http://forum.digitalspy.co.uk/board/...47#post8020547

Telewest to increase line rental, limit free calls to 60 mins a time and then 3p/min.

Cost of not paying by DD increases to £4.

Do Telewest not want landline customers anymore.

Surely the price increases (except the paying by methods other than DD) only bring Telewest up to the same level as BT have been charging their residential customers for many months?

The restriction on call length, also aligns Telewest with BT.

Yes, but now there is even more no reason to go with Telewest for phone service.

Might as well use BT line (£11) where you can CPS the line to get free evening and weekend calls (up to 90 mins a time) for free and use cheap call providers like 1899 via their short access code number for 3p each calls, etc.

Telewest should be pricing their phone service so that people want to take it out, rather than pushing people to dump Telewest for phone services.

I think Telewest's latest business plan is to attract and maintain high spend customers, particularly those who are interested in their bundled packages (internet access, cable & phone) all from the same supplier. That way they believe they can continue to grow their business, whilst not having millions of customers to care for who they barely make a profit from because they cherry-pick just the best value products.

I've just had a TW leaflet through the door offering tv, phone and 2meg broadband for £30 a month for 12 months, so that doesn't appear to be targeted at high spend customers.

When I swapped my TW line for a BT one, they asked why I was leaving and if there was anything they could do. As they don't have to give the same CPS/short dial code access to other providers as BT must, then no they couldn't. As they wouldn't be getting the call revenue from me anyway, it would have been a bit pointless to bribe me to stay.

They'll be making money to fund for a new brand name and logo.

Furthermore, how come NTL customers don't pay such high rates if Telewest is owned by NTL?

It's not official yet is it ?

It's a bundled package - it means TW get £30 per month.

That's alot more than I pay my TV provider, broadband provider or landline provider.

High spend does not imply poor value for money.

I didn't say anything implied poor value, I simply don't agree that someone paying a total of £30 for all three services could be considered a 'high spending customer'.

Incidentally, do you know of any business who would not love to dump lots of low spending customers and replace them with fewer but higher spending customers? That's not a business plan, that's a dream.

By encouraging you to buy all 3 products from TW, they are increasing their revenue per customer.
Furthermore, by not allowing other call carriers, they have a captive market for those using their telephone service.


Newspaper sellers? Window cleaners? Petrol Stations?
Last edited by dawson : 28-04-2006 at 16:57

These new charges will mean I will have to pay £2.25 extra. So it doesn't really bother me.

If I was with BT Together option 1, heres what I will be paying:

Line rental: £11.00
20 daytime calls lasting 10 minutes: £6
40 Weekends calls lating 10 minutes: £2.40
10 1471+3 uses: 60p
Anonymous caller rejection: £4.00
Non-Direct Debit admin fee: £1

Total: £24.00

Staying with Telewest after June:

Line Rental: £11.50
20 daytime calls lasting 10 minutes: £7.20
40 weekend calls lasting 10 minutes: FREE
Returning a call via 1471: FREE
Anonymous caller rejection: £1.75
Non-Direct debit admin fee: £4.00

Total: £24.35

And if paying by direct debit: £20.35!

So basically there is not much difference between Telewest Talk weekends and BT Together option 1.

The only difference is, Telewest provides a better service overall compared to BT in terms of customer service, accurate billing and fault responses.

Oh! And you don't have to pay for the 1471 service with Telewest! BT charge you 6p everytime you press three.

How to save a packet, but only for BT customers

Line rental: £11.00

20 daytime calls lasting 10 minutes: £6
use 1899.com and it will only cost you 60p

40 Weekends calls lating 10 minutes: £2.40
actually, it will only cost £2.20, but...
use 1899.com and it will only cost you £1.20

10 1471+3 uses: 60p
Never, ever press 3 - write down the number & dial it youself. FREE

Anonymous caller rejection: £4.00

Non-Direct Debit admin fee: £1
Pay via quarterly DD if you can.

Total: £24.00
actually its £25 , but...
My total: just £16.80 (£17.80 if you cannot pay by DD)

...and if you make just one of those 120 weekend calls per quarter using BT rather than 1899.com (additional charge 2.5p), you get Free Caller Display

Or cheaper still as bextech points out in the other thread: http://forum.digitalspy.co.uk/board/...7&postcount=50

Even more savings

(although as it states, that does require agreeing to Carrier Pre-Select to a company other than BT which some people are not comfortable with)

True, but at least the line rental remains with BT, that is the most important.

Whats next, we all seem to be enjoying the rise in prices all over london.....

Property, Petrol, Energy, Gas, Transport, Services..... etc

Ok we could say this happens all the time all over the world.
I just want to know, can the average person cope with it?

We are already giving our lives to the city/country, some of us may need to work our entire lifetime to pay off a morgage. If you try and save money by not buying a car, then think again, london transport gets you.

NON DIRECT DEBIT CHARGES, MY FOOT.

£4 was it, Telewest are having a laugh. I guess their PC's need to be switched on longer to automatically debit money so they need to charge customers for their electric bill.

Who in their right mind would stay with such a company & what about all their old customers who never use direct debit ( 5 - 10 years ago )

Oh cable london is no more i know, should the old customers who have no choice chose to start using DD or fork it out, hello telewest you forgot to mention option 3, but i guess thats up to the worthless customer.

I simply dislike companies taking advantage of their customers, i dont care whether telewest's changes come up to standard with BT. Their exploiting customers, who doesnt these days, its all about profits......

oh well, goodnight.

I'm ditching the Telewest phone line when my 12 months are up.

Keeping the BB?

I'm keeping the BB and ditching the phoneline.