BT Pricing

SteveChadbourne

Sorry if this has been covered in another thread but I'm completely fed up with BT.

I use OneTel on carrier preselect for all my calls but still have to pay BT £10.50 per month on top. It used to be a lot less than this but they scrapped the cheaper line rental a year ago and insist that you use BT Together Option 1.

Is there anyway round this? I called them up and have lodged an official complaint but have not had any comeback.

Surely they cannot be allowed to do this on non-competative grounds? I thought I heard that Ofcom were investigating when they changed the pricing but cannot find anything on the Ofcom website.

Any ideas on how to fight this anyone?

Cheers

Steve

sergeant121

The £10.50/month is your line rental.

If you're in a cabled area, you could change to a cable landline and save a small amount (but you may well have to pay a connection charge).

Remember though that only BT is obliged by its licence to allow cuctomers to make their calls via other providers (like OneTel, 18866, 1899 etc.).

SteveChadbourne

Yes but line rental used to be a lot cheaper, something like £5 month. You could then choose to pay for calls on top or go for a package like BT Together Option 1 for discounted calls.

When lots of people started moving away and using carrier pre-select, BT decided to make BT Together Option 1 the "line rental" option so we are now paying extra for discounted calls we will never make. This is to punish people using carrier pre-select or other call schemes and make it more expensive for them in the hope they will come running back to BT.

I would have thought this was anti-competitive and something Oftel should (and was I thought) looking at.

sergeant121

£5 a month BT line rental? That must have been a while ago!

Anyway, I agree with your comments but they got away with it with the regulator and I don't hold out much hope of the situation changing (hence, I'm a CPS and 18866/1899 user now and only use BT for 0870/0845 calls when I have to make them [when I can't find an alternative geographical nmumber on saynoto0870.com]).

Edinburghlass_2

Yes but line rental used to be a lot cheaper, something like £5 month. You could then choose to pay for calls on top or go for a package like BT Together Option 1 for discounted calls.

When lots of people started moving away and using carrier pre-select, BT decided to make BT Together Option 1 the "line rental" option so we are now paying extra for discounted calls we will never make. This is to punish people using carrier pre-select or other call schemes and make it more expensive for them in the hope they will come running back to BT.

I would have thought this was anti-competitive and something Oftel should (and was I thought) looking at.

In fact BT upped the line rental by £1 per month when putting everyone onto Option 1. However we used to get £2.15 worth of free calls as well so this does make the difference more but it is a long time since the line rental was £5 a month.

Last July/August when this came in there were a lot of people complaining to BT and Oftel but I haven't heard any outcome of complaints.

Much as I dislike paying BT £10.50 a month line rental, at least with BT services from other companies like CPS and internet suppliers are available to use.