After just receiving my BT phone bill I was shocked to see that I have made only £25 worth of calls, yet the bill is £60.

Even taking into account VAT, this still seems very steep to me.

Does anybody have firsthand experience of the alternatives to BT?

well you can get your line rental down to 9.99 per month including vat with companys like one tel - homecall.

Originally posted by Mo
After just receiving my BT phone bill I was shocked to see that I have made only £25 worth of calls, yet the bill is £60.

Even taking into account VAT, this still seems very steep to me.

Does anybody have firsthand experience of the alternatives to BT?

what does the breakdown show the other £35 as being?

Well, good or bad Im a telewest broadband user.

Have phone, cable tv and broadband for £30.00 p.m plus call charges.

If you use the phone alot £15 extra will cover all calls anytime nationally. (apart from mobiles)

Not really had any problems at all and the broadband is top notch, never let me down.

Bare in mind that your BT bill is probably quarterly (ours is) and Telewest charge monthly. We actually saved money by switching to BT from NTL, we pay £20 every month by direct debit, they send us the bill and if it's under the £60 we've paid in, they keep the rest over for the next month incase it's over.

We rarely get bills above £60, but we were paying nearly £30 a month with NTL.

Originally posted by Cyclone
what does the breakdown show the other £35 as being?

Service charges £30 and VAT £9, the difference being by way of the Friends and Family discount.

Originally posted by Mo
After just receiving my BT phone bill I was shocked to see that I have made only £25 worth of calls, yet the bill is £60.

Even taking into account VAT, this still seems very steep to me.

Does anybody have firsthand experience of the alternatives to BT?

Are you on option one, or three.

As automatically you are placed on the "three" list; the "one" list is cheaper - for line rental that is.

HTH, :)

Originally posted by Hook

We rarely get bills above £60, but we were paying nearly £30 a month with NTL.

With us, our NTL bill is £69 - BB, phone and TV.

I was amazed to learn that when i was using PAYG dial-up - whilst the BB was playing up, that the bill was still £69 - 6 hours worth of dial-up still within the bill - I believe we pay £9.99 for "make as many phone calls as you like" package.

Originally posted by amhudson119
With us, our NTL bill is £69 - BB, phone and TV.

Is that per month or quarter? :o

Originally posted by amhudson119
Are you on option one, or three.

As automatically you are placed on the "three" list; the "one" list is cheaper - for line rental that is.

HTH, :)


Well I didn't opt, so assume I was put on the Option 1 as the BT booklet said this would be the default option.

To be honest none of the options really suited me as;

a) I never spend an hour on one phone call

and

b) the few calls I do make are made in the week during the day when the discount doesn't apply.

Originally posted by Mo
Service charges £30 and VAT £9

That will be it then - £10 a month line rental.

Telewest charge about the same.

have ur little sister to stop for a weeka nd then see the HUGE increase in phone charges grrrr

I think it's about time they introduced a lower cost line rental, for people who only make or receive half a dozen calls a month. It's simply rubbish value for money to have to pay a tenner a month for an hour's talktime.

we only use ours 4 internet line thingy normally. use mobiles as its easier

Originally posted by Mo
After just receiving my BT phone bill I was shocked to see that I have made only £25 worth of calls, yet the bill is £60.

Even taking into account VAT, this still seems very steep to me.

Does anybody have firsthand experience of the alternatives to BT?

Does this also include the 'unbilled' calls, which can sometimes be high but are not included in your statement?

I had one recently that included 2 months-worth of broadband charges, despite the fact that I don't and can't use broadband (THEY tested the line and told me that after I ordered it).
I phoned up to tell them and it was explained to me in very slow simple language that I had 2 month worth on the bill cos i ordered it after the last bill went out and they charge a month in advance... fine... but i don't HAVE broadband... they were very confused!!!! Needless to say they have since cancelled it and refunded me, but its a good job i take notice of the details of my bill or it would just have been automatically paid. Why the hell didn't they cancel the order when they told me a can't have BB? its far too easy for them to just hope i'll ignore it and give them the money!!!! grrrr.... :rant:

Originally posted by fox20thc
Well, good or bad Im a telewest broadband user.

Have phone, cable tv and broadband for £30.00 p.m plus call charges.

If you use the phone alot £15 extra will cover all calls anytime nationally. (apart from mobiles)

Not really had any problems at all and the broadband is top notch, never let me down.

:clap: :clap: :clap:

for a quarterly bill that sounds quite reasonable, I thought it was a monthly.

My monthly bill is generally £55, we hardly ever use the phone, but need it just in case. The rest is for broadband and cable tv.

Originally posted by spyro2000
Does this also include the 'unbilled' calls, which can sometimes be high but are not included in your statement?

What are those? I've never heard of them?

Originally posted by Cyclone
for a quarterly bill that sounds quite reasonable, I thought it was a monthly.


What I was saying was that for only £25 worth of calls a £60 bill is pricey....as a proportion, it's more than double the value of the calls.

I only make one call a week of just under an hour. Was offered a lower than usual line rental by BT but then they realised I have broadband on my line and couldnt offer it to me :loopy:

Think the new service that BT will offer in future looks good, but it needs you to have broadband with BT - darn !!!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4094424.stm

The 10 quid a month line rental is pretty good really

Originally posted by Mo
What are those? I've never heard of them?

Sorry, I was actually suppose to say 'unitemised' calls, not unbilled calls.

Originally posted by Mo
What I was saying was that for only £25 worth of calls a £60 bill is pricey....as a proportion, it's more than double the value of the calls.

But it's our line rental that makes it cheaper. The package gives us lots of free calls, so those we get charged for are often less than the line rental. We get something like free calls for an hour, and then you have to ring off and call the person back and you get another hour for free.

Originally posted by Hook
Is that per month or quarter? :o

Month, but we do use the phone quite a bit.

We may be moving further south soon (and out on a NTL area), and into a Telewest area, so we'll probably go with them - have one big bill, as opposed to three wee bills.

:)

We are with Bulldog.... £30 per month for line rental and 8mb broadband. Very good most of the time, but we had a problem with the line a couple of weeks ago and their customer services are by far the worst I have ever experienced! The fault did turn out to be in the BT box on the street, and I couldn't help wondering if BT had deliberately caused the problem to get us to go back to BT!:suspect:

Mo

You cant beat these packages

http://secure.ntlfreedom.com/bundled/bundle_broadband.aspx

£24.99 for 512k broadband and unlimited local and national anythime phone calls, you will still have to pay the BT line rental though.

I have it and its great.

I'm a happy Telewest customer too.
3 years now.
No regrets. Pppppttttrrrrrr:P to BT!

What do B.T and a pelican have in common?
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They can both stuff their Bills up their AR*E

I like to recommend the phone co-op

It does what it says on the tin

Originally posted by Mo
What I was saying was that for only £25 worth of calls a £60 bill is pricey....as a proportion, it's more than double the value of the calls.

I think that most people have bills like that these days. We pay £10 line rental for generally about £0.50 worth of calls.

Partly because calls have become so cheap and partly because we don't use the phone very often.

Originally posted by mikey
Mo

You cant beat these packages

http://secure.ntlfreedom.com/bundled/bundle_broadband.aspx

£24.99 for 512k broadband and unlimited local and national anythime phone calls, you will still have to pay the BT line rental though.

I have it and its great.

But they're per month, so she'll be paying her BT line rental of £10 a month(I think) and then £24.99 a month for that, and her bill will be over £100 for three months. More expensive not cheaper :loopy:

Originally posted by Hook
But they're per month, so she'll be paying her BT line rental of £10 a month(I think) and then £24.99 a month for that, and her bill will be over £100 for three months. More expensive not cheaper :loopy:

Ok but this includes broadband, I think mo's bill didnt.