband part from £30-£80. I think I pay more per month for being on a very rural exchange.

I suppose I need pretty much unlimited Broadband?

Doc_N

I see that Primus are now offering a 12 month contract at £7.99 pm. Has anyone managed to persuade BT to match this yet?

biggad

does anyone know the cheapest route to getting a BT landline installed? I currently have cable and am switching to Sky.

many thanks in advance!

Browntoa

Sky charge something in the region of £35 to install the line for you