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18185/1899 users connection fee 5p from 16/01/07

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  • pbolding
    pbolding Posts: 38 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10 Posts Combo Breaker
    Whenever I try to use 18866 or 1899 to call Andorra (small country, I know) which is listed at 3p a minute, I get a message saying they don't connect to that country and giving another number to call at 15p. A bit of a swizz since the very fine callchecker has provided me with a service that charges 1p.
  • pbolding wrote:
    Whenever I try to use 18866 or 1899 to call Andorra (small country, I know) which is listed at 3p a minute, I get a message saying they don't connect to that country and giving another number to call at 15p. A bit of a swizz since the very fine callchecker has provided me with a service that charges 1p.

    The pricing policy of this group is very odd,as the 1p a minute company you refer to is also owned by them.
  • Is it me or is everybody whinging over an increase of one penny on the connection charge for 18185 and 1899 UK calls? Show me any other company that lets you call any geographical UK number and talk all day (if you wanted to) for just 5p.
    I have just calculated that at 4p per call, I saved £19.08 on my UK landline calls in December alone using 1899 compared to the BT Together Option 1 rate.. Even if the connection charge was 5p per call I still would have saved £18.47. That's a saving of £221 a year.
    From 28/12/06 to 26/01/07 I saved a further £9.14 on calls to mobile phones using 18185. Saving a further £109 a year.
    So with an annual saving of around £330, I reckon I will be sticking with 1899 and 18185 for a long time yet.
    When the 1899 and 18185 connection charge goes up to 6p per call then I will switch my evening and weekend calls back to BT (5.5p for up to one hour) as we rarely make a call that lasts longer than an hour.
  • Heinz
    Heinz Posts: 11,191 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture Combo Breaker Car Insurance Carver!
    steam_dan wrote:
    When the 1899 and 18185 connection charge goes up to 6p per call then I will switch my evening and weekend calls back to BT (5.5p for up to one hour) as we rarely make a call that lasts longer than an hour.
    Don't you get evening and weekend UK 01/02 calls of up to 90 minutes free?
    Time has moved on (much quicker than it used to - or so it seems at my age) and my previous advice on residential telephony has been or is now gradually being overtaken by changes in the retail market. Hence, I have now deleted links to my previous 'pearls of wisdom'. I sincerely hope they helped save some of you money.
  • hurrah
    hurrah Posts: 1,373 Forumite
    steam_dan wrote:
    Is it me or is everybody whinging over an increase of one penny on the connection charge for 18185 and 1899 UK calls? Show me any other company that lets you call any geographical UK number and talk all day (if you wanted to) for just 5p.
    I have just calculated that at 4p per call, I saved £19.08 on my UK landline calls in December alone using 1899 compared to the BT Together Option 1 rate.. Even if the connection charge was 5p per call I still would have saved £18.47. That's a saving of £221 a year.
    From 28/12/06 to 26/01/07 I saved a further £9.14 on calls to mobile phones using 18185. Saving a further £109 a year.
    So with an annual saving of around £330, I reckon I will be sticking with 1899 and 18185 for a long time yet.
    When the 1899 and 18185 connection charge goes up to 6p per call then I will switch my evening and weekend calls back to BT (5.5p for up to one hour) as we rarely make a call that lasts longer than an hour.

    On average how many geographical calls do you make via 1899/18185 a month to make the savings you quote?
  • hurrah wrote:
    On average how many geographical calls do you make via 1899/18185 a month to make the savings you quote?

    I haven't worked out a monthly average, the savings quoted were based on my December 2006 calls via 1899. During this time we made 61 geographical calls, 23 of which were daytime calls, the remainder being evening and weekend calls. I used the BT rate of 3p/min plus 3p call set-up charge to calculate the BT cost of daytime calls, and 5.5p for the BT cost of all daytime and evening calls. Using this method I calculated that the cost for December's calls with BT would have been £21.52. 1899 charged £2.44 (4p per call), at the new rate of 5p per call this would have been £3.05.

    In fact, I made two errors when calculating the BT cost as I used "per second" billing as BT have abandoned "per second" billing the true cost of the calls with BT would have been slightly higher than I originally calculated. I also used the BT minimum call charge of 5p for shorter calls, which should of course now be 6p. Given these two errors are in BT's favour, my savings will actually have been higher than my original calculation.

    To calculate the savings on our calls to mobiles using 18185 I took the BT Together Option 1 rates (daytime 13p/min, Eve 8p/min, WE, 5p/min) and used per second billing. Again, I used 5p as the minimum BT call charge for short calls. My calculations show that BT would have charged £22.35, whereas my 18185 bill for the same period was £13.21.
  • Heinz wrote:

    Taking December as the basis for the calculation, this would have saved me a further £1.90. Not a significant saving, but a saving nonetheless. Am I right in thinking that this is a CPS provider?
  • Heinz
    Heinz Posts: 11,191 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture Combo Breaker Car Insurance Carver!
    steam_dan wrote:
    Taking December as the basis for the calculation, this would have saved me a further £1.90. Not a significant saving, but a saving nonetheless. Am I right in thinking that this is a CPS provider?
    Yes, you are right - and, as there's no monthly fee either, it's still one of my recommendations.
    Time has moved on (much quicker than it used to - or so it seems at my age) and my previous advice on residential telephony has been or is now gradually being overtaken by changes in the retail market. Hence, I have now deleted links to my previous 'pearls of wisdom'. I sincerely hope they helped save some of you money.
  • 18866 used to have just a 1p connection fee and 0p/min. so, that is a five-fold increase in about two years
  • Heinz
    Heinz Posts: 11,191 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture Combo Breaker Car Insurance Carver!
    18866 used to have just a 1p connection fee and 0p/min. so, that is a five-fold increase in about two years
    True but, remarkably, a call to any UK 01/02 number using 18866 (or 1899 or 18185) is still, at 5p for a call of any duration, 1p cheaper than even the shortest of weekday daytime calls to the same number using BT!
    Time has moved on (much quicker than it used to - or so it seems at my age) and my previous advice on residential telephony has been or is now gradually being overtaken by changes in the retail market. Hence, I have now deleted links to my previous 'pearls of wisdom'. I sincerely hope they helped save some of you money.
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