Sky Talk price increases - 6 July 2011 - suggestions on how to avoid price hikes

anewman

Sky Talk are increasing line rental by £1 to £12.25 a month, and calls per minute to landlines during the day from 6.03p per minute to 7.6p per minute with the connection charge (where applicable) increasing from 10.11p to 12.5p.

I personally think these charges are obscene, and am offended they lock you in by disallowing the use of services such as 1899/18866/18185.

The new prices mean that calling landlines now costs more than the 8p per minute charged by the mobile services Tesco, Asda, and GiffGaff before 7pm with the connection charge taken into account. If your call lasts less than 30 minutes (the break even point of connection charge + per minute rate), I urge you to place the call using one of the above mobile phone services instead to prevent Sky profiting from their price increases.

Sky are pushing the Sky Talk unlimited for £5 a month which offers "Unlimited" calls to landlines and 20 international destinations including USA, Australia, and Canada. If you make calls to international destinations such as these, or if you would spend over an hour on the Sky Talk phone line (i.e. you choose not to use another method such as VOIP) to landlines during the day per month, using this service would be worthwhile.

Another possibility many people forget nowadays is VOIP. It seems to have come in fashion and gone. VOIP allows you to place calls to normal phones using the internet. You can either do this with a microphone and headphones/speakers attached to your PC with varying degrees of quality, use an adapter into which you plug a standard phone, or buy a dedicated IP phone. The savings to had can be quite good. For example, sipgate.co.uk charge 1.19p per minute which far beats Sky Talk's 12.5p connection + 7.6p per minute. It also acts as another landline with a landline number people can call.

There are also other services to take advantage of. For example GiffGaff mobile offers free GiffGaff to GiffGaff calls and texts every 3 months per £10 topped up. 0p per minute is a price that cannot be beat. If for some reason you do not want to change your mobile phone to GiffGaff, why not pick up a low end PAYG 02 phone and slip a GiffGaff sim into it and carry 2 phones?!

I would leave the service but I very much like the broadband service for which I get the full 20mb as the exchange is just across the road, and the only other LLU Broadband provider offering that speed at my exchange is TalkTalk. And as I am a light caller I think it is financially beneficial to stay with the service, but try to reduce costs where I do use the phone during the day with VOIP and mobile phones.

OldGreyFox

You can use www.18185.co.uk via its 0808 freephone access number to make 01/02/3 calls at 1p a min, 5p connection.

Heinz

anewman wrote: »

Sky Talk are increasing line rental by £1 to £12.25 a month, and calls per minute to landlines during the day from 6.03p per minute to 7.6p per minute with the connection charge (where applicable) increasing from 10.11p to 12.5p.

So, line rental £1.65/month cheaper than BT but everything else the same price.

Wouldn't it be cheaper to switch back to BT and opt for their Line Rental Saver - then you could use the 18185 prefix for 0p/minute 01/02/03 calls and pay only £10/month for line rental?

anewman

It's the broadband tie-in really. I like the broadband, BT don't offer a 20meg service on this exchange and I'd be paying more for less than half the speed. So all in all it works out better.

Wasn't aware BT call prices were also that much during the day, thought it was just a Sky rip off thing going on Having looked, you're right they're just matching BT's increases like for like.

ToeKnee2007

I currently have Sky Talk Unlimited (without Sky Line Rental) and override providers such as 18185 and 1899 work just fine. I mainly use them for calls to mobiles, which are expensive on Sky Talk.

As Sky use BT Wholesale's line, the only thing that doesn't work is the 1280 prefix, so you can't make calls to be charged by BT. This means that you will be charged for services that are normally free such as 1571 and Caller Display.

If you have Sky Line Rental then your calls are diverted onto Sky's network so they can block what they like.

I am tempted to drop Sky Talk but I would pay an extra £5 a month for my Sky broadband if I did, which is slightly more than the cost of 1571 and Caller Display from BT.

neil40

Sky offer line rental advance which works out at £9.25 per month if you pay a year in advance.You have to call customer services to get it.Google sky line rental advance to find it.

Neil