BT Payphone "stealth" price rise to 60p

rapido

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littleboo

Where else would you expect to see the advance warning other than in the phone box itself ?

rapido

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littleboo

No idea, but it's hardly stealthy if you stick a sign up so everyone using it can read it. It might be stealthy if you put it on a web site and not in the phone box though.

rapido

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littleboo

rapido wrote: »

"From 1st June 2010 the minimum fee is 60p, includes 40p connection charge"

If the sign says "From 1st June.." then it's advance warning, surely.

icefall

omg thats a big rise, what about those people who really need to use the phone and don't realise till its too late

mrtom21

Erm... They will put in the first 40p... wait to make a call and realise they need to pay 60p? Then they can decide whether to make the call or not. It isn't a massive issue phone boxes are a dying breed these days. If they really needed to make a call so badly... They can just pay 60p. The less people who use these things the more expensive they are gonna get.

rapido

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custardy

and how much money do you think BT makes from payphones?
im guessing they are required to provide them as a throwback to being fully publically owned

edit:

Payphone use

Payphone use has been declining for some years because of the increasing use of mobile phones. BT is committed to meeting its obligation to provide a public payphone service, but payphone use has halved in the last two years, with more than 62 per cent of payphones unprofitable and around 10 per cent used only once a month.

Calls and numbers

Around half a million calls are made each day from a public payphone by people who continue to rely on them as their main method of making calls, or who need to make an essential call and their mobile may not be working.

At their peak in 2002, there were 92,000 payphones across the UK. Currently BT has more than 54,000 street payphone kiosks (including more than 12,500 red phone boxes).

Costs

Currently maintenance costs are an average of £800 a kiosk. That equates to approximately £44 million including a massive £10 million for the cost of theft and vandalism

so they will be losing money regardless

mrtom21

A 30 minute call to a day time landline for a BT land line customer on the weekend plan would cost £1.17 (30 x 5.9p) + the 9.9p set up fee. At a payphone you are still getting it at around half that price which to me still works out cheaper. If the majority of payphones are not making any form of money then you have to question why they are even there. You should consider it lucky BT still have the obligation to provide them at a loss in most cases.