Complaint to Ofcom re Kingston Communications

MsVictoriaMeldrew

Hi
I live in Hull and so have no choice in the matter of where to go for my home phone and broadband: the local firm Kingston Communications has a complete monopoly over these services. The company sells home phone packages which include all local calls "free" and variable charges for national and special rate calls. I have no family in Hull, I have a couple of local friends I phone once a fortnight or so and I make few other local calls. As most of my friends live away, I opted for a package (includes line rental but not broadband) which gave "free" national calls at weekends and a rate of 5.5p for up to a 60 minutes after 7pm: probably quite good value if one uses the phone a lot. Over the last quarter I made 26 local calls and 28 national. The total cost of my billed calls was £1.64 plus VAT and the most I have racked up in recent years was about £3 per quarter.

The basic cost of the package was £14 per month, which rose this summer to around £15.30. I pay by direct debit and discovered today that from this month they want to charge me £17 per month to cover the cost of the calls and the package. After I complained, they reduced the monthly payment to £16. I still think I am being ripped off and I am seriously considering a complaint to Ofcom.

I would like to submit some price comparisons with my complaint...does anyone know, please, how to get hold of such information?

Thanks and regards

Kim

susie49

I sympathise with you on this. I live in the Kingston Communications area and it annoys me greatly that I have no choice when it comes to telephone or internet providers. I can't understand how they are allowed to have this monopoly.

jhp

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KCOM_Group

Guys_Dad

The real point here is, of course, that at one time BT had an absolute monopoly throughout all the UK except Hull area.

They were forced to open up - as were Gas and Electricity companies - to allow competition. Somehow, Kingston have escaped that and have a monopoly.

Now it is not a matter simply of cost or even quality of service, it is just the principle of there being no competition available and that, in 2011, seems wrong somehow.

TheSnowman

In Hull KC are a cable phone provider, just the same as Virgin and like on Virgin lines no other companies (such as Sky or Talk Talk) are available on them.

Companies such as Sky and Talk Talk only provide their services on BT lines but there's nothing stopping them from renting lines off Virgin or KC.

To be fair to KC, their line rental is much cheaper than BT and Talk Talk and includes free local calls at anytime and other call costs are much cheaper too.

I used to live in Hull and I know there are other providers that provide calls, using a prefix number or a smart box that reroutes calls. I now live in East Yorkshire where I do have a choice between suppliers, I used to have Talk Talk but now I'm with KC and my broadband speed is three times faster than Talk Talk and I'm paying less for calls.

Folk in Hull often think the grass is greener on the other side but I think KC is far the best supplier around.

Keep up the good work KC!

darrenforster99

There are many areas of the UK that still to this day have a monopoly on the phone lines even though apparently the BT monopoly was removed many years ago.

In Ludlow on our exchange we only have two companies - BT and TalkTalk as there are only two firms with LLU equipment in the exchange.

I buy my internet and phone line from Plus Net (part of BT - funny if your on proper BT you get access to BT Openzone FOC but if your on Plus Net - a part of BT - you don't).

But it really doesn't matter who I chose as a phone company and ISP here, all of them except TalkTalk sell BT Wholesale, so they're all re-selling BT's products. So BT still has the monopoly, here we at least do have a choice of either TalkTalk or BT but there are still many exchanges throughout the UK that don't even have LLU on them yet, and all these can only buy phone line and broadband from BT.

As for KC being worse than BT I find that really hard to believe, BT has been a company that for the past 10 years has stifled internet speeds in the UK, and constantly put their own profits ahead of their customers (well they are controlled by a bunch of greedy !!!!!!! shareholders aren't they), and dragged this country down, putting businesses down by not upgrading phone lines sooner to fibre optics, and wasting loads of money on old decrepit copper wires, when most other countries phone companies have been pushing money into changing the wires to fibre optics, and speeding the internet up constantly, and now finally BT has decided it's losing the battle and decides to get off it's backside and do something about it, now that it's let the whole of the UK get 10 years behind everyone else, the only exception is areas where Virgin is present, and at the moment the only places BT are really properly interested in putting in BT Infinity is places where they have a direct threat from Virgin Media.

Other areas aren't really of any interest to BT because to them it doesn't matter, people that live there it's tough BT can charge as much as they like for a poor inadequate service and no-one can do anything about them.

I used to have internet with Eclipse a few years ago, they are owned by Kingston Communications and I always found their service to be far superior than BT's. I still remember when I first had them I had major problems of the line keep cutting out, and instead of blaming it on the filter as many firms do, they sent someone to properly check the line, they found out that our phone line all the way to the box had little cuts in it where someone had gone through it whilst digging in the road, they then organised for BT to re-lay all the wire down the road to the box, and after that the internet was perfect. I was so glad to have had them as my ISP when I was in Warrington, and now I've moved house I would order them again if it wasn't for the fact they are now totally out of my price range at present. Also would consider KC but KC doesn't seem to recognise SY postcodes.

Stuart_W

darrenforster99 wrote: »

Other areas aren't really of any interest to BT because to them it doesn't matter, people that live there it's tough BT can charge as much as they like for a poor inadequate service and no-one can do anything about them.

Ofcom have recently forced BT to cut wholesale rates in rural areas where there is no other network present, which should mean alternative ISPs can offer lower prices to rural customers when connecting via Openreach (BTWholesale).

http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2011/07/20/247344/Ofcom-forces-BT-to-cut-rural-ISP-charges.htm

My internet company charges a £4.60/month premium when using BTWholesale and not LLU. Hopefully this will now fall in some areas.