Alternative phone lines

Steve_xx

rushnowt wrote:

Sorry you've confused me lol, not hard to do

I assumed that the PO and One tel providing their own lines now after reading some of the posts, why would he need to pay BT anything for making a call to a BT customer if he's not with BT, sorry if i sound a bit dense, I've looked at the site of the PO and don't see anything about that, they state their call charges etc. I was with NTL long ago and I never had to pay BT anything for making a call to a BT customer from my NTL line

sorry just had another thought, do you mean that part of the charge made by say the PO would include BT's charges so you wouldn't necessarily see that actual charge going to BT ? but you would pay it anyway ? does that make sense.

My FIL wouldn't and couldn't be bothered to route calls through another provider, as i stated earlier , he's very set in his ways and doesn't really like change tbh but he's just had enough of BT

Yes, your second paragraph is correct. You would not see a charge to BT directly, but your new operator will have to pay BT for each call made to its customers.

Even if your FIL does change from BT to the PO or Onetel, the actual exchange line will be a BT line, and more likely than not, BT will be the maintainer. Though you will only pay your chosen operator for both line rental and for any calls you make. However, as I said earlier, he may loose the right to route his calls via another service provider if he changes from BT.

BT gets a lot of bad press; much of it is unjustified. BT is very regulated in most of the things it does, whereas most other UK operators are regulated minimally by comparison. This is because BT is still the dominant operator and therefore it must not be allowed to stifle competition in the telecoms market, and so it is highy regulated to prevent it from driving other operators out of business.

BT is now very profitable and many people somehow don't like this. I well remember the days when the Post Office and BT were as one. Both of them turned in a loss year on year and that meant that the goverment and the taxpayer had to keep both of these organisations afloat. This is no longer the case and both of these organisations are now profitable. That means that they stand on their own two feet and they pay corporation tax into the tax coffers rather than draining them as they used to. This has to be better for the nation as a whole.

BT are not the big bad wolves that they are often portrayed as.

rushnowt

Thanks April, I know your right, I myself do that, which is most beneficial to me, however FIL is stuck in some strange place where common sense doesn't have access :rolleyes: talking to him about anything is like :wall:. He has this notion that he is right and the rest of the world is wrong lol.

Thanks for the explaination Steve, I think his main problem is the new £5 charge for late payment, although there has been other things that have irritated him about BT for a while.

The real issue with FIL is that he wont pay for anything till its absolutely necessary, he thinks by having DD's set up etc your letting these companies have their hands in your pockets :cool: I know your all thinking theres no hope for him, I'm in total agreement

bbb_uk

rushnowt wrote:

...however FIL is stuck in some strange place where common sense doesn't have access :rolleyes: talking to him about anything is like :wall:. He has this notion that he is right and the rest of the world is wrong lol.

I have a mother that is the same. To this day she still insists that BT are more expensive than any other provider but in reality (even not including CPS and Call18866, etc) they are the same and in some cases cheaper. lol.

Another selling method you could try for keeping BT is the free caller display so he can see the number (and name if supported) of whomever is calling and the obvious only £1 admin charge for not paying by DD. I'm sure most other companies if they do allow the use of paying by other means probably charge more than the £1 admin charge.

Edinburghlass_2

I think the only point to think about now regarding switching line rental from BT is how long will it take for a supplier such as PO, Onetel, TalkTalk etc to get BT to fix a problem on a line where the line rental is not paid to BT.

Do all these new line rental suppliers have a compensation clause if your line is out of order for any length of time? I haven't looked into this but at least with BT you do get compensated if the problem is at their end and you are without a line or have a bad line.

It strikes me that BT are going to put customers who pay their line rental to another company to the back of the queue when it comes to repair or maintenance

bbb_uk

Edinburghlass,

That is a very good point. BT do offer compensation, etc but I know nothing about that is mentioned on OneTel's t&c when I read them last. Not sure about PO though. I suspect that BT would probably do that but probably legally can't but it would be difficult for OneTel to prove that BT are even slower to repair faults where the rental is paid to them (onetel) than their own (BT).