I'm going to be moving my mum to the post office next week.

(not literally mind )

£12 quid a month, including line rental, and you get evenings and weekends calls and the ability to call mobiles for free at weekends as well.

You're not tied to a year long deal either and you can pay your bill over the counter in the post office and save the £4.50 direct debit charge as well

BT is ripping the piss. The minute it's possible to get top quality broadband without a landline phone they'll go out of business.

If I was an investor I'd be getting out of there as fast as possible. Landlines will be as relevant as phone boxes within my lifetime.

I have just got the day that I released from BT's clutches which will be the 2nd of August. I have also received a letter off BT saying that they estimated that I'll owe them £24.00. So in other words it will double that then.

As the mobile phone companies have just reduced the amount of data that you get with a mobile contract I wouldn't hold your breath.

I'd be interested to know what technology you think will be able to replace landlines. It's funny that no one has suggested it to deal with rural 'have-nots'.

Still, you can dream.

I really think the time has come for Ofcom to look into the matter of having to take a phone line so that you can have Broadband at home.

Whilst appreciating that you have to have the actual physical wire for Broadband, it is obvious from many of the posts on this and other Forums that many people are having to pay BT or other providers for a phone service THAT THEY DON'T WANT AND DON'T USE!

Why cannot Ofcom rule that the phone companies must offer the physical connection but WITHOUT the phone service.

I myself have a BT landline, with phone calls via Virgin National for my Broadband, but use my Virgin Mobile for all my calls even though I get free evening and weekend calls via the Virgin deal. I get 300 minutes and 300 texts via Virgin Mobile for £10 per month, which means a one minute phone call to an 01, 02, 03 or any mobile number costs just 3p, compared to a minimum of almost 15p with BT (10p connection plus 5p per minute, rounded up like BT do).

BT must really be getting desperate for customers, as I've had three phone calls in the last six weeks trying to get me to bring my calls back to BT. Incredibly, those calling actually think BT are offering a good deal and can't get their heads round the fact that I can do so much better.

So come on Ofcom, pull your finger out and do something that might get you a bit of credit and good publicity for a change.

What we need is a replacement for Ofcom as they seem to be useless.


Must agree many people nowadays only want a line for broadband. They can make voice calls using their mobile or via VOIP.

This doesn't really make sense. You are paying for the physical line, not a phone service.

What you pay is for the provision and maintenance of the line and any equipment involved in handing the signal off to your broadband supplier. I suppose it's possible that there is some way of costing the link from your line to the exchange equipment that could save you a couple of pence per month but it won't really be worth the trouble.

And despite there being quite a few people who don't use a landline phone, relying instead on the 'free' minutes they pay £15-40 a month to their mobile supplier for, there are still a hell of a lot of savvy users who make good use of various options to ensure that the call element of their phone bills is virtually nothing.

With BT if you are paying already for the line, calls with the £4.99 ( I think) package are 'free' up to an hour in length 24/7

The thing is many customers don't want to use BT, they have used them in the past and have been unhappy with their poor customerr service.

They don't want to have to go through numerous menus and wait and wait and finally get someone in another country reading from a script and who may have a poor command of English.

It gives the customer the feeling that the company only care about saving money and not giving the customer the best service possible.


When you get a company that answers quickly or straight away and is UK based and it's answered by English speaking personnel whom you can understand l it makes all the difference.

Whilst that might sound great in theory, in practice there are proportionally more complaints from most other suppliers. Even if you are not with BT, unless you are on cable (and look at the complaints about that), your supplier will still have to contact OpenReach to get the problem sorted out.

In reality, BT are far from perfect but then so everyone else.

The real advantage of BT is that they are legally obliged to allow you to use services such as 1899 which, for people making less than 100 daytime calls per month is generally the cheapest way to make calls.

There may be the odd person with very unusual calling patterns who could find a cheaper way to operate but it would certainly be the exception.

Yes customer service for various types of companies especially when you have to ring call centres and wait for ages is generally poor in the UK.
What some people do is use a company for tel or tel and internet with good customer service and it's the company that has to call Openreach to get things done and the customer only has to deal with the company they are paying the monthly bill to so they don't have to ring BT customer service.

I rang a company yesterday concerning my credit card and after waiting 20 mins finally got an operator who said they had to transfer me.....and cut me off.
And I was using my mobile as well which can sometimes cost more than a regular landline.

The fact that lots of companies give poor service doesn't let BT off the hook......

No, I absolutely agree. They really should get their act together.

Their decision to use Indian call centres, for example, shows a distinct lack of consideration for their customers.

I've just heard so many horror stories about Sky and talk-talk that I suspect a lot of people are just jumping out of the frying pan into the fire.

Within my lifetime, I guarantee it. Just look at the technological advances within the last decade. Can you seriously tell me that within the next 10 years someone won't have developed even an experimental way of doing it? If the demand is there...

I imagine the only reason many people have a landline is because they have broadband. If "naked ADSL" became available - this is entirely possible with no major changes needed - then BT would lost millions of customers. Naked ADSL would mean people could have the choice in using VoIP if they wanted a landline. I don't know anyone without a mobile phone, either.

We're changing to Sky line rental as soon as our BT contract is up, which is soon. It works out cheaper because their broadband goes down.

We only have a BT line for broadband. Everyone I know uses their mobiles.

Naked DSL would cost more than current broadband does, the circuit still needs to be live and Openreach aren't going to connect and maintain circuits for free. There would be different charging structures for those that want a landline and those that don't unless ISPs would be willing to absorb the cost of renting the circuit from Openreach themselves and I doubt many would be willing to do that. What people would need to think about is how important is it for them to have a landline people will always, except when faulty and in major emergencies of course, be able to get hold of them on as VoIP obviously won't work if there is a power cut.

You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of the way the whole 'telephone thing' works.

If people are using VOIP or their mobiles rather than their landline the only way they are customers of BT is because BT own Openreach which provides the physical circuit.

If a 'naked ADSL' became available it would change nothing except that people using it would not have the option of using a landline in an emergency because they are already making their calls by other means.

Although I am a BT customer I pay them absolutely nothing for calls because all my calls are either free or made via 1899.


A lot of more savvy people use both a mobile phone and a landline. They realise that paying a mobile phone company £££ a month and then using 'free' minutes to make calls that they could just as easily make with a landline is not cost effective.


Then (assuming you mean they use their mobiles when they could be using their landlines) you know a lot of people who are paying more for their telephony than they need to.

If you are paying rental for a BT landline for Broadband then it makes sense to upgrade it for £4.99pm and get free calls. Their new connection and call charges won't even apply at all then. Way cheaper than using a mobile.

I'm sticking with BT despite their 50p increase. I've chased a couple of quid savings before with other companies, only for them to get me in a mess, give me poor service and sooner or later raise their prices anyway.

Never had bad service from BT, phone or BB, and my BB speeds are now up with the best after they went 20MB Max.

By the way, the last time I called BT CS I got a very helpfull UK man who I negotiated a very nice BB discount with.

Just giving more money to BT, I want to give them less not more.

,

And this is why they put prices up, because they know people will stay with them. sky is the same, lets put prices up, people will still stay with us.



Phone wise it have been ok, but then I have been with three phone providers and all have been ok in that it works, after all if don't matter who you pay your line rental to the phone system will work as long as there is not a major fault.

Bt so called 20Mbits is a swizz, even if you synced to that speed, you would never get anywhere near it in downloading due to Bt shaping.

I get over a megabit more since I changed to LLU on sync speed and I also know that extra Megabit is not shaped, what I sync at is what I get apart from over heads. No silly profile system, saying that my line can only cope with 2.5Megabits, where i have proved that my line can handle more and it is stable

I know know one on Bt who syncs at 20Mbits, even people that are only a few yards from the exchange.


Only called Customer service a couple of times, the first was to do with my mobile phone and I got though to A uk person, the second was a problem with my broadband and got though to someone in India.

The first one was very helpful, the second one to be honest was a waste of time.


Never had any other need to call BT, they called me a few times to try and get me to recontract my broadband, which I refused lots of times.

I even got my Mac via email, that way they don't try and keep you on the phone for ages trying to talk you out of it.


I think I am going to cancel Caller Id and when I change phone provider I will put it back on.


i don't use it very often anyway, if there is someone I don't want to talk to I just put the phone down, or I could let it go though to the answering machine and screen the calls that way.

Read this elsewhere





Just got my BT line cancelled without any charges, it was renewed automatically in January this year due to moving to to new address and when I last check I would have to pay £100 cancellation fee (paying off remaining line rental months), but yesterday I've got an email about line rental going £0.50 up on 1 October and as I have 10 days to act I called them and told them thank you. The T&C states:

....
Quote:
Changing the terms (notification)
48. If we make a change to the price or the terms and conditions of a service which is to your material disadvantage, you will not have to pay a charge if you decide to end that service early, unless the Tariff Guide says otherwise. However, once we have told you about such a change, you must let us know that you want to end that service within 10 days. This agreement will continue to apply to any other services that are not affected by any changes that we make.
.............


Well, they just did that and I can confirm it's a valid point if you seeking to get out of this auto-renewing contracts they do.

...............



Don't have a landline myself but might help others.

A bit too late for most people now, it have been a couple of weeks or =more since Bt sent the email out. I am not in contract, so I can get out whenever I want.

Seems like BT don't like the idea of me being out of contract, for the last four days I have had someone rang on behalf of BT, Phoned when I was at work., i bet they want me to go back to them with broadband or go into some long contract for the phone. Got a ghost in hells chance, happy with my broadband and not going into any phone contract with Bt.

Yes 10 days isn't long to get back to them but I suppose that's the idea.
If people pay monthly it should be 30 days to get back to them if you wish to cancel.

Rang up o2 this morning to move to their landline service.

Got an email from o2 at 1033 to confirm my order. At 1046 get an email from BT to tell me about their price rises in October.

Oh the irony of it all!!