'Alternative' phone companies

clearingout

Am moving house so am using the opportunity to have a good look at the comparison websites.

Line rental deals and free phone calls in the area I am moving to are coming up with companies named as follows:
Primus
Yourcalls.net
Hive Telecom
Direct Save Telecom
Vonage

does anyone have any comments to make about these companies? good? bad? indifferent? any problems either with the line or billing issues?

thanks for any comments - these are coming in far cheaper than BT so would like to switch but I am too old and tired to switch to problems lol!

moonrakerz

The major problem with many of the phone companies is that they offer "free" calls at certain times to entice people to sign up (they are not free of course, as you pay a monthly charge anyway) - then they charge you very high rates for peak time calls ! Real swings and roundabouts stuff.

You need to use several companies to get the best value: I use:-

BT for line rental: they HAVE to let you use any other call provider.
18185 for daytime/mobiles : 5p connection + 0P per min/6p per min
Primus as my CPS for evening and w/e: Free - I pay them nothing, in fact they used to pay me, so my account is in credit and I have never paid them a penny.

BindyB

We used to be with Direct Save Telecom for phone and internet a couple of years ago. We had free calls 24/7 and unlimited internet and it was a very reasonable price. There was a blip setting up the line/account at the very beginning (can't remember now what happened) but it was resolved quickly and during the following year and a half or so that we were with them we had no problems.

We only actually left because Sky were then doing what seemed like a very good offer that meant we could have calls, internet and TV for just £4 a month more than we were paying to DST for just the phone and internet. As it turned out Sky turned out to be a bunch of cowboys and added bits and pieces on to our bill over time for no extra services and we ended up paying far more than we were promised and we wished we'd stayed with DST.

Personally I couldn't fault DST