Has anyone got their line rental with Primus?

msmicawber

I'm wondering whether to take Primus up on one of their offers, but it involves moving my line rental to them from BT on a 6-month contract.

I currently have BT line rental, Primus calls and Broadband, and use 18185 for certain calls (all handled by an Orchid dialler and the Heinz program). My problem is the increasing number of people that we know (especially, but not limited to, the children's friends) who don't have a landline, so mobile charges are the bulk of our call charges each month.

I'm trawling through my last few months' bills to try and work out whether it makes financial sense to take them up on their offer, but would like to know whether anyone rents their line from Primus and what experiences they've had.

Any advice would be welcome.

Heinz

What about going for Primus's Penny Mobile 2 instead of handing over your line rental - and make those calls to mobiles for 20p for up to 20 minutes.

jhp

I cant see any financial advantages in moving your line rental to Primus.

steven_cardwell

I have line rental with Primus, as well as phone and broadband, the package is supposed to be £29.99 a month, however since the line rental started to appear on 3 bills ago, they keep trying to bill me for all 3 separately, coming to £36.47.

Even though i upgraded to this package last August, after finishing my 1mb broadband and e&w calls CPS package with the cashback offer, there wasn't so many "offers" around other than Talk Talk, so £29.99 a month for unmetered broadband, 24/7 calls and line rental was a good price, however since Primus likes to make their bills look so complicated what with discounts for this and that on it, rather than just show a true value for what you take, it is a bit hard to say if anything is wrong on the bill, until all 3 parts of the bill appear, and what with no chargeable calls on the bill, you know that the amount being charged, (£36.47) is wrong.

My 8mb broadband was "online" after i agreed the package ASAP, as was the 24/7 calls, i got notification of the date for line rental change over from BT, all with weeks of singing up with Primus, for what they called at the time Home Saver 3, however the line rental charging never appeared till only 3 bills ago.

The 1st bill was hard to tell, as i had a £17 credit due to complaining about the email service being down, and they charged 2 months of line rental that month, so last month was my 1st bill with all 3 being charged, !

I got the refund on the last bill, and only the correct money was taken, however i did have to phone again this month as the bill was overcharged, best bit was by the same amount, and this was after 4 phone calls and an email the month before, the latter i still haven't had a reply to, after 4 weeks.

I have got around 8 months left of my 18 month contract, and to be honest, when you look at the fact BT charge about £15 for line rental and 24/7 calls, and a supplier such as o2 charge £17(i am on o2) for broadband outside a LLU area, then it isn't much more than what Primus are charging like for like.

As Primus had billing issues at the beginning of the year, apart from the 2 months of line rental charge, at the start of their "catch up" with billings, they now seem intent of catching up this missing month, by issuing bills every 3 weeks, so it has become a lottery what week in a month they are going to bill you.

At least with BT, on a monthly payment plan, they took the direct debit on a fixed date, and most other ISP's i have used, usually have a date that they will take on, when you are on a budget, and get paid monthly, with my partners wage being every 2 weeks, and Working Tax Credit being weekly, this Primus bill, becomes a noose around your neck, as once all my fixed bills are paid at the begining of the month, then it might be easy to find £30 in week 3 of the month, but not week 2, i have questioned why Primus can't have a fixed date direct debit, like every other DD i have, but it doesn't seem that they want to give an answer to that question, the sneaky thing is, they have started to bill twice in the same month, but as they are not taking the money for 2 weeks after that, it still looks like one bill per month, as there is only one payment coming out per calendar month.

Primus does let you use 18185 tho', i do have a dialler, and have had no problems using it for other call carriers.

I aslo asked about penny mobile, and was told that i couldn't add it to the "all in one", calls/broadband/line rental package.

To sum up, with the problems with broadband being down for those 3 days a while ago, no emails for over a week, and with it no sorry, and personally no refund, for the 3 days without broadband, plus the billing issues, and the general lack of understanding and communications from Primus, i would stick with BT for line rental.

The one thing that Primus does have going for it, is that its broadband is unmetered, but i have had more problems with Primus getting their bill charges correct, than i ever did on a BT bill.

The lack of "real time" billing, ala BT or 18185 is another issue, especially if you do phone 0845/0870 or mobiles, it would be good to be able to keep track of what your bill should be, rather than any surprises when the email comes in to say the bill is ready, and you then have to find the money within 2 weeks, not great when you are budgeting off a monthly wage.

Overall, from my own personal experience from taking this all in one package, i wish now i hadn't.

msmicawber

Thanks, Steve. My concern has been their billing as well, as I believe I'm paying more than they told me at the outset. I find their broadband service generally good and, like you, like the unmetered aspect.

What they're offering me is line rental £9 per month (rather than the £12 BT charges each month), plus 8Mb broadband for £13.99 per month, and to drop the £2.50 account charge, so saving me around £5 per month. However, like you, I've struggled to understand their bills because every 3rd bill is larger and all bundled in together so it's hard to see what is broadband and what is account charge. I too get irritated at the fact that their bills come whenever they care to send them rather than on a set date each month.

I think I'll look back through my bills and see whether the 20p mobile thing would save me some money.

Thank you all again.

mikegahan

I have had my calls with Primus for some time and generally it is very good. There have been one or two espisodes where their system gets very busy so that you cannot call out but they are rare. They did offer me the choice of renting the line through them rather than Bt but there was no price saving to me, plus it woulld make life difficult if i wanted to leave them so i declined

steveharris

give primus a call 0800 036 0094 and ask them to give you the line rental for 9.99 as advertised on confused.com
hope this helps