primus...good or bad

deano72_2

looks like they have cheap lan line rental,im coming to end of my bt contract so am on the hunt for a new deal

Heinz

What are BT offering for you to agree to another 12 month contract? £3/month discount used to be easily available.

deano72_2

thanks for reply,my current bt contract was 18month (phone & broadband) which runs out end of march,i have not contacted them as yet to see what they can offer,but i see martin this am on tv & he recomended primus,but after just doing a quick search on here they sound like a crock of pooh.
im not sure how much im curently paying but at a guess its £12 lan line rental + £15 broadband & theres another £35+ pm for my mobile so it all adds up just for comunications & surfing...if i could do away with my lanline & broadband alltogether & just use the my mobile to make calls & nettage (tehtering maybe) i would, so i mite look into that insted of renewing lanline & BB
ps i dont use LL to make calls,just so i can use BB at home realy

R34GTT

I could not recommend Primus at all, dreadful incoherant customer service, awful vague billing and not even cheaper once you add basic features such as CallerID. I will be leaving them once the contract is up and switching to Plusnet (already with them for my Broadband) who have English call centres and excellent online account management.

deano72_2

so why did martin recomend them,i wonder who he is with !! lol

deano72_2

thats cool that hes here to save us money & well recieved,but if its more hassle than its worth then thats not good advice.im still not ruling them out,just putting the feelers out at the moment so hopefully few members will come along & say how good they are

R34GTT

deano72 wrote: »

so why did martin recomend them,i wonder who he is with !! lol

Because their headline tariff is the cheapest, though in my opinion not the best value.

Primus would be OK if:
1. You never ever have a problem of any kind and need to communicate with their customer services.
2. They do not automatically leave on features that they charge at £1.50 each (e.g. CallDivert, CallerID) when you switch from a provider that used to include these at no extra charge.
3. They did not take 6 months to remove said chargeable features you didn't want.
4. They had a detailed online account management system and detailed bills (calls are itemised but their vague '[FONT=&quot]Charges,Credits and Adjustments' [/FONT]does not tell you how the rest of the bill is broken down).
5. They had an English call centre which didn't take 30 minutes to answer your call.
6. They set up new direct debit details in a timely fashion and did not randomly start charging an extra £1.50 for not using direct debit.
7. They did not randomly start charging for not using paperless bills that I never opted out of.

deano72_2

blimey r34 lol thats bit of a list there, so i supose you could say they are the cheapest to start of with then end up on par ifnot more exspensive than there competitors

A.Penny.Saved

I liked the low fee but that is only the part to attract people. When you find out about everything else, including relatively high charges for many things including an essential for me Caller Display which I believe should be a standard feature.

Everything else says this isn't a good deal so I will avoid it.

anselld

Very Bad!! Been with them two months and can't get a bill that looks anything like the advertised price.
Really - don't bother!

takesides

I couldn't warn you off Primus/NewCall enough. Here is the list of problems I have had with them (actually EVERY single thing they have done so far has been a problem):

1. Got a new line installed by them (through BT). It took weeks and weeks for them to arrange it. After a fortnight I called to ask what the hold up was and they said there was a problem with my bank details preventing them making the booking - They didn't call, email or write to let me know, they just stopped going through with the work.

2. After being charged £100 for the installation, I realised after several months that I wasn't being charged monthly. Again, no emails, calls or letters, just no charges. After a few months they took £60 from my account, again with no comms, and told me to look at my account details online (this "feature" did not exist when I signed up). The online billing is a joke, totally vague and incomprehensible - even down to the fact that it doesn't even say it's a Primus website anywhere on it. Eventually I realised that the 100 I gave them for the line installation they had credited to my account and this was paying for the monthly bills, had forgotten to charge for the installation then just took the money when they realised.

3. When I moved house I was still under contract so had to stay with them and asked for my account to be moved to my new address. Again, this took weeks to sort out and when I called to find the problem I found out they had hit a snag and instead of contacting me had just not bothered to do anything. It turned out they couldn't do the work because my new house "didn't exist" (it's over 100 years old!). Then once convinced I did actually live in a house that existed they said there had never been a phone line there. I work in telecoms so eventually I had to talk them through exactly how a phone exchange works, how I know my phone line works and what needed to happen at the exchange to get my line working. (They were constantly rude and condescending about this whole escapade but I'll expand on that later).

4. Today I received a threatening "Final Warning" letter (wow! some comms!) that I owed them £42.25 and would be taken to court if I didn't pay it. I called them up and got very confusing information from yet another rude member of staff that although I had set up a direct debit, it "hadn't happened" for a few months - don't know what that means, there has always been plenty of money in my account. He then said I didn't have to do anything but call back later in the month to see if they had been paid!

5. Foreign call centres: The staff range from totally confused to incredibly rude and arrogant (often both).

6. Not even that cheap. As other people have mentioned here, once you get any of the services that anyone else provides as a basic you are not saving any money anyway.

I can't stress enough how much you should avoid these cowboys! Totally disorganised, they hold customers in complete contempt. I suspect this company has been started by some bright spark to make a quick buck at the expense of consumers and they will disappear in the middle of the night at some point in the future.

PHEW! Rant over, but I think you can get my point - these guys are BAD, BAD NEWS.