BT LIne Rental Saver - no longer available after end July?

What_time_is_it

So, how much do we think "at least £10" will actually translate into?

JGB1955

What_time_is_it said:

So, how much do we think "at least £10" will actually translate into?

Well, I'll be able to tell you... but not until 18 July!

williamhutchison

BT now inform customers who pay their Line rental annually that this will be discontinued from 21st July. The Line Rental will now be incorporated into the monthly Broadband Charges. This pf course means that BT can in this manner increase the cost of the line rental annually by the cost of Inflation plus X%. This is yet another way of craftly increasing prices

iniltous

Line rental has been incorporated into the broadband rental for years , that’s why LRS  line rental saver was poorly titled, after this change to one monthly figure , not LR and BB , and LRS made no sense with regard to something that doesn’t exist ( line rental on a broadband service ) there is no line rental if you take broadband, there is a monthly fee that covers everything in delivering the service, so if you historically had LRS , or took it out in the last few years , there was no longer the original advantage of paying for 11 months LR and getting 12 , and it’s why many complained that the total bill went up , even though the customer thought that had paid for a years line rental by paying £220 ( or whatever ) upfront,
All  the £220 upfront provided was a yearly discount of £20 , it has no connection to line rental, and that why ( in large part ) they are getting rid , however unfortunately some who understood it and liked the fact that a £220 upfront payment ( that would get a few penny’s in interest if left in the bank ) will be denied getting a £20 discount by using the scheme regardless of what it was called, but I would suggest it’s joint blame for BT calling LRS instead of something like Yearly Discount Scheme and customers wilfully ( in some cases ) arguing that the majority of the BT bill should never increase if they paid LRS , only the broadband part , but as said multiple times there is no line rental charge , the monthly cost , it’s a combined fee , it is not , and hasn’t been subdivided into 2 parts for years

ZeroSum

williamhutchison said:

BT now inform customers who pay their Line rental annually that this will be discontinued from 21st July. The Line Rental will now be incorporated into the monthly Broadband Charges. This pf course means that BT can in this manner increase the cost of the line rental annually by the cost of Inflation plus X%. This is yet another way of craftly increasing prices

I think they've been doing that anyway for years. Only with the high increases its become more noticeable & loads have complained about it. Mind it's still a crafty price increase of a flat £20 a year.

iniltous

It’s not a price increase of £20 , it’s the removal of a discount scheme.
The CPI + *% formula is applied to the ‘entire’ bill , then the £20 discount applied.
Say a consumer with LRS and a monthly bill of £30 , they would pay £220 upfront , every bill would be £10 because they got a bill credit of £20 for twelve months ( worth £240 , the extra  £20 credit for having LRS ) 
CPI increase kicks in , £30 goes upto £34.50 , but the  £20 credit is applied, so bill is £14.50 up from £10 , consumer outrage as they were expecting  only the £10 they were paying to go up by the CPI  formula to £11.50 all because they think the £220 keeps the line rental fixed but it doesn’t,
Removal of LRS will affect those that understood how it worked , it’s being removed so that those that couldn’t understand it won’t be able to complain in the future , it was  misleading of BT to continue to call the discount LRS for many years , removing it will add clarity, but those that liked getting a £20 discount for paying £220 upfront will miss out on that ‘free’ £20

ZeroSum

Another BT employee ^^^

Altarf

To stop all you lot arguing, this is what BT said about their Line Rental Saver product last year - https://web.archive.org/web/20220820052243/https://www.bt.com/help/landline/getting-set-up/bt-line-rental-saver/bt-line-rental-saver-discount

“BT Line Rental Saver discount

If you pay in advance by debit/credit card, you can get one month free.”

It is only sometime after August 2022 when they changed the “one month free” to refer to a £19.99 discount.

Anyway, its removal is nothing to do with anyone complaining.

The telecoms companies offering a discount on line rental if you paid in advance did it because it was a VAT avoidance scheme that reduced their tax bill. HMRC disagreed with them on how the law worked and took them to court over it and won - https://www.monckton.com/andrew-macnab-representing-hmrc-successfully-defends-virgin-medias-appeal-over-vat-on-prompt-payment-discounts/

Most of the other telecoms companies withdrew their line rental discount schemes immediately there was no tax saving for them, and although BT’s lingered on, the writing was on the wall.

wild666

When BT first introduced their line saver rental I believe you paid 10 months payments for the price of 12. It was later reduced to about a £20 saving. I had the line rental saver from 2011 to 2018 when I was with BT and PlusNet. 
IMO they were charging so little towards the internet that people had when people could get line and internet,38Mb, for less than £25 per month and they were paying about £6 per month for the internet with the majority going on the line rental saver option. I think my last line rental saver payment was somewhere between £185 or £210 back in 2017/18 with standalone line rental at around  £18.99 per month. 
With BB now being a phone and BB contract most, if not all, company's just charge a fee for the BB and include the line rental in with the BB package but have higher charges for using the phone line for calls. 

iniltous

When companies could have separate items on the bill for broadband and line rental , they all loaded most of the cost onto the line rental element, this artificially made broadband look cheaper than it really was , so for example, ‘Any net’ get a local loop from OR for the wholesale price of £7 per month , they add broadband to it and  they sell it for £25 , but they show LR as £20 on their bill and broadband as £5, they have used the  £13 markup on the LR , to disguise the broadband price.

This  is one of the reasons why ISP have to show a single , total price for broadband and not some arbitrary amount for  LR and BB , because it’s misleading, that’s why you no longer see adverts ( like  for example )  ‘ £5 broadband’ as a headline, but charge £25 for LR , because in many people’s mind they think ‘BT’ get the £25 ( so are thought of as robbing b*st*rds, ) and the plucky ISP only gets £5 , when the reality is ‘BT’ ( Openreach ) still get around £7 out of the £30.