International & UK CallChecker discussion

NonGeographicalMan

Very bad news everybody as the prices quoted for Post Office HomePhone for calling landlines and mobiles using 084 and 087 dial thru providers on the MSE Call Checker are now very seriously and totally wrong following Post Office Homephone's extremely regrettable massive price hike of the cost of calling all 0843/0844 and 0871/0872 numbers with effect from 15th April 2014.

See https://www.postoffice.co.uk/price-changes

I have just spotted this due to the post at http://www.saynoto0870.com/cgi-bin/forum/YaBB.cgi?num=1392870637 but it has actually already been in effect for 9 days and it is very bad news for me personally as I currently need to make a lot of calls to Spanish mobiles and my home landline is with PostOffice Homephone. Fortunately I have not made any in the period since the price change happened until I became aware of it but it effectively means that using Voip calling is now my only means to avoid this disgusting ripoff.

So instead of its previous granular rates of as little as 1p per minute for 0843/0844 numbers and 6p per minute for 0871 numbers P O Homephone has now whacked up all 0843/0844 numbers to 7p per minute at all times and 0871/0872 numbers to 15p per minute at all times plus a 15p connection fee per call (formerly 12p per call).

As discussed in the https://www.saynoto0870.com/cgi-bin/forum/YaBB.cgi?num=1392870637 this is utterly disgusting behaviour by P O Homephone as it does not reflect their own real costs for the calls but it seems to be an attempt to blackmail customers to take their own international calling plan options (not at all competitive with the old 0844 and 0871 dial thru rates) rather than making the calls with another provider.

This is quite outrageous behaviour by P O Homephone and I intend to complain about it to both Ofcom and the new merged OFT and Competition Commission. I suspect it is connected with P O Homephone's new deal with TalkTalk as TalkTalk has always taken the attitude that its customers should not be able to use cheaper services for making calls by for instance blocking access to dial thru services on their landlines such as 1899 and 18185.

For the time being the two P O Homephone lines I use at different addresses still have access to 1899 and 18185 but I wonder for how much longer this is likely to continue

Meanwhile I hope that MSE will get its Call Checker rates update for P O Homephone as soon as possible as I find it disappointing that it seems to have missed the original date of price change some 9 days ago.

Blue_Max

Thanks to saynoto0870.com, we have'nt used these premium rated numbers for nearly five years.
We do make lots of international calls. For that we use VoIP.
Cheaper by far than any other way.
With thousands of free Wi-Fi hotspots in UK and the rest of Europe, VoIP calls are often possible using mobile phones.

NonGeographicalMan

Why should people be forced in to changing to technologically inconvenient Voip by these Greedy Selfish Fatcats in the marketing departments at P O Homephone, TalkTalk or Virgin being allowed to set calling costs to cheap 0844 numbers that allow them to make a 600% per minute profit on their supply costs.

What is the useless regulator OfCoN or the useless QUANGO that has replaced the OFT and the Competition Commission going to do about this bad behaviour by the major telcos cartel????

I hope that this quite blatant scamming will soon be subjected to the adverse and corporately embarrassing publicity it deserves by You & Yours, Watchdog and other similar programs.:eek::mad::(

redux

NonGeographicalMan wrote: »

Why should people be forced in to changing to technologically inconvenient Voip by ...
(

What is technologically inconvenient about picking up a phone handset and dialling a number?

Yes, you have to have a phone which can do VoIP, and there is a small amount of account setting up to do for a couple of minutes or so, but as obstacle courses go it's hardly of military grade.

And it would have already been rather cheaper than the previous 1p and 6p rates you mentioned. And for UK calls as well.

You don't have to treat yourself as a prisoner. Choose to embrace something and get on with it, especially if you're also worried about 18185 access in future.

NonGeographicalMan

redux wrote: »

I don't know why MSE's Callchecker isn't as useful as it could be for international calls

Presumably because it requires a manual report from a user that rates are wrong in order for the prices to be updated.

I have now pointed out that as of April 15th the rates shown for calling international landline and mobile numbers with P O Homephone are very seriously wrong for all the 0844/0871 call thru services listed so hopefully that error will be put right some time soon.

NonGeographicalMan

In the light of the MSE Call Checker information still not being updated with the correct prices for Post Office Homephone today I have now also sent an email about this poblem to the quoted contact address for incorrect information on the Call Checker as follows:-

---

Original Message

---

Subject: Incorrect P O Homephone Call Chekcker Prices
Date: Fri, 25 Apr 2014 10:32:54 +0100
To: callchecker at moneysavingexpert.com

Prices listed on your MSE Call Checker are now totally incorrect for Post Office Homephone customers for all listings involving the use of 0844 or 0871 prefixed dial thru numbers as listed at http://www.postoffice.co.uk/price-changes

Specifically as follows:-

Call connection charge will increase from 12p to 15p per call.

To help simplify charges calls to numbers beginning with 0844Call costs may vary depending on your service provider. Calls may be monitored or recorded for training and compliance purposes. or 0843 will now all cost 7p a minute regardless of time of day and calls to numbers beginning with 0871Calls cost up to 10p a minute from a BT landline, calls from mobiles and other numbers may vary. and 0872 will all cost 15p a minute regardless of time of day.

This unfortunately means that these dial thru methods are no longer vaguely competitive for any P O Homephone customers to use for making calls.

I already posted about this yesterday in your MSE call checker thread at http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.php?p=65339835&postcount=352 but sadly no one from MSE has responded and the prices on the call checker remain incorrect despite P O Homephone having increased these prices by 600% or more back on April 15th

I look forward to hearing from you as to when you plan to update the call checker with the correct price information for P O Homephone.

Regards,

Blue_Max

Quote, "This unfortunately means that these dial thru methods are no longer vaguely competitive for any P O Homephone customers to use for making calls."

Spot on!

Many years ago, I found out that 'dial thrus' with their connection charges and minimum charges and so on was never competitive compared to VoIP.
Despite the fear of the unknown some may have, VoIP is far from complicated to set up and use. We use a set of Siemens DECT phones. They can switch from fixed line to VoIP at the touch of button. Range is very good and the sound quality is the best I have ever known in a phone.
Whislt a VoIP phone can be purchased for as little as £15, with some service providers one does'nt even need a VoIP phone!.
For example, the UK based Localphone.com, you can have a normal geographic number for any foreign number you call frequently.
I also use another service provider who charge just 0.6p per minute and nothing more for calls half way across the globe.

Blue_Max

Upptalk is a mobile VoIP application. Simply by downloading and installing the app will give your free calls to US, Canada and UK landlines.
Then by watching ads, downloding games, apps, taking part in surveys, etc one can earn credits that can be used for free calls and texts to anywhere in the world.
http://upptalk.com/en-UK
See MSE thread at
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/4872258

NonGeographicalMan

NonGeographicalMan wrote: »

In the light of the MSE Call Checker information still not being updated with the correct prices for Post Office Homephone today I have now also sent an email about this poblem to the quoted contact address for incorrect information on the Call Checker as follows:-

Just to note that MSE have still not updated their International Call Checker to reflect the P O Homephone price rises a few weeks ago, even though these new prices are now several weeks old and also in spite of my email pointing out their error.

It appears that MSE probably have an automated way to screen scrape the Voip provider sites of the likes of Localphone to automatically update prices if those sites change their rates but if an actual landline provider dramatically changes their prices to call 0844 numbers then they are not automatically tracking those rates and nor do they seem to have the required staff to even bother to take any note of informative emails regarding price changes, such as my own.:eek::mad:

So the MSE Call Checker simply cannot be trusted and all prices they publish must be checked out with your own phone provider (for the 0844 or 0871 based call solutions) and/or with the current websites of the providers in question (for Voip only based solutions) before dialling the number you want to call.

Heinz

NonGeographicalMan wrote: »

So the MSE Call Checker simply cannot be trusted and all prices they publish must be checked out with your own phone provider (for the 0844 or 0871 based call solutions) and/or with the current websites of the providers in question (for Voip only based solutions) before dialling the number you want to call.

Yes, that's why there's a red Warning box stating:

Warning!

This is an AUTO-generated list, errors can and do happen. Always double check the price first yourself.