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ihshaikh

Been with them since August 2013 fir both phone and broadband. Since November the broadband has gradually slowed down from 5MB to less than 0.5.

They don't respond back to emails at all. Ended up calling them and they fixed the issue, at least temporarily.

Recent speedtest and it's now 1.3mb down.

Not very happy with their customer service

xyz123

signed up to a 12 month contract for line rental on 5th february. Today i get an email advising of an increase in price. This is not acceptable. Email sent to the mentioned address for clarification.

barahs

my phone seems to have been cut off. (this number is no longer available) yet bb and wifi still ok. Any ideas?

NonGeographicalMan

xyz123 wrote: »

signed up to a 12 month contract for line rental on 5th february. Today i get an email advising of an increase in price. This is not acceptable. Email sent to the mentioned address for clarification.

Considered Primus for a while for my elderly relative's second little used line as attracted by the £6.99 per month first year deal for evening and weekend calls plus line rental through MSE.

However dismissed it and went with Post Office Homephone on their pay for the year ahead deal at £120 for weekend calls and line rental (£10 per month) for the following reasons:-

1. Primus customer service known to be abysmal and reports of actual billing inaccuracies for phantom calls to speaking clock etc.

2. Caller Display not included whereas it is included with Post Office Homephone

3. Its clear the Year 1 Primus price is not a long term sustainable price and the long term price is £11.39 plus Caller Display at £2.50 per month so £13.89 per month. P O Homephone provide Caller Display, Call Barring and 1571 Voicemail all as free features within the standard line rental price. They also offer free calls to mobiles and European landline numbers at the weekend as long as their £1.25 per month evening call bolt on is also taken.

4. Post Office is susceptible to bad publicity on You & Yours or by writing to CEO etc to put things right. Primus/New Call Telecom clearly doesn't give two hoots about their public image and has precisely the same business mentality as Ryanair.

5. Turns out that P O Homephone does give a £10 credit to the new customer and a £10 credit to the introducing P O Homephone customer even for just basic P O Homephone phone service without any broadband add on.

In short if looking for the cheapest possible line rental on a long term sustainable basis with the most features included then P O Homephone on a Line Advance basis seems to be the best bet. All the evidence with Primus is that they are in fact the First Utility of the UK phone marketplace and are therefore best avoided at all possible costs.

On further checking I see that Primus do actually have a £20 each refer a friend system at www.primussaver.co.uk/refer-a-friend.html but that is presumably funded out of having to pay the full £11.39 per month rental in Year 1 that actually costs a whopping £52.80 more than signing up online through MSE. So actually its not a real offer at all and costs you £32.80 more than the MSE deal (given that the friend and not the customer gets one of the introductory £20 payments)

That sums up Primus. Namely its all smoke and mirrors marketing with a very poor and unreliable customer service and billing operation at its core.

Ripped_off_3

AVOID, AVOID,AVOID, AVOID,AVOID, AVOID,

I joined Primus last year and they have been a nightmare.

I had only been with them a couple of months before they started increasing prices, once, twice, three times until they were not a lot cheaper than BT. I complained and was told, tough it's in our contract so we can charge what we like. What's the point of a 12 month contract where the poor consumer gets penalised if they want to move away? Folk join at a price that suckers them in and then BAM, up goes the price. Although the law changed a few weeks ago to stop telecom operators doing just this it will make no difference, they'll still put the price up, they work around the rules Forget them, go somewhere else.

They then took a massive amount of money out of my bank by organising a BT visit for a fault that did not exist and I never asked for. Result, my bank went into the red and I got billed for overdraft charges for months and a visit to the bank manager to explain. I've never been overdrawn in over 45 years of having an account. Primus eventually refunded me but nonetheless I feel like my spotless bank record is marked now and have no idea if it's affected my credit score.

I threatened legal action but got sweet-talked into dropping it by them offering me a better deal and dropping the price back to what it was when I first joined for a twelve month. I even kidded myself that they might keep their word and got my parents (in their late 80s) moved over to them at the reduced price to help him save money. Fine? No.

I have never, in the entire time that I have been with them, had a correct bill. Money goes on, comes off, disappears, god knows what but the invoice is never correct ever. The invoices are just an invention, figures are meaningless, I can't even work out what's what and I did accountancy! I have no idea if I am in credit or owe them money. I don't use my phone line for calls, only for my internet, I make a few calls in the free evening or free weekend periods that's it so it's not rocket science to make a bill out. Invoice for month = one line rental, nothing else.

I insisted that I pay for both my dad's bill and my own by one standing charge each month so I can control what money they get, no way I'd ever ever let them get back into my account with a direct debit and it's finished me forever having another direct debit with anyone. Result, no sign of what I'm paying in with the standing charge anywhere, that money's disappeared somewhere. Bills to my dad claim they're unpaid and a further £2 a month is charged to allow him to pay by cash which he isn't doing because I'm payong on the standing charge. How much does my dad owe me? No idea. How much do I owe? No idea. Endless emails go nowhere. Months go by, nothing. Incompetence isn't a big enough word. I've seen four year olds with better sense,

And guess what. I got an email last week saying that the cost of the rental and calls is increasing by £1.20 a month. This was exactly what they did last year so I expect another rise and another and...

I am now looking at moving from them, can anyone tell me a better cheap service? I'm thinking of ditching a landline altogether, get my internet wirelessly, I'm sick of all the aggro one gets if there's a problem - ISP blames rental company, they blame BT, BT blame AND charge the customer. Customer, well the customer gets ripped off. Good old UK, worse ripoff in Europe.

Avoid Primus like the plague unless you want to suffer mushroom syndrome and lose your hair. Don't believe their prices because they'll more than likely put them up once you're stuck in a 12 month contract which you can't escape without penalty.

AVOID, AVOID,AVOID, AVOID,AVOID, AVOID,

NonGeographicalMan

Ripped_off wrote: »

AVOID, AVOID,AVOID, AVOID,AVOID, AVOID,

I joined Primus last year and they have been a nightmare.

I'm clearly very fortunate that similar previous reviews to your own of Primus managed to deter me from switching my mother's little used second phone line to them on the basis of the lure of the apparently cheap £6.99 per month deal with evening and weekend calls included for the first year.

Obvious warning signs were that the run on price in year 2 would be £11.49 per month (as I assume the MSE special first year deal just rolls off on to the normal price for their saver customers currently shown on their own website) and the expensive further £2.50 per month for Caller Display and £2.50 again for each further Select Service. And I just couldn't risk being responsible for switching my mother to a company who she couldn't get through to on the phone or would just ignore her if they made billing mistakes and she needed to get in touch.

I am now looking at moving from them, can anyone tell me a better cheap service?

My recommendation would be the Post Office Homephone for phone line rental but I wouldn't necessarily recommend them for broadband (which I have no personal experience of with them having only used them for line rental) but I have had six positive years of having a phone service with them. It is possible to split your broadband from your phone line service although some companies such as Plusnet are unfortunately now trying to penalise you for doing so by charging more for the broadband if you don't also take phone service from them.

Coming back to P O Home phone if you take Line Rental Saver from them as listed at www.postoffice.co.uk/home-phone/line-rental-saver then its £120 for the year or equivalent to £10 per month inclusive of weekend calls to landlines plus Caller Display, 1571 voicemail and Call Barring (international or premium rate calls etc) are also all included free of charge (each of of these Select Services costs a further £2.50 per month extra with Primus or therefore £7.50 more if you wanted all three services that are free with P O Homephone).

In addition if you pay a further £1.25 per month then weekday evening calls after 6pm and weekend (which starts at 6pm on Friday through to midnight on Sunday) calls to all UK mobiles and to landlines in 40 countries (all of Europe plus some other major ones around the world) up to one hour length are also all included free of charge.

I have been with P O Homephone for six years and generally found their phone customer service very good and at least their current line rental proposition appears to be a long terms sustainable one. By taking Line Rental Saver at £120 your also avoid the already announced increase on their monthly line rental price in mid April from £12 to £13 per month.

Post Office Homephone also pays a £10 credit to the phone bill of anyone introduced by an existing P O Homephone customer as well as paying the introducing customer £10 credit too (see https://account.pobroadband.co.uk/SelfCare.UI/ContentManagement/FAQs?topic=OSP%20Only#045). So if anyone is interested in joining P O Homephone and wants to be introduced then please send me a Private Message and I will let you have my P O Homephone phone number so you can include it in the sign up details online (give your source of introduction as a friend and relative and it then later asks what their phone number is) thereby earning each of us £10 off our next phone bill.

The main downside of P O Homephone is that if you want one provider for landline and broadband then they don't currently offer fibre broadband. In addition some people claim their copper broadband is not the best for heavy downloaders plus there are cheaper copper broadband deals available in the first 12 months, eg from Plusnet.

However for a phone line only used for phone (eg a secondary little used one mainly used for fax or burglar alarm etc) then P O Homephone's Line Rental Saver deal is I think about the best around in terms of included features (eg Caller Display) and straightforward long term pricing without misleading special deals only in Year 1 that don't then continue (i.e Primus, BT Plusnet, Sky or TalkTalk).

MagWag

Hello Primus people,

I have been a Primus Saver customer for just over two years and apart from a few weeks delay getting a new phone line in and everything up and running - things have been fine - no problems with service or bills.

My elderly Mother now needs a land line connected so I was looking to see what the best deals might be (probably not yourselves as she doesn't use internet so wouldn't get a free line installation)...however in the process of looking I noticed that for the same price I am currently paying, new customers can get twice the download (I get 20GB...new customers can get 40GB with the 'UPGRADE 40' code...plus £15 free credit).

I don't need a new router - the old one is working perfectly well...but can I get the new deal without going through the rigmarole of signing up online and possibly messing up my current connection or payment arrangements. It would be a nice touch if you were to automatically upgrade existing customers...think of the good will you could create! :j

I think this question might also be of interest to other customers out there who haven't had a bad experience with Primus - but like me would appreciate a larger download limit. :T

Thank you....

NonGeographicalMan

MagWag wrote: »

I don't need a new router - the old one is working perfectly well...but can I get the new deal without going through the rigmarole of signing up online and possibly messing up my current connection or payment arrangements. It would be a nice touch if you were to automatically upgrade existing customers...think of the good will you could create! :j

You don't seem to understand that Primus/NewCall's entire business strategy is to lure customers in with an artificially cheap subsidised deal in Year 1 but then to carry them on without the subsidised price in Year 2.

That very thing happens with MSE and Primus Saver. Its £6.99 in Year 1 with Evening and Weekend Call but then the 12 months come round and they roll you off on to the full price £11.39 on their website.

So no they aren't going to offer it to you the 40GB deal as an existing customer automatically. I would also have thought you can't use it online as this is a deal only available to new customers and their system will recognise you are already a customer when you try to sign up and refuse to let you do so as a result. You would have to leave Primus and go to one of the few phone companies with only a 1 month contract (eg Post Office Homephone) and then come back again to get this deal as an existing Primus customer.

MagWag

Hi NonGeographicalMan,

When I signed up 2 years ago I wasn't on an introductory offer, I chose Primus Saver because they were the cheapest available at the time, and they also provided free phone line installation.

Even without an introductory offer they are still the cheapest deal available as far as I can see - and in 2 years I have never gone over my 20GB download limit. My post was really aimed at Primus themselves...just to see if their people are still looking at the forum and would like to be nice? They do say your existing customers are your best customers!

Anyway I am pretty savvy, don't you worry about me! I've looked into the EE package as I already use Orange...but if you think Primus feed back is bad - go take a look at the EE Facebook page...:eek:, I don't think I shall be signing up for their landline/broadband service any time soon.

I guess I have been lucky with Primus - I have had no problems with service or billing. If they care to give me 40GB then I would be happy to take out a new contract with them; if not then as soon as I find another provider who can beat them I shall switch...but first I will phone them (if I can get through ) to ask for a Mac code & see if they would like to keep my custom by offering me that 40GB? If not, then I will take my custom elsewhere.

NonGeographicalMan

MagWag wrote: »

I chose Primus Saver because they were the cheapest available at the time, and they also provided free phone line installation.

MagWag,

So that was a £100+ in value subsidy as a new customer (Primus still had to pay BT Openreach to install your line at their usual rates) that actually exceeds by a considerable margin the £52.80 discount on line rental and call (12 x £4.40) given to new customers joing them for phone only through the MSE website.

Unsurprisingly Primus are now trying to recoup that subsidy from you by not offering you any new subsidised deals on broadband and calls that are only designed to lure in brand new customers who they hope and expect may be with them for say at least the next five years..............

If you want another deal with a big subsidy in year 1 then I think your best deal will almost certainly now be to move your custom elsewhere.

Yes I know in the good old days that existing customers were always treated well but that is not sadly how the MBAs who these days run business seem to have been trained. To them a new sale and a brand new customer is always everything and old customers can always apparently simply be taken for granted. Presumably its a strategy that must work for them financially or they wouldn't carry on with it.