Post Office Home Phone Price Increases

penryuk

Hi,

last night I got an e-mail from the Post Office, who provide my home phone (inc line rental), about price increases. The price rises are actually insane -

• Anytime (Old) (per month) Current - £10, New £13 (+30%)
• Home Phone (incl Line Rental) (per month) Current £11.50, New £15 (+30%)
• UK landlines (per minute) Current 15p, New 18p (+20%)

So that's either £36 or £42 a year increase (depending on the scheme you are currently on)! No explanation of why the rise is so massive either. Last time I looked around, Post Office was still the cheapest for providing just landline and anytime calls so do I just have to suck it up? Or does anyone know a company I'm not aware of who can keep this cost a bit more under control? NB I don't want broadband, just phone.

PaulMonk

Same here except for:
Anytime (per month) Current - £7, New £10 (+42%)
My bill will change from £18.50 to £25 (+35%) - shocking. I'll be off by the end of today - NowTV £18 cheapest broadband package with anytime calls - with £70 Quidco making it around £12 a month.

penryuk

I just realised it's not either/or, it's both so for me that's a £78 a year increase! My broadband is via VM so it's just for a landline phone. Seriously considering ditching altogether and just use my mobile from now on.

JJ_Egan

Cannot VM supply you with phone services as they do for so many .

penryuk

JJ_Egan said:

Cannot VM supply you with phone services as they do for so many .

I have used VM for phone services in the past - they were so unreliable I gave up and swore never to use them again. That was based on several contracts in different properties over about 20 years - they never seemed to improve and each fault took a week to fix every time. Thankfully their broadband seems a bit more reliable although it still fairly regularly goes down for half a day every 3-4 months...

brewerdave

penryuk said:

I just realised it's not either/or, it's both so for me that's a £78 a year increase! My broadband is via VM so it's just for a landline phone. Seriously considering ditching altogether and just use my mobile from now on.

Unfortunately  ,the last part of the quote partially explains why the costs are going up - very few people use the landline for calls only any more as they have virtually unlimited minutes on mobiles. 

PaulMonk said:

Same here except for:
Anytime (per month) Current - £7, New £10 (+42%)
My bill will change from £18.50 to £25 (+35%) - shocking. I'll be off by the end of today - NowTV £18 cheapest broadband package with anytime calls - with £70 Quidco making it around £12 a month.

And this explains the rest - all the ISPs want to sell bundles - a line plus calls is a non starter now.

MKB

Also got the email increasing Rental+Anytime from £18.50 to £25 (+35%).
Virgin will add to my M100 broadband-only contract for £17.76 for a total of £41.00 which seems high when new customers pay considerably less.  Plus they want a £35 one-off installation fee, even though I had a phone with them years ago and still have the wall sockets.
Cheapest standalone deal I've found is directsavetelecom.co.uk at £174.00 advance payment of line rental and then £4.50 per month, for an average of £19.50 per month.
Any better deals?