Cheapest Home Phones Article Discussion

Heinz

I have never heard of them. I've never seen them advertised either. Have you?

Phoniex doesn't produce any obvious hits in a Google search.

Warning bells should be ringing, IMHO.

mrs_T

http://www.tesco.com/clubcard/deals/product.aspx?R=1668

Tesco now allow you to pay for calls and broadband using clubcard rewards, £4 of rewards coupons buys one months evening and weekend calls + broadband, £6 of rewards coupons buys one months anytime calls + broadband. I always struggle to find something to spend them on so this is great. You still need to pay for tesco line rental. They are also offering a £30 giftcard when you sign up at the moment.

mikenewland

I have just got the following deal from BT £30/month for signing up for 1 year and I do not have the hassle of changing my email addresses.
Line rental and broadband, including download, anti virus and backup
Free 24/7 landline phone calls including 0845 and 0870 numbers
5 free mobile numbers
BT Vision television standard pack.
So BT are not all bad
Mike

MCMitten

mikenewland wrote: »

I have just got the following deal from BT £30/month for signing up for 1 year and I do not have the hassle of changing my email addresses.
Line rental and broadband, including download, anti virus and backup
Free 24/7 landline phone calls including 0845 and 0870 numbers
5 free mobile numbers
BT Vision television standard pack.
So BT are not all bad
Mike

Does this apply to new customers only?? I'm currently paying £30 per month but my package only includes

Line Rental and broadband
Free evenings and weekends

I think it's awful that they can offer cheaper/better packages to lure new customers in but wont give any similar offers to the customers that they already have

anotherlittleseppo

akyman wrote: »

I'm wondering if anyone knows if you can use 18185 with line rental from Talk Talk? I'm an avid user of 18185- it has saved me a small fortune but the Talk Talk offer seems good. I wouldn't touch Tiscali with a barge pole after my mother had untold hassle after some intermidiary signed her up fraudulently online.

If I had known what I was signing up for, I would have avoided Talk Talk like the plague. I upgraded from the calls only tariff to the line rental and broadband package 1 year ago and have experienced nothing but nightmares ever since. TalkTalk have taken nearly a year to set up my account with the international boost correctly, so for months I had to call them to get them to credit incorrect charges.

They still aren't able to get their billings and payments system working correctly. Even though I am a direct debit customer, they never manage to take the payments from my account. It's probably just as well since they never provide me with accurate bills. They fail to send out notifications of bills via email even though I signed up to online billing. When I do check my account online, the bills on the site do not match the billing records held internally by Talk Talk. They don't send them out even when they say they will.

I get letters demanding immediate payments for sums that never appear on any billing records. Unexplained, unauthorised charges have started to appear on my account and they never are able to explain or provide details for what these charges are for. Their billing errors have set off automatic account barring so my broadband or outgoing calls will be cut off and then take ages and weeks of calls to customer and technical services to restore.

Whenever I call Talk Talk, I am passed around among several overseas call centre operators. The lines to their operators suffer from crackly, poor quality and delayed audio connections, there are frequent, inexplicable disconnections and what seem to be language barriers. It's embarrassing to say but most of the operators can't understand my accent, even when I'm giving them basic information like my phone number, and frequently I can't understand their accents. These operators stick very closely to the Talk Talk jargon filled scripts, which they don't understand well enough to help you to understand... unless you're lucky enough to speak to a UK call centre operator.

UK operators, though few and far between seem to have enough training and authority to provide better explanations of their procedures and steps to resolve queries. They often provide their email addresses so you can follow up with further problems and queries. This helps because, inevitably, every time I chase up an error via phone, I am cut off at least twice either while on hold while they transfer me from one operator to another or mid conversation with their operators. These problems occur regardless of whether I call customer services, billings, technical support and even the thinking of leaving talk talk department.

Emailing through their website sends you a confirmation that your message has been sent, but no one responds to the query. Emailing their generic customer services address from your own account usually provides a reply that is contrary to what I will be told by a call centre operator when I follow it up for clarification.

Adding insult to injury, when an operator tells me they've fixed something or a customer services representative writes with assurances that they have resolved a problem on the account, their actions are often automatically overridden by Talk Talk's systems. Credit notes granted sometimes disappear, future compensation as free line rental gets revoked, payments and credits don't appear on account statements, direct debit instructions get set up but never get collected, assurances to keep services connected result in account bars.

Why am I still with Talk Talk? Because they have threatened to fine me £60 if I dare to switch suppliers.

Does anyone know of any landline/ broadband supplier that won't send me to an early grave?

Javert_2

I'm also with PlusNet - and costs are as quoted by G_M - plus I do pay extra 99ppm for Caller ID. But an all-important fact for me is that all their Call Centres are in Sheffield - no phoning half-way round the world as with TalkTalk - and they don't use "crib sheets" to answer your questions. I've always found them very helpful.

Chaufeurse1956

My mother, who has had line rental for many years with BT, has advised me that she has received a letter from BT thanking her for deciding to use them for outgoing calls from her home phone. Somewhat bemused she rang BT and asked what the letter was about as she uses 1899 for all her UK calls. BT claimed that 1899 had re-routed calls she made back via their network as of the 28th Feb 2011. Naturally she has not requested this, nor cancelled her 1899 account, and is confused. I have done some investigating and, unless 1899 had some technical issues, the only possible answer is BT have, without her consent, put her on the 'light user scheme'. There are two calls via 1899 for the 1st and 4th March and two via 18185 for the beginning of March to me (I am currently on holiday in Florida, and 18185 is the cheaper for calls to the US). Apparently BT customers are unable to use 1899/18185 etc if they are a BT light user. I have advised her to ring BT asap and find out if they have changed her to a light user and to request any call charges are immediately refunded, in the meantime I have sent a message to 1899 asking if they had technical issues and did they re-route calls she made back via her BT line.

Can anybody throw any light on this issue please? I would be interested to hear if any other forum members have received the same letter from BT and what they were able to gauge if they investigated.

Whilst the majority of line rental suppliers actually block customers from using 1899/18185, and, in those instances, these companies usually supply a freephone number for customers to use enabling them to access 1899/18185's lines, I was always under the impression that BT are the only line rental supplier who do not block calls to 1899 et al. My supplier cuts me off from 18185 after two minutes, but as I have the package that includes all local, national and most international calls it is not a problem for me.

Thanks very much!

rtsq

Just a friendly word of warning about the talktalk offers. I was originally with tiscali with no problems and happy with the service, when talktalk took over I moved my line rental over to talktalk, eventually after many hours spent with customer services and no phone service for two weeks and a visit by the bt engineer who confirmed it was talktalks fault we had a trouble free service (with a £20 credit on the bill after complaining to customer services). However over christmas we lost our phone service again, for over two weeks, this was caused by talktalks new billing software.
Once again the customer help line proved totally useless with broken promises and agents reading from scripts and cut and paste emails that ignored my complaints.
While we were waiting nearly three weeks for talktalk to sort a problem of there own making, I had to call out bt to fix a line fault on our business line and it was fixed the next day.
I have decided that I have had enough.
When it works talktalk is fine but if you have any problems you are on your own.(We never had any line faults both times it was caused by Talktalk)
the bt winter deal, broadband anytime calls with line rental saver is a reasonable deal.

hmc

hi, can you tell me if you think im on the cheapest deal for me please
i have line rental off bt which with caller display is £18mth dd but im going to cancel the caller display. 6.99mth to aol for broadband and all inclusive calls. 1899 for 08 numbers. i make no mobile calls
thanks in advance

Victor_Delta

hmc wrote: »

hi, can you tell me if you think im on the cheapest deal for me please
i have line rental off bt which with caller display is £18mth dd but im going to cancel the caller display. 6.99mth to aol for broadband and all inclusive calls. 1899 for 08 numbers. i make no mobile calls
thanks in advance

This suggests you should be able to make some savings.