BT price increase - now rounding up VAT and call charges

Sooler

In booklet with BT bill ....

From 17th June 2005 BT will round up VAT to the nearest penny.
From 22nd July cost of calls will also be rounded up to nearest whole penny.

MarkyMarkD

Every little helps, eh?

AP

Shall we say 'Desperate times for Desperate measures' for BT? Since they abolished their Standard tariff and move everyone to BT Together Option 1, plenty of customers have been deserting them to join One.Tel, TalkTalk, Toucan, Tele2, Tesco Homephone, Sainsburys Homephone; plus using 18866, 1899, Telediscount, Telestunt, Telesaver, Ratebuster, etc, etc.

They are not going to admit it but it looks like BT have indeed shot their foot in it by this move. What have they been doing since then - things like:

1. Introducing a 6p connection charge for pressing 3 after 1471 for call return;
2. Increasing the charge to 123 Speaking Clock from local rate to 10p flat rate;
3. Extending the starting time for daytime calls from 8am to 6am; and now

Rounding up call charges and VAT to their advantage!

All these 'Stealth' price increases exactly reflect the mind of somebody fighting a losing battle.

But they have not seen the end of it yet. That programme about Voip calls on BBC2 the other night signals more immense competition on the horizon. One of the customers on the programme who have started trying to make Voip calls said something like ' ... if I was running a company providing landline telephone services, I would be very very worried indeed ... '

Nicholas

Poor old BT. Almost feel sorry for them. They maintain the lines and all the other providers are allowed to piggy back on their network offering free weekend calls for example. Now if BT were to offer free weekend calls they would be accused of using their monopolistic position to stifle the competition etc.

They just can't win.........:wall:

MarkyMarkD

Nicholas wrote:

They maintain the lines and all the other providers are allowed to piggy back on their network offering free weekend calls for example. Now if BT were to offer free weekend calls they would be accused of using their monopolistic position to stifle the competition etc.

They just can't win.........:wall:

They maintain the lines for which we are obliged to pay them line rental. They aren't doing it for nothing!

Hunnymonster

MarkyMarkD wrote:

They maintain the lines for which we are obliged to pay them line rental. They aren't doing it for nothing!

Pay them over the odds too I'll bet (especially after paying £75 to have one installed here)

Nicholas

MarkyMarkD wrote:

They maintain the lines for which we are obliged to pay them line rental. They aren't doing it for nothing!

Ever heard of OneTel 9.99 a month line rental:)

However, I suppose you have a point in so far as OneTel would then have to pay BT for the lines, although at a lower price.

I for one would be interested to know who gets what out of the 9.99.

Nicholas

Hunnymonster wrote:

Pay them over the odds too I'll bet (especially after paying £75 to have one installed here)

Are you in a cable area? If so you were not obliged to pay the 75 pounds. I know that cable calls are slightly more expensive, but I think it would take a long long time to spend 75 pounds more for the equivalent service on cable.

Heinz

It was said on Working Lunch yesterday, that BT had admitted to them that, despite their "100,000 people are returning to BT every month" adverts, they are actually (nett) losing 60,000 customers every month!

AP

Heinz wrote:

It was said on Working Lunch yesterday, that BT had admitted to them that, despite their "100,000 people are returning to BT every month" adverts, they are actually (nett) losing 60,000 customers every month!

Good! May this trend continue forever!

pinkonion

I'm getting my Mother to change back to BT as Telewest aren't so hot. When back on BT (taking her no. with her) she can then use 18866 & 1899 at their cheapest rate and will save something like £8 or £9 a month over the Telewest unlimited call tariff.

She can also take advantage of the cheaper dial-up internet options that BT lines provide. She has Sky digital as my late Father dumped cable TV a few years ago.

I note Telewest are increasing some of their charges from July (reducing 1 or 2 others also) - particularly scrapping free cable to cable calls (they did previouly just charge a connection charge).