MSE News: BT to announce price hikes this weekend

catkins

minislim wrote: »

i cannot understand why people are still with BT. they are the most expensive of all the internet and phone providers.

their "deals" (i use the term "deal" loosely) are still miles off some providers standard prices.

they seem to be one of the first to start bringing in 18 month contracts as opposed to 12 months (just like it happened in the mobile phone industry, it went from 12 months to 18 months to 24 months tied to on contract and for very little in return.

Oh and the cost of BT line rental is the most expensive around.

why oh why would you want to be ripped off from all directions by going with BT?

A couple of years ago me and OH decided to try and save money and change from BT. First we went with Virgin - total disaster. I won't bore you with the details but we never had phone and broadband working together, they cut off next door when putting in our service (phone and broadband - they weren't amused), then reconnected next door and we were cut off. They laid the cable across next door's front grass and neither us nor them realised until they cut their grass.


Anyway we got rid of them pretty quick and tried Sky. Again absolutely useless. When the broadband was working it was so slow. Impossible to watch even a short video on Youtube.


Went back to BT about 2 years ago and no problems whatsoever. Will be sticking with them

Uxb

Moneyineptitude wrote: »

But surely your line shouldn't fail often enough for this to be such a priority?

I can't remember the last time I had to ring Virgin Media about a line fault and I've been with them since the "Cable North West" days.

Sadly in a rural area with long lines, lots of joins and generally old infrastructure, not to mention branches down across lines - yes.
Even with the best will in the world BT when mending one line in the maze of the connections inside the BT cabinet or down a joint box will every now and then "knock off" another line by breaking the ali' cable at the join. If you looked inside these things you wonder how it is possible to mend anything without damaging another line - given that they are so fragile.

So it's regular - as in every few months: it seems though they come in swarms. there will be no problem for a long time then someone locally has a failure and once BT come in to open things up the who lot starts to cascade failures again all round the place.

I even had multiple failures on multiple days as my line was mended, in the process of which another was broken, that was mended a day or so later and in the process my was broken again!

JJ_Egan

Even in many built up areas no Virgin Cables.

principa

I use BT Infinity + BT Vision (cheapest packages) but out of contract.

The pre-pay line rental increases earlier this year were a shock and now this.

I think that the `free' BT sport offered is not so free ...

thegrail

I agree the BT do give excellent service - generally, The option to reroute calls to a mobile while the problem is sorted was really helpful to me, but it just meant BT Openzone would then take 2 weeks to finally resolve the cable problem.

BT (and the cartel) continue to raise prices every year but I've never seen a justification. Has electricity increased in price? Has technology improvements not resulted on lowering of costs and overheads? Or is it just an excuse to increase profitability and/or increase wages when the rest of us have been suffering austerity cuts?

Why aren't they lowering the costs every year rather than increasing them?

Last year they started charging for 1571 answer phone and caller display as well as increasing line rental.

BT charge over 15p to connect a call before charging 8p per minute. If I ring from my Three mobile it is 3p per minute. How come it is cheaper for a mobile to call a land line?

Perhaps it is time for OFCOM to switch attention from mobile roaming to landline charges instead.

BTW - I've started to make savings my cancelling my anytime calls (£7 per month) and just having the free weekend option and using 18185 instead - now it's 3p to connect and 0p per minute for normal landline calls.

When I can get rid of the phone line and just have a value-for-money broadband service I will...

MPD

Moneyineptitude wrote: »

But surely your line shouldn't fail often enough for this to be such a priority?

I can't remember the last time I had to ring Virgin Media about a line fault and I've been with them since the "Cable North West" days.

In 4 years
One instance of cable theft
One ham fisted builder cutting a cable
Flooded ducts
Unexplained loss of service maybe related a broadband call
Several engineer visits to fix drops on broadband service

Some would have affected everybody but for the others BT finally got the problems sorted even if it was arguably their fault.

Also the reason we first went with them was they were the only provider who could transfer our phone number when we moved house, even if it took 4 attempts to get it right.

VisionMan

principa wrote: »

I use BT Infinity + BT Vision (cheapest packages) but out of contract.

The pre-pay line rental increases earlier this year were a shock and now this.

I think that the `free' BT sport offered is not so free ...

BT line rental is nothing to do with BT Sport principa and nor does it subsidise it. Its the BB packages that do that.

CalM_2

I joined Bt In Feb on a 18 month contract from Virgin because Virgin became useless at teatime for video streaming but was ok for online gaming etc, i jumped and at first Bt was great, but over the last few months my speed has dropped from 76mb, now upto 50mb,my ping has risen so online gaming often lags.

I am wondering can i use this price increase to cancel my contract, i've just heard about the line rental and broadband increase on the tv news.

macman

Does anyone have any info on BT's new 'Home Phone Saver' tariff? This was outlined in the Guardian this morning (see link below), but there's nothing about it on the BT site yet (although the prices increases are flagged up).
It appears to offer line rental and inclusive landline calls for £19.99 per month, but doesn't specify if those calls are 24/7, or weekend and evening only. If the former, that's effectively a £4.50 discount off the price after the December increase. However it doesn't say if Line Rental Saver is available with this tariff or not?

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/aug/23/bt-price-increase-6pc-home-phone-broadband-football

Stompa

macman wrote: »

Does anyone have any info on BT's new 'Home Phone Saver' tariff? This was outlined in the Guardian this morning (see link below), but there's nothing about it on the BT site yet (although the prices increases are flagged up).
It appears to offer line rental and inclusive landline calls for £19.99 per month, but doesn't specify if those calls are 24/7, or weekend and evening only. If the former, that's effectively a £4.50 discount off the price after the December increase. However it doesn't say if Line Rental Saver is available with this tariff or not?

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/aug/23/bt-price-increase-6pc-home-phone-broadband-football

See here:

http://bt.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/49402/~/home-phone-saver