Heamoraging money to NTL: Switching Advice Please

Arcadian_2

Right,

much useful info here to digest and investigate. I will go away and plan my approach with NTHell and post the results after I've made the call. Whichever option I go with I'm sure i'll save a considerable amount thanks to this excellent site

A very big thank you to all :T

telecomsavings

Have you ever tried speaking with the NTL retentions team?

I got Telewest to lower the subscription costs for my services which are:

Supreme TV pack: £7.99 knocked off and is now £10 per month
2MB internet: £4.99 knocked off and is now £13 per month
Talk anywhere: was moved onto to talk anwhere 400 from 200: £28 per month including telephone line rental.

Total cost per month: £51 and because all my call charges are included in the bundled inclusive minutes, my bill is set to £51 per month.

Comparison:


Free Digital TV with phone line NTL: yes BT: No
300 inclusive mobile minutes and texts for £10: NTL: yes BT:No
Free anonymous caller Rejection: NTL: Yes BT:No
Free weekends calls on basic talk plan: NTL: Yes BT: No

Other services:

Calling features pack: £3.50(NTL) £4.50(BT)
Telephone line rental: £11(NTL) £11.50(BT)
Advanced voicemail: £1.75(NTL) £2.50(BT)

Weekends calls from 1.80p per minute:NTL BT: From 2.50 per minute

bbb_uk

Telecomsavings you seem to have some weird prices in your comparison which is actually making NTL look better!

telecomsavings wrote:

Comparison:
300 inclusive mobile minutes and texts for £10: NTL: yes BT:No

The 300text/mins is available for £15 for those without NTL/TW anyhow.

Free weekends calls on basic talk plan: NTL: Yes BT: No

But you can have free evening & weekend calls via Primus if you have a BT line saving well more money than NTL/TW.

Calling features pack: £3.50(NTL) £4.50(BT)
Telephone line rental: £11(NTL) £11.50(BT)
Advanced voicemail: £1.75(NTL) £2.50(BT)

Again where did you get this information? BT charge £1.50 for Enhanced Voicemail and it never was £2.50 from what I'm aware (more info here). BT charges £11 for linerental and has never charged £11.50. In fact BT only charge £12 for those not paying via direct debit where NTL/TW charge £14 odd. BT charge £3.50 for upto 4 services in their pack.

Weekends calls from 1.80p per minute:NTL BT: From 2.50 per minute

What type of call is this as I'm sure you have the wrong prices again!?!

Telecomsavings - as well as some made up prices you have it appears you are unfairly comparing NTL/TW retentions offer to that available elsewhere. In otherwords you're comparing NTL/TW retentions offer to a normal priced-product of BT which would be classed as an unfair comparison.

The point is, to have competitive prices on NTL/TW you SHOULDN'T have to go via retentions team just so you can get the same prices or near enough as those that are available elsewhere with BT and the many other providers only available via a BT line.

NTL/TW should be more competitive anyhow but they're not - end of.

bbb_uk

Bumping

telecomsavings

Those call charges are for calls to mobiles and was obtained from the NTL comparison site.

Furthermore:

BT Callminder(Enhanced Voicemail) is £2.50 per month as shown on my neighbours bill.

Anonymous caller Rejection is £4 per month as shown on my neighbours bill. Whilst NTL now offers is it for free, Telewest is currently charging £1.75 whilst Wight Cable charge only £1.

The BT calling features pack on my neighbours bill is £4.50 and the use of the call return facility is 6p per usage whilst NTL/Telewest do not impose a charge.

And the BT telephone line rental is £11.50 per month as shown on my neighbours bill. As far as i'm aware its £12 per month for BT pay and call customers even if they pay by Direct Debit.

I do agree that the £4 per month non-direct debit admin fee is a bit high, but what is to stop BT doing this? The admin fee is to cover paper usage and the service charges which paypoint,payzone,banks and credit card companies charge for passing payments onto NTL/Telewest. It also covers the prepaid envelope for sending cheques and the postage cost for sending out the bill.

So what they could do is email bills to those who have internet access and they could then only charge £1 instead of the current £4. The customer would have to pay by credit/debit card or by using an old bill/letter or statement provided by NTL/Telewest and present the barcode at a paypoint retailer.

Edinburghlass_2

BT line rental is £11 per month if paid by direct debit, £12 per month if not.

There will now be a 25p reduction per month in line rental if you do online billing rather than a paper billing.

As shown on my online bill

Edinburghlass_2

Edinburghlass wrote:

BT line rental is £11 per month if paid by direct debit, £12 per month if not.

There will now be a 25p reduction per month in line rental if you do online billing rather than a paper billing.

As shown on my online bill

edited to add link to thread about paperless billing from BT.

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=258692

bbb_uk

telecomsavings wrote:

Those call charges are for calls to mobiles and was obtained from the NTL comparison site.

According to NTL .pdf price guide (here) NTL charge daytime 19ppm, evening 11.50ppm, weekend 6ppm.
According to BT's website here, BT charge daytime 13ppm, evening 8ppm, weekend 5ppm.

BT Callminder(Enhanced Voicemail) is £2.50 per month as shown on my neighbours bill.

Enhanced voicemail is called Enhanced BT Answer 1571 and is £1.50 as shown here.

Anonymous caller Rejection is £4 per month as shown on my neighbours bill. Whilst NTL now offers is it for free, Telewest is currently charging £1.75 whilst Wight Cable charge only £1.

I'll give you that one as BT are expensive for that service.

The BT calling features pack on my neighbours bill is £4.50

It depends on how many services you get but yes BT charge upto £4.50

And the BT telephone line rental is £11.50 per month as shown on my neighbours bill

BT's standard linerental is £11 per month as shown here (Option 1).

I do agree that the £4 per month non-direct debit admin fee is a bit high, but what is to stop BT doing this?

BT is regulated and this is why its £1 more so they can't up this price without having Ofcom on their backs. Whereas, NTL/TW aren't regulated hence why they are so much more expensive than BT in most cases (bar one or two calling features and the top-tier calling features pack).

As for NTL's comparison site, it's outdated as proved above in most cases. NTL have not got round to updating it as its not in their favour to point out that BT are cheaper in most cases. TW used to have a comparison page comparing their prices with BT but TW updated their comparison page and no longer compare their prices to BT's as obviously this highlights NTL/TW are more expensive than BT.

Remember that these prices are from a BT landline. If you used one of the many other providers available with a BT landline then you actually save more than what BT charge. Things like free evening & weekend calls with no monthly fee and daytime calls for 4p per call. Compare all this with NTL/TW and it all adds up to NTL/TW being THE most expensive landline provider.

hurrah

bbb_uk wrote:

it all adds up to NTL/TW being THE most expensive landline provider.

No doubt about that. Thats why a lot of their customers use the likes of 1899,First Telecom, Phonecoop,etc to avoid their expensive connection,and call charges.

telecomsavings

You only get what you pay for in my eyes.

BT uses too many indian call centres and the customer services is slightly worse than NTL.

BT can raise that £1 admin fee if they want as this is not covered by Ofcom's conditions. Ofcom only regulates line rental,usage prices,competition,marketing of BT,openreach and a few others.

And then again, Ofcom has relaxed some of the conditions which BT has to follow. Furthermore, Ofcom has proven to be useless and thought it was much better when it was Oftel as they had more time on their hands to deal with individual complaints and had strict rules against BT and other telecom companies.