Cheapest Home Phones Discussion

allanmc

If you can cope with the 12 month renewable contract, and are happy to deal with the 60 min inclusive landline call limit, BT Option 2 (Evening & Weekends) is pretty hard to beat at £10.50 per month. It is also very easy to set up and use. You don't have to wait until April, as you can sign up now.

If you make a lot of weekday daytime calls, Option 3 (Anytime) may be worthwhile considering. This works out at under £4.50 a month if you sign up for 12 months. After your year is up, it would then be £5.95 per month, with no ongoing contract. Are you likely to exceed £4.50, or £5.95, per month on weekday daytime landline calls?

To fine tune things a bit further, you can use 18185 for your weekday daytime landline calls (Calls under minute would be OK to just dial via BT), all calls to mobiles and weekend daytime 0845 and 0870 calls (BT is very competitive for all other 0845 & 0870 calls). 18185 have been very competitive for these calls for a long time now, but you would need to keep an occasional eye on things to ensure that they remain so.

If you really want to save as much as possible, the Heinz plan is as good as it gets. It just takes a bit more managing and may not be worth the effort if your bills are not, or will not be, that large anyway. It is ideal for the purist MoneySaver and is not really appropriate for those who are less focused.

The Primus alarm issue is probably just a legal get out clause. If your alarm call didn't route properly via their CPS service and you got burgled, or your house burnt down (or both, if you were really unlucky!) they can simply say that you were warned and that they, therefore, have no responsibility.

crougal

i am currently with talk talk with my line rental at BT i have seen that 18185 offer a better call tariff

are they any good :rotfl:
or are there any other options only for home phone use as i am happy with my internet provider and all other schemes seem to want you to sign into a broadband land line deal :mad:

Heinz

Please see the HERE link in my signature below.

Diane_MacRae

Heinz wrote: »

It depends. If you have transferred your line rental to Talk Talk, they seem to operate a policy of barring access to the likes of 1899 and 18185 on lines running on their LLU equipment at your BT exchange.

The picture is less clear if Talk Talk are just re-selling BT's WLR to you but, even then, Talk Talk will certainly have it written into their T&Cs that they can, at their sole discretion, bar such access.

However, if you still pay your line rental to BT and are merely using Talk Talk as your CPS (Carrier PreSelect) calls provider, Talk Talk (or any other CPS for that matter) cannot stop you routing your calls as you wish - so you can use prefix (override) providers like 1899, 18185 and 18866, any of the gateway providers (e.g. those listed in the MSE Callcheckers) and/or 1280 (to 'hop back onto' BT) for that matter.

Thanks. I wonder if Martin could/should make this clearer in main article? Given that TalkTalk is his Best Buy for Phone+Broadband and he also recommends 18185 for other calls, but the two are in fact incompatible, it would be helpful if this important 'BUT' was spelled out unambiguously. Meanwhile TalkTalk continue to tell prospective new customers (like me) that I can still use 18185 - until I'd signed up & found out the truth.

Diane_MacRae

Heinz wrote: »

It depends. If you have transferred your line rental to Talk Talk, they seem to operate a policy of barring access to the likes of 1899 and 18185 on lines running on their LLU equipment at your BT exchange.

The picture is less clear if Talk Talk are just re-selling BT's WLR to you but, even then, Talk Talk will certainly have it written into their T&Cs that they can, at their sole discretion, bar such access.

However, if you still pay your line rental to BT and are merely using Talk Talk as your CPS (Carrier PreSelect) calls provider, Talk Talk (or any other CPS for that matter) cannot stop you routing your calls as you wish - so you can use prefix (override) providers like 1899, 18185 and 18866, any of the gateway providers (e.g. those listed in the MSE Callcheckers) and/or 1280 (to 'hop back onto' BT) for that matter.

Thanks. I wonder if Martin could/should make this clearer in main article? Given that TalkTalk is his Best Buy for Phone+Broadband and he also recommends 18185 for other calls, but the two are in fact incompatible, it would be helpful if this important 'BUT' was spelled out unambiguously. Meanwhile TalkTalk continue to tell prospective new customers (like me) that I can still use 18185 - until I'd signed up & found out the truth.

billsavings

Diane_MacRae wrote: »

Thanks. I wonder if Martin could/should make this clearer in main article? Given that TalkTalk is his Best Buy for Phone+Broadband and he also recommends 18185 for other calls.

He clearly states in his article for the cheapest stand alone solution in which he recommends 18185 for calls that " You will need to have a BT basic line rental."

You can use 18185 with Talk Talk using their 0808/020 access numbers but their is a different tariff for this.

See: http://www.18185.co.uk/mobilerates.php

ship-badger

Has anyone here had any experience of "Elite Calls"? They have been badgering me to change to their service; offering "half-price" line rental and cheap call rates. It looks like quite a good deal, but I'll not sign up if they are rubbish.

Heinz

Never heard of them but I note their contact numbers are 0844 576 range (g6 rate, 5p/minute at all times).

Strange, I'd have thought that, to encourage sales, they'd have opted for freephone or geographical numbers rather than disguised premium rate 0844 numbers. Even then, the choice of ½p, 1p, 2p, 3p, 4p or 5p per minute numbers would have been available - but they chose 5p/minute!

BTW, they appear to be a business provider - they're using BT business rates (generally much higher than residential rates) to make their cost comparisons.

I always use the per-minute cost of calls to Spain as my rule-of-thumb guide. I pay 1p/minute (and can sometimes find a working gateway number offering half that). They charge 4½p/minute.

http://www.elitecalls.com/tariff-options.html

jhp

Heinz wrote: »

Never heard of them but I note their contact numbers are 0844 576 range (g6 rate, 5p/minute at all times).

Strange, I'd have thought that, to encourage sales, they'd have opted for freephone or geographical numbers rather than disguised premium rate 0844 numbers. Even then, the choice of ½p, 1p, 2p, 3p, 4p or 5p per minute numbers would have been available - but they chose 5p/minute!

BTW, they appear to be a business provider - they're using BT business rates (generally much higher than residential rates) to make their cost comparisons.

I always use the per-minute cost of calls to Spain as my rule-of-thumb guide. I pay 1p/minute (and can sometimes find a working gateway number offering half that). They charge 4½p/minute.

http://www.elitecalls.com/tariff-options.html

Not forgetting the 12 month rolling contract and the £395 early cancellation fee.:eek:

Andy_Cole

Can anyone advise me as to what the best package would be?

My home phone is used alot, calling mobiles and regularly France (same number everytime) at all times of the day including Evenings and weekends!

I am not interested in an inclusive broadband connection.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated as I am currently paying in excess of £100 a month!