NTL - Cheapest Home Calls Prices?

Mr_B_13

I would be interested to hear views from NTL customers(and Martin) on which home phone services (Onetel, 1866, 18899 etc) are cheapest and can be used on the NTL network for UK local/national calls.  The articles on MSE mainly focus on 1866 and 18899 as they are the cheapest on BT (I am aware that this thread and article are constantly updated).  However, for NTL customers on these services, there is an 0808 (freephone) number, the usual connection charge plus a per minute charge (18866 not 1899), whereas for BT customer, it is free beyond the connection.  In addition, some of the services (such as TalkTalk) are not available on NTL which limits options.

At the moment we use Onetel for evening and weekend calls and rarely go beyond £3.99 per month as we work all day and are out of the house.  However, is there an even cheaper way (particularly if we also are in during the day some of the time)?

Some will be reading this message and wondering why bother as we only pay about £3.99 per month - however, I am sure that other NTL (and Telewest) customers will be spending much more and will therefore be interested in hearing about their options.

Many thanks

Mr B  

chalktalk

Cheap options available to NTL lines:

Call 1899 - 3p connection fee and nothing else for landline calls at any time via their 0808 access number
Also good for mobile calls 10p per min weekday/2p per min weekend plus 3p connection fee.

xfone - (a variety of Swiftnet) - very good per second pricing to all non geographic numbers (08, premium etc) avaoiding NTL's connection fee.

For dial up internet, alpha telecom offer 1p/min 24/7 via 0800 number. Much cheaper than NTL's own option, and cheaper than 0845 internet in the daytime.

Hope this helps

stellagypsy

Hi Mr B

This is what I did when I was on NTL (now back with BT) -

Onetel - (the free plan) for weekend calls and also some mobiles, taking advantage of "call saver" and the £1.00 per month to get the discount off mobile calls - son has a compulsion to dial the whole world on his mobile so I need all the help I can get!.

1899 - for all other land line calls @ flat rate of 3p (don't make that many, mostly to my mum in an evening but there is no limit on the length of call so that is OK for me)

1899 - weekend mobiles (3p connection + 2p per minute) and peak time mobile calls (3p connection + 10p per minute)

I bought an Orchid dialler and programmed it with my preferences. I started by drawing up a perfectly good grid of which prefix to dial and when but OH and son said they found it "confusing" and were dialling all sorts of prefixes (chaos!!!) so cost of dialler = good value

The best thing for me is that I can monitor the family's calls made on the internet - I now deduct the cost of what I consider "excessive" mobile charges from son's allowance, which has had the desired effect.

My bill has plummeted. Now I am back with BT I can also use 18866 and take advantage of the 1p rate and my bill has fallen even further.

I have also put my mum's phone on to my 1899 account to stop her being ripped off by NTL when she calls me - she was paying 60p - 70p a time!!! The charge appears on my bill but she gives me the money when I see her (it's only coppers!) - she loves to hear the voice message say "this is a free call"! But then again, so do I!

HTH, Stella

knuckledragger

When 1899 and 18866 are basically offshoots of the same company, why do they treat calls on NTL so differently? ie 1899 flat 3p/call and 18866 1p connection+0.5ppm/call ???

Mr_B_13

Thank you for your advice so far.

Knuckledragger - my thoughts exactly but not sure of the answer.  Perhaps they do not see NTL?Telewest/Mobile customers as their core market?  The claim on their site is that they have to charge more because they get charged more by the providers - but as you say, they are both offshoots of the same company, therefore they should in theory be able to access the same deals (on cost anyway)?  

1899 @3p is still not to be sniffed at - if you make a lot of calls, then Onetel (£3.99 evening/weekends) may be a good option then 1899 for weekdays.  I am just going back through my bills (a sad way to spend an evening :-/) to work out whether it would be cheaper to switch Onetel to standard (free weekends, no connection charge) when most of our calls are made, then use 1899 for the rest of the week.

Mr B

stellagypsy

Mr B -

1899 @3p is still not to be sniffed at - if you make a lot of calls, then Onetel (£3.99 evening/weekends) may be a good option then 1899 for weekdays. I am just going back through my bills (a sad way to spend an evening ) to work out whether it would be cheaper to switch Onetel to standard (free weekends, no connection charge) when most of our calls are made, then use 1899 for the rest of the week.

I would drop the Onetel £3.99 package and go on the "free" one - how many evening calls do you make? for £3.99 you could make 133 calls with 1899 per month Mon - Fri evenings (ie 6 or 7 per evening, every evening) before you are "out of pocket" - do you make that many? I don't!

Also, it is a good exercise to trawl your old NTL bills - I did it (almost to the point of driving the family mad!) and it was a real eye opener. Also it helped convince OH (who is totally un-money-savvy) that we needed to change from NTL.

HTH, Stella