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Old 09-01-2015, 08:48
ajfuk
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How can they justify this?

Something seriously needs to be done about the cost of line rental in this country, I cant believe how much it costs on my most recent bill.

I sent a tweet to @btcare and they said yes because you don't pay by direct debit it costs £2 a month more. Hardly fair penalising someone for choosing to pay by credit card each month.

Does anyone else think they are seriously over priced?
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Old 09-01-2015, 08:49
ajfuk
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Also my question relates to the cost of line rental in general, not the fact of how I choose to pay so I don't need someone being clever saying well its your own fault of not paying via direct debit.
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Old 09-01-2015, 13:23
SteveMcK
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We see lots of people complaining about how long it takes openreach to come out and fix line problems, yet how else can they get the money to pay for maintenance if they don't charge a decent rate for the line? They could charge less, if people would accept even poorer repair service, or offer top-class service if you pay more. They have to strike a balance somewhere, and Ofcom have a say in it as well. It doesn't seem an unreasonable price when you consider the infrastructure involved, although it's inevitably averaged so that the folks beside the exchange probably pay over the odds, and those on the end of 6km of overhead wire on poles get a bargain.

BT rates aren't that different to other W. European countries. France Telecom monthly phone service is 16.99€ (about £13.50) when paid by direct debit, for example.

As for the diference between DD and CC prices, that just reflects the business realities. DD is safer and cheaper than CC for BT, so they'll charge a premium for the service where they risk losing money. Hard for the honest folks who always pay in full, on time, but that's the reality.
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Old 09-01-2015, 13:26
The Sack
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Does anyone else think they are seriously over priced?
I have thought it was overpriced since it went past a tenner to be honest, money for nothing.
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Old 09-01-2015, 13:36
littleboo
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The wholesale price is around £9 and falling. Retail prices are high probably because it subsidises broadband prices of £5
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Old 09-01-2015, 14:43
marieukxx
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We've just made the switch from BT to sky today. I ahggled and got the line rental for £5 a month for £12 months on top of their free broadband offer so I'm very happy. BT just couldn't compare offer wise.
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Old 09-01-2015, 14:54
Ragnarok
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We see lots of people complaining about how long it takes openreach to come out and fix line problems, yet how else can they get the money to pay for maintenance if they don't charge a decent rate for the line? They could charge less, if people would accept even poorer repair service, or offer top-class service if you pay more. They have to strike a balance somewhere, and Ofcom have a say in it as well. It doesn't seem an unreasonable price when you consider the infrastructure involved, although it's inevitably averaged so that the folks beside the exchange probably pay over the odds, and those on the end of 6km of overhead wire on poles get a bargain.

BT rates aren't that different to other W. European countries. France Telecom monthly phone service is 16.99€ (about £13.50) when paid by direct debit, for example.

As for the diference between DD and CC prices, that just reflects the business realities. DD is safer and cheaper than CC for BT, so they'll charge a premium for the service where they risk losing money. Hard for the honest folks who always pay in full, on time, but that's the reality.

The truth is the price of wholesale line rental if anything depending on the type of line has ether held steady or gone down since 2006. The higher line rental charges considering the wholesale price hasn't moved much is all profit for the likes of Talk Talk, sky , BT retail, etc, etc.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/6...ail-price.html
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Old 09-01-2015, 17:37
Gerry1
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Why on earth does the OP choose to moan to DS rather than shopping around for a different provider?

I'm with Fuel Broadband (formerly Primus) and paying £7 per month which includes free 90-minute evening calls from 6pm as well as all weekend. Daytime calls are via 18185, geographic calls costing just 5p regardless of duration. For calls to mobiles, I use Three PAYG at just 3p/minute with no connection charge. For unlimited broadband, I use Sky at £7.50 per month (no other services).

Beat that !

If the OP willingly chooses to keep patronising the most expensive provider and pay over the counter or whatever, them I'm afraid they will indeed be taken to the cleaners.
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Old 09-01-2015, 19:44
noise747
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How can they justify this?

Something seriously needs to be done about the cost of line rental in this country, I cant believe how much it costs on my most recent bill.

I sent a tweet to @btcare and they said yes because you don't pay by direct debit it costs £2 a month more. Hardly fair penalising someone for choosing to pay by credit card each month.

Does anyone else think they are seriously over priced?
Yep and have been for years. this you don't pay by direct debit is naff and should be stopped. People should be allowed to pay how they like and not get penalised for doing so.

Line rental is a con, simple as that.
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Old 11-01-2015, 10:23
ney
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I pay towards my BT bill weekly using the BT payment card. The only good thing now is that BT have stopped the processing fee for people like me that don't pay the bill though DD.
Im due a BT bill in just over a weeks time and im again expecting the line rental to be just over double the cost of calls we have made in the last 3 months.
We are on the free evening and weekend call package and also have Infinity 2 unlimited as well as some BT TV services.
BT as well as other companies know we all cant do without a phone line as we need it for other services like broadband and maybe TV.
Phone calls via the landline have been slowly decreasing over the last few years as more of us use mobiles to phone and text.
You can even message someone via Viber and Facebook for free if you have 3G or are in a Wi-Fi hotspot.
BT and other companies will slowly keep putting there line rental prices up to cover them for the decrease in the use of people making phone calls over landlines.

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Old 11-01-2015, 11:42
SteveMcK
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BT and other companies will slowly keep putting there line rental prices up to cover them for the decrease in the use of people making phone calls over landlines.
The situation is actually the reverse. BT used to use the income from calls to subsidise the cost of line provision, but Ofcom won't let them do that any more. They need to charge for each part of the service on its own merits, to prevent unfair competition with other suppliers. It's one of the reasons that line rental is called out separately.
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Old 11-01-2015, 11:53
Tassium
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Why on earth does the OP choose to moan to DS rather than shopping around for a different provider?

I'm with Fuel Broadband (formerly Primus) and paying £7 per month which includes free 90-minute evening calls from 6pm as well as all weekend. Daytime calls are via 18185, geographic calls costing just 5p regardless of duration. For calls to mobiles, I use Three PAYG at just 3p/minute with no connection charge. For unlimited broadband, I use Sky at £7.50 per month (no other services).

Beat that !

If the OP willingly chooses to keep patronising the most expensive provider and pay over the counter or whatever, them I'm afraid they will indeed be taken to the cleaners.
No one is providing a 'phoneline for £7/month!

Fuel charge £15/month
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Old 11-01-2015, 13:04
iniltous
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Yep and have been for years. this you don't pay by direct debit is naff and should be stopped. People should be allowed to pay how they like and not get penalised for doing so.

Line rental is a con, simple as that.
if line rental is a con, should the asset owner provide the line for free ?, if the line stops working who should fix it ?, if it needs replacing who should replace it ?, if it's something that is owned and has an intrinsic value, can the 'owner' pull it out of the ground and sell it and leave the person who uses the line but doesn't want to pay to use it, out of service for ever ?, how would a company that provides something but doesn't charge for it stay in business ?
Do you think a private company like TT ,Sky or anyone else should use this asset for free and make profit from it, but the asset owner gets nothing ?, if in your opinion line rental is a con, I presume you want it to be free, but free to who ?, the consumer or the service supplier ?, why is supplying something and charging a fee for it a 'con' , a confidence trick ?
Or is your complaint about the price ? in which case you don't think it's a con it's just overpriced then should we accept your opinion as a layman, because you know better than the regulator who has access to accounts, accountants etc, and employs people who work in the 'communication' business ,as it's the regulator who actually set the wholesale line rental price, not the asset owner....
In my opinion a confidence trick may be like , but not exclusively , 'selling' something, with no intention of ever supplying it, or selling something knowing the thing to be supplied is inferior or different to the thing being sold, in what way does OR do this ?
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Old 11-01-2015, 15:01
Gerry1
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No one is providing a 'phoneline for £7/month!

Fuel charge £15/month
I'm not a liar, nor am I so thick that I don't know what I'm paying.
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Old 11-01-2015, 15:45
Captain Pugwash
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I'm not a liar, nor am I so thick that I don't know what I'm paying.
I will back you up on that one Gerry, I changed to Primus some time back, now Fuel as quoted, my line only rental was as you state £6.99, when I moved house I agreed to increase to a different payment package, but that was my choice.
The person who questioned your statement should check with Fuel (primus).
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Old 11-01-2015, 16:29
noise747
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[quote=iniltous;76393559]if line rental is a con, should the asset owner provide the line for free ?,

Did I say it should be provided for free? the price is too high, way too high, certainl;y for people who hardly use the phone, the line rental is more than the calls.

if the line stops working who should fix it ?, if it needs replacing who should replace it ?, if it's something that is owned and has an intrinsic value, can the 'owner' pull it out of the ground and sell it and leave the person who uses the line but doesn't want to pay to use it, out of service for ever ?, how would a company that provides something but doesn't charge for it stay in business ?
How often do they need fixing? My cable have to be over 30 years old and yet only once have BTOR been down while I been here to fix anything and then they did not do anything instead blamed my extension, which was fitted by them by the way. they then told me my phone line needed renewing and that how far it got.
They still could not tell me why my phone failed to work for 2 days. the extension was and still is fine by the way, or would be if there was a phone service coming to this house now.

Do you think a private company like TT ,Sky or anyone else should use this asset for free and make profit from it, but the asset owner gets nothing ?, if in your opinion line rental is a con, I presume you want it to be free, but free to who ?, the consumer or the service supplier ?, why is supplying something and charging a fee for it a 'con' , a confidence trick ?
They do make a profit from it, one hell of a profit.

Or is your complaint about the price ? in which case you don't think it's a con it's just overpriced then should we accept your opinion as a layman, because you know better than the regulator who has access to accounts, accountants etc, and employs people who work in the 'communication' business ,as it's the regulator who actually set the wholesale line rental price, not the asset owner....
In my opinion a confidence trick may be like , but not exclusively , 'selling' something, with no intention of ever supplying it, or selling something knowing the thing to be supplied is inferior or different to the thing being sold, in what way does OR do this ?

Ok, Con was the wrong word to use for god shake.

The regulator is a waste of space, Ofcom is just a job for the boys, no doubt someone knew someone who needed a job, so let set up some regulator and give them a job.
£15 a month for a bit of cable is way over the top, £10 is too much to be honest, not my problem if they want to give free calls, I did not say i wanted free calls.
I would prefer a lower line rental and get rid of the so called free calls.

The problem is these companies know they can rise the line rental and people will pay it because the have little choice.
It do not matter which provider you go to these days, most are around the same price. is that not what we call price fixing?
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Old 11-01-2015, 16:30
noise747
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I'm not a liar, nor am I so thick that I don't know what I'm paying.
How can they do it so cheap? I thought the wholesale price was higher than that.

I just had a look, it is £15 a month now,
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Old 11-01-2015, 17:14
ba_baracus
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How can they justify this?

Something seriously needs to be done about the cost of line rental in this country, I cant believe how much it costs on my most recent bill.

I sent a tweet to @btcare and they said yes because you don't pay by direct debit it costs £2 a month more. Hardly fair penalising someone for choosing to pay by credit card each month.

Does anyone else think they are seriously over priced?
If you want to pay by credit card, pay upfront for a year and it will only cost £14.13 per month.
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Old 11-01-2015, 17:23
ba_baracus
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Bear in mind that it's not just the wires that you are paying rental on. But also the maintenance of the equipment on the end of those wires that allows calls to be made in the first place, the electricity needed to keep that equipment running, fuel for generators in case of power failure, and all that stuff also needs maintained.

Now of course, some people will say they don't want a phone service, they just want the wires for broadband. However until Ofcom allow that you are stuck paying for it.
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Old 11-01-2015, 18:28
Jimmy_Barnes
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Beware of New Call Telecom who own Primus, or Fuel as they're now called. They repeatedly failed to set up a Direct Debit, and I must have called them seven or eight times about it. Then they had the nerve to send me texts saying I was going against my contract agreement by paying them via Standing Order!

Their service was pretty reliable admittedly, but customer service was a shambles and a company that can't even set up a DD so THEY get paid is just massively incompetent. So after a year I switched to BT. Yes I pay more, but I have fibre now, YouView, and most importantly, I'm able to deal with a company that knows what it's doing. Sometimes it's worth the extra few quid just so you know you're not going to have to be chasing things up or complaining anymore.
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Old 11-01-2015, 19:35
SteveMcK
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How often do they need fixing? My cable have to be over 30 years old and yet only once have BTOR been down while I been here to fix anything
Cables are monitored constantly (and tested overnight), and faults are generally repaired long before the end subscriber even notices a problem. Faults usually show up as increased resistance or noise long before call failiures happen, and that is detected by the routining equipment and repairs scheduled automatically. It's all automated, it would be a pretty crap system that relied on customers to find and report faults, they'd never get decent reliability. The only time you'll see someone "come out" is in the rare case when a line fault has happened suddenly (like the lorry that snagged my overhead line & ripped 200m of wire off the poles all down the road before they noticed!).

For the people who complain that line rental is "too expensive", the reality is that they have no idea how much it costs, or what is involved in providing the lines.

If it were really possible to do it for half the price, don't you think that someone else would have started to do so, to undercut BT? Look at internet prices, it's a cut-throat market, everyone is looking for cheaper service (and forgetting the old adage that you only get what you pay for).
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Old 11-01-2015, 21:29
iniltous
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[quote=noise747;76396448]
if line rental is a con, should the asset owner provide the line for free ?,

Did I say it should be provided for free? the price is too high, way too high, certainl;y for people who hardly use the phone, the line rental is more than the calls.



How often do they need fixing? My cable have to be over 30 years old and yet only once have BTOR been down while I been here to fix anything and then they did not do anything instead blamed my extension, which was fitted by them by the way. they then told me my phone line needed renewing and that how far it got.
They still could not tell me why my phone failed to work for 2 days. the extension was and still is fine by the way, or would be if there was a phone service coming to this house now.



They do make a profit from it, one hell of a profit.




Ok, Con was the wrong word to use for god shake.

The regulator is a waste of space, Ofcom is just a job for the boys, no doubt someone knew someone who needed a job, so let set up some regulator and give them a job.
£15 a month for a bit of cable is way over the top, £10 is too much to be honest, not my problem if they want to give free calls, I did not say i wanted free calls.
I would prefer a lower line rental and get rid of the so called free calls.

The problem is these companies know they can rise the line rental and people will pay it because the have little choice.
It do not matter which provider you go to these days, most are around the same price. is that not what we call price fixing?
Ok, so as you accept line rental is not a confidence trick, what is a reasonable return on the use of a local loop, you say £15 is way too much and £10 probably too much, the wholesale rental for a local loop is about £9, that's what OR get, what you pay to a service provider at retail is dependent on what provider you use, but if that £9 turns into £18 or whatever that hardly OR's fault,
you don't use BT retail, and absolutely no one has to, there are lots of providers, BT Retail cannot be held responsible for what others charge, only what they charge
so to recap line rental isn't a con, and £9 line rental (wholesale price) is what the regulator ,and it would appear you also think is fair for the use and upkeep of that local loop..
..you use a wireless provider and they probably charge 'line rental' yet they don't even provide a 'line', their transmission medium is the air, and I always thought the air was free, but you pay willingly for some of yours
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Old 11-01-2015, 21:38
moox
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Cables are monitored constantly (and tested overnight), and faults are generally repaired long before the end subscriber even notices a problem. Faults usually show up as increased resistance or noise long before call failiures happen, and that is detected by the routining equipment and repairs scheduled automatically. It's all automated, it would be a pretty crap system that relied on customers to find and report faults, they'd never get decent reliability. The only time you'll see someone "come out" is in the rare case when a line fault has happened suddenly (like the lorry that snagged my overhead line & ripped 200m of wire off the poles all down the road before they noticed!).

For the people who complain that line rental is "too expensive", the reality is that they have no idea how much it costs, or what is involved in providing the lines.

If it were really possible to do it for half the price, don't you think that someone else would have started to do so, to undercut BT? Look at internet prices, it's a cut-throat market, everyone is looking for cheaper service (and forgetting the old adage that you only get what you pay for).
The Openreach price is a fraction of the BT Retail price - of course, some of the extra cost will be profit and any calling packages BT throws in, but it is clear that some of it is being used to fund unrelated pursuits into sports rights and buying EE.

I presume Openreach manages to profit from their approx £90 a year for a WLR line, which includes doing the testing (presumably this "testing" is automatic testing done either by a 1980s' PSTN switch or a not that much newer bit of test equipment tethered to it) plus renting the rotting, aging copper that BT can barely be bothered to maintain, plus maintaining the 1980s era AXE10s and System X switches, generators and so on. What you pay BT Retail on top of the Openreach fee has nothing to do with this?

Last time the cover fell off of the box at the top of the pole no one bothered to fix it until I reported it - and if I hadn't I'd probably have had crackly voice and bad VDSL until someone looked at it (and even then they'd probably try to blame me). Not exactly the crack squad you want to make it seem.

I moved my line from BT Retail to my ISP and saved a dramatic sum of money in doing so - and it's great knowing that I'm not funding quite so much of BT's empire building as I was. I don't get as much in the way of inclusive calls, but the line isn't that frequently used, so it's fine. If BT ever did what some telcos did and offered a dry loop I expect a lot of people would jump on it it in the age of mobile/VoIP being the preferred telephony method
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Old 11-01-2015, 21:40
littleboo
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How often do they need fixing? My cable have to be over 30 years old and yet only once have BTOR been down while I been here to fix anything
Sounds just like my house insurance, I've been paying it for years and never been burgled and never had to claim, therefore, it must be a con.


It do not matter which provider you go to these days, most are around the same price. is that not what we call price fixing?
No, it isn't, price fixing is where suppliers actively collude to keep prices artificially high.
The price of beans is pretty much the same in any supermarket, it doesn't indicate price fixing.
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Old 11-01-2015, 21:44
ba_baracus
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The Openreach price is a fraction of the BT Retail price - of course, some of the extra cost will be profit and any calling packages BT throws in, but it is clear that some of it is being used to fund unrelated pursuits into sports rights and buying EE.

I presume Openreach manages to profit from their approx £90 a year for a WLR line, which includes doing the testing (presumably this "testing" is automatic testing done either by a 1980s' PSTN switch or a not that much newer bit of test equipment tethered to it) plus renting the rotting, aging copper that BT can barely be bothered to maintain, plus maintaining the 1980s era AXE10s and System X switches, generators and so on. What you pay BT Retail on top of the Openreach fee has nothing to do with this?

Last time the cover fell off of the box at the top of the pole no one bothered to fix it until I reported it - and if I hadn't I'd probably have had crackly voice and bad VDSL until someone looked at it (and even then they'd probably try to blame me). Not exactly the crack squad you want to make it seem.

I moved my line from BT Retail to my ISP and saved a dramatic sum of money in doing so - and it's great knowing that I'm not funding quite so much of BT's empire building as I was. I don't get as much in the way of inclusive calls, but the line isn't that frequently used, so it's fine. If BT ever did what some telcos did and offered a dry loop I expect a lot of people would jump on it it in the age of mobile/VoIP being the preferred telephony method
How would you expect them to know about it otherwise?
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