Making calls through B.T. when signed up to Sky

Beatlefan

Hi, I wonder if anyone can help.

I live in a rural community, so have a BT line, but pay for my calls via Sky - £5 a month, free landline calls for up to an hour, etc. Good deal. I just pay BT the line rental. All well and good......

However, BT are charging me £2.50 a month for the "caller displayed" feature on the phone. They say that you have to pay for this feature if you don't make two (or more) calls a month.

I'd like to keep this feature if possible, so my question is, is there a prefix I can use to make a call via BT rather than Sky? I thought if I made two or three very short calls a month through BT, it might be much cheaper than paying the £2.50 "caller waiting" charge every month.

Any tips would be appreciated, many thanks. :A

Heinz

Get a BT Chargecard and set it up to charge any calls made to your home phone account.

Only make the minimum number of calls necessary (they aren't cheap).

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?p=21516115#post21516115

Update 17/8/09. BT company representative has now done an about-turn on this and confirmed that chargecard calls do NOT count as chargeable calls. http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/...3&postcount=11

McKneff

Hello there Beatlefan
Give Sky a ring. You can now pay them your line rental and its only £10 a month and i think it includes caller display free.

Do you use the telephone during the day. You can have free landline calls in the evening and weekends (you are paying £5 for the calls during the day) You can also have free broadband if you havent got it already.
If you are on Skytalk the calls to Sky are free

Beatlefan

Thanks very much for that Heinz. Do you know how to go about getting a B.T. chargecard? Are these the cards you use in phone boxes? There's a phone box opposite my house, so I could ring home twice a month from there to qualify!! And probably save about £2 a month! Brilliant, thanks.

Or could I just access BT from home, using 1280 as the prefix? Will this work as my calls are provided by Sky?

Many thanks. :T

Abbafan1972

Thanks for that. I have signed up for sky line rental. I already have sky talk and of course am getting charged for caller display from BT and I didn't realise Sky offered it for free, have checked the relevant Sky page and it is free. :j

I was a bit dubious at first, but now I know how much BT have been ripping me off, I have decided to bite the bullet.

Just another question, do I have to cancel the caller display option with BT, or will it automatically be cancelled.

Heinz

Beatlefan wrote: »

Thanks very much for that Heinz. Do you know how to go about getting a B.T. chargecard? Are these the cards you use in phone boxes? There's a phone box opposite my house, so I could ring home twice a month from there to qualify!! And probably save about £2 a month! Brilliant, thanks.

Or could I just access BT from home, using 1280 as the prefix? Will this work as my calls are provided by Sky?

1280 will not work now you have Sky Talk (that's the problem you're trying to overcome). It's because Sky now purchases 'calltime' from BT via their new WCLI (Wholesale Calls Line Independent) offering and that means your calls are already on the BT network and, hence, 1280 cannot put them onto the BT network, they're already there!

You can order a BT Chargecard (in fact, they're now called Calling Cards) online - see HERE - charging calls to your home phone number in Step 2.

They can be used from any landline.

Abbafan1972 wrote: »

Just another question, do I have to cancel the caller display option with BT, or will it automatically be cancelled.

You have to cancel BT Caller Display (the easy way is to do so online - HERE).

Update 17/8/09. BT company representative has now done an about-turn on this and confirmed that chargecard calls do NOT count as chargeable calls. http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/...3&postcount=11

Abbafan1972

Thanks. I have took off all the options with BT. I think it takes sky about 14 days to see it all up, so I don't mind if there's an interim period where I don't have caller display.

I'm not sure how my bills will work out, because I think you pay in advance, so somewhere I'll end up being out of pocket.

Beatlefan

Many thanks to McKneff and Heinz for the tips re Sky line rental and the clarification re 1280. :T

Only question around switching line rental to Sky, which from a money-saving position is definitely the way to go!!, is around standards of service. Aren't BT responsible for the cables & telegraph poles. If there's a problem with that side of things, are Sky good with repairs, customer service, etc. Will they send engineers out to fix the telegraph pole or cables? Presumably they contract back to BT to do any work that needs doing?

Heinz

Beatlefan wrote: »

Only question around switching line rental to Sky, which from a money-saving position is definitely the way to go!!, is around standards of service. Aren't BT responsible for the cables & telegraph poles. If there's a problem with that side of things, are Sky good with repairs, customer service, etc. Will they send engineers out to fix the telegraph pole or cables? Presumably they contract back to BT to do any work that needs doing?

Yes. All those who 'provide' telephone lines via the former GPO (i.e. non-cable) network are required to use BT Openreach for maintenance of the network. They are not permitted to undertake such works themselves.