I've just noticed today that Call18866.co.uk are now charging 4p connection fee for all calls made from a BT landline, using the 18866 prefix.

As of yet, I haven't received notification of this by e-mail.

1899.com now seems to be the cheapest for standard UK daytime calls - At 3p connection fee.

Thanks
Daniel

They only made their last increase in Sept.  >:(

If they carry on at this rate it might be worth getting an inclusive call  package , at least you want have a congestion problem at weekends.

Thank you both.
18185 for mobiles and Brussels (0.5p - excellent) and 1899 for t'other use. Resting 18866 pro tem. :)
But worth the adjustments - so thank you again.

Very sneaky 18866 !!!
Not even mentioned as a "Latest Headline", you need to look for the small-print above to find it and even that isn't an announcement.
Confidence in 18866 has disappeared, they seem totally devious (connection has doubled in the last two months) - time to switch.

The email notification is actually at the bottom of one of their "sale" emails. People who don't make calls to the countries included in their "sale" are likely not to read down as far as the end where it says that the increase in connection charge starts on 30 Nov:



Quote:

----- Original Message ----- From: <george@18866.co.uk> To: <george@18866.co.uk> Sent: Tuesday, November 29, 2005 2:08 PM Subject: 18866 international sale! Dear customer, Call the following countries for only 0.5 pence per minute*! Argentina Denmark Italy Netherlands Norway For more details and free online registration please visit www.call18866.co.uk. Kind regards, The Call18866 Team If you wish to unsubscribe from this newsletter: http://www.call18866.co.uk/newsletter.php *From the 30th of November 18866 will apply a connection fee of 4p per call. Please note that calls to landlines within the U.K. will remain 0.0 p per minute.

Can anyone understand the crazy business logic of Finarea and their many telecoms brands?

18866 was their founding cheap uk calls brand and the one with by far the most loyal customers and now they try shafting them with these repeated significant price increases, whilst offering better rates to mobiles, 0870 and for overseas calls with 18185.  Also better rates to overseas mobiles with www.dialaround.co.uk and www.bestminutes.co.uk

If 1899 also increase the connection fee (as I fully expect we will learn that they are doing tomorrow) then I will simply consolidate everything on to 18185 and make plans post hase to investigate either a monthly 01/02 calls plan or a voip option.  The Sipura SPA-3000 looks very interesting with its call forwarding options now that calls to my Liechtenstein Riiing mobile on www.voipcheap.co.uk are only 6.5p per minute and a voip call forward to a uk landline would be free.

By the way I can't understand some of you saying you have seen the price rise on bills already as their "Sale" email to me says the price rise comes in tomorrow.

If this 4p connection charge isn't repeated on 1899 can we begin to assume that 18185, 18866, 1899 dialaround etc are all sub franchise operations of Finarea competing with each other?

Yes, I also noticed this.  I sneaky price increase in small print at the bottom of the e-mail.

I haven't used 18866 for about a year, and only made about 150 or so calls at 1p each.

Since then, I used Tele2, who offered free evening and weekend calls for no monthly fee.  I also have a few mobiles with inclusive minutes, and free line rental, which in effect means I pay nothing to have a mobile.  Instead of paying for my calls, I use my inclusive minutes instead!!

Paying 4p per call is almost as uncompetitive as BT!!  Some of the more well known brands are charging around 4p per call now.

However I won't be cancelling 18866, but instead, leave my account which owes about £1.50 in limbo.  They only collect if you owe more than £5, so having a dormant account owing just under £5 will do more harm for them than cancelling, and probably being asked to pay back the £1.50 I owe them!!

wrote on Nov 29^th, 2005 at 9:04pm:

Can anyone understand the crazy business logic of Finarea and their many telecoms brands? ~~ If this 4p connection charge isn't repeated on 1899 can we begin to assume that 18185, 18866, 1899 dialaround etc are all sub franchise operations of Finarea competing with each other?

Can't really understand why they need to have around 10 of them here altogether, but they seem to have several in each other country where they operate. I was struck by just how similar one of their French sites is to 1899, same layout, same woman's picture, so I doubt they are all separate. Maybe different people go for different branding, colours, graphics on the website ... really don't know.

On calling Liechtenstein mobile, I had replies that it would not be added as a destination on 18866 or 1899 and they recommended Telediscount, which isn't very helpful for calling from a mobile. With the introduction of other global roaming SIMs, the cheapest way to call one of the others is for about 1.2p/min, but this is also certainly a mistake, on a par with calling most of the world for 1p/min back in June, so I'm not sure about going for it.

Yes, the Sipura product is interesting, but still costs quite a bit of money before any savings are made, and I'm just thinking that many of the calls that would divert in and out could be made at similar tariffs anyway without the hardware ... as I see it, and without claiming to understand all of it, the Sipura routing only really adds call diversion possibilities to your existing number compared to the use of a separate new one. But I can see that renting an ordinary landline number should be less necessary.


But back on topic, at 4p a go, it is little cheaper off-peak than BT, and is likely to make more people think about the various cps deals with free off-peak calls. And the usage threshold that makes people look at all-in cps has just moved, so they may find it difficult to keep all their customers ...

andy9 wrote on Nov 30^th, 2005 at 5:14pm:

Yes, the Sipura product is interesting, but still costs quite a bit of money before any savings are made, and I'm just thinking that many of the calls that would divert in and out could be made at similar tariffs anyway without the hardware ... as I see it, and without claiming to understand all of it, the Sipura routing only really adds call diversion possibilities to your existing number compared to the use of a separate new one. But I can see that renting an ordinary landline number should be less necessary. But back on topic, at 4p a go, it is little cheaper off-peak than BT, and is likely to make more people think about the various cps deals with free off-peak calls. And the usage threshold that makes people look at all-in cps has just moved, so they may find it difficult to keep all their customers ...

Well its now 30th Nov and the 1899 website still says 3p connection fee but as I won't be back at home till later this evening after 4 days away I can't check out whether this is actually the case.  It would be hard to understand a price rise to 4p connection fee on 18866 without a corresponding connection fee rise on 1899 as up to now its simply looked like 18866 was the loss leader product that was having its prices raised to the same level as other Finarea group indirect access PSTN products.  Clearly raising the connection fee to 4p on 1899 and 18866 but also extending the cheap 0870, mobile and international pricing from 18185 to these brands would make a lot of business sense.  But charging 4p connection on 18866 and not on 1899 makes little or no sense.

I suspect Finarea has now acquired enough phone customers Europe wide and is getting close to the flog off to a big telco stage.  And to get a good price from a big telco one needs to raise future customer revenue projections.  And to do this one has to raise call prices whilst not raising them so high that the customer will leave.  However as most other telcos charge 4p connection per call but most also charge per minute in the weekday daytime then Finarea still looks attractive for anyone averaging only 3 calls a day.  Although Tiscali charge only £4 per month extra for all 01/02 calls on top of their monthly broadband charge the fact is that Tiscali's broadband service is an utter disgrace and only the naive and uninformed will sign up to 12 months of Tiscali broadband hell.

It seems to me that Finarea is probably going to be flogged off to a big telco in the next 12 months and that for anyone who still wants cheap calls without a subscription voip will be the way to go.  And if one wants to use voip for all one's calls (including incoming) then an ATA is the only way to go as having to have a PC on all the time is not really acceptable (also voice quality using an ATA with a decent quality anallogue phone is much better than most computer headsets).

As someone who is at times away from home for several days at a time but in a role where it may suit me to look as though I'm at home it seems that one of thexe flexible ATAs could be very handy.  Of course in the long run it would appear that voip calls may be routable to one's 3G/4G mobile via voip (although I doubt without charge) but the cost of such phones and line rental is currently prohibitive and its clear that Vodafone, Orange etc will fight tooth and nail to block external voip calls from other telcos for as long as they possibly can.

By the way Andy what is the other global SIM product you refer to and which country is it based in?  The fact that Voipcheap can now do Liechtenstein mobiles for less than 7p per minute shows that the rate of European mobile calls can only continue to plunge ever lower.

By the way who apart from the Post Office offering CPS has no minimum connection fee?  Is Toucan Telecom another one?

I currently have CPS on TalkOne with TalkTalk but I use this only for the 30 minutes of free mobile calls a month which continues to fall in value by the month.

Its just that I have a couple of friends who still use old fashioned dial up internet in conjunction with BT 1571 and these are a nightmare as one can't use RingBack when they are on the internet and instead gets shafted for numerous minimum connection fees.  So in these circumstances using the Post Office for calls that one immediately has to keep hanging up (when 1571 cuts in) may be preferable.

wrote on Nov 30^th, 2005 at 7:11pm:

By the way who apart from the Post Office offering CPS has no minimum connection fee?  Is Toucan Telecom another one?

Toucan dont have a min call charge,but they operate per minute billing,and charge an extra £1 for a paper bill.

bigjohn wrote on Nov 30^th, 2005 at 11:15pm:

Toucan dont have a min call charge,but they operate per minute billing,and charge an extra £1 for a paper bill.

Does the Post Office have per minute billing?  Also what happens with the Post Office in the evening and at the weekend to 01 and 02 numbers?   Surely they do effectively have a minimum fee then since there is no pence per minute call rate?

Looks like voipcheap and an ATA would be my answer to all this.  Except of course that I'm sure that Finarea won't keep voipcheap free for uk calls indefinitely.

wrote on Nov 30^th, 2005 at 7:06pm:

By the way Andy what is the other global SIM product you refer to and which country is it based in?  The fact that Voipcheap can now do Liechtenstein mobiles for less than 7p per minute shows that the rate of European mobile calls can only continue to plunge ever lower.

I think this will merit a new thread (in a day or two; time for bed now), rather than wander off-topic more on here, as it will be quite detailed - containing 5 altogether.

Briefly on tariffs though, before describing the SIMs - unfortunately I think that may be something of a false assumption or wishful thinking on your part, and I'll elaborate on that a bit as well.

wrote on Nov 30^th, 2005 at 7:11pm:

Its just that I have a couple of friends who still use old fashioned dial up internet in conjunction with BT 1571 and these are a nightmare as one can't use RingBack when they are on the internet ...

Suggest they find out if they can use Call Waiting instead - one of the programs on the disk that came with this modem detects that to notify incoming calls. I can't put modem on hold as the ISP doesn't use v92 modems for me, but I can still hang up.

::) TELECOM PLUS - under the name of Utility Warehouse Discount Club charges 2p per minute anywhere in the world, using CPS, and they also take over the LINE RENTAL from BT, saving about 50p per month + VAT, I've been a customer for 8 months and am really happy! Want to know more, visit their website on www.utilitywarehouse.co.uk, if you want to sign up come back to me and I'll tell you how....

Sorry, missed something on the url, should be: https://www.utilitywarehouse.co.uk/store/index.taf?exref=068029 the earlier url will just throw up an error so I have discovered....

BAT21Tiger wrote on Dec 1^st, 2005 at 3:09am:

Sorry, missed something on the url, should be: https://www.utilitywarehouse.co.uk/store/index.taf?exref=068029 the earlier url will just throw up an error so I have discovered....

Let me guess from the way you talk about the product,you are the T-Plus Distributor who this affiliatelink refers. the posting of spam on this site is not allowed.You are no doubt aware that TP take a dim view of distributors posting spam on other sites.

Also apart from that Telecom Plus runs an EXPENSIVE phone service,so why would anyone want to join it.

Yes it does offer cheaper line rental but it also charges for caller display,where as BT does not.So you end up paying more for your line rental then you did with BT.Their are also a number of other excellent reasons why you shouldnt move your line rental from BT.

Turning to their call packages eg More Talk 2 (Exclusive Evening and weekend calls to 01/02) T-Plus charge £5 a month other suppliers are doing it free!

They dont charge 2p to anywhere in the world as you incorrectly suggest,only to a limited number of destinations,and you have to pay extra for this priviledge.All the destinations they do charge 2p to can be reached cheaper using other suppliers.Calls to other destinations not included in 2p list are expensive.

Their call prices to 0845/0870 can be beaten.

On top of all this they charge £1.50p + vat membership fee a month.

Not the greatest thing since sliced bread after all  :)

PS: I notice they have recently started supplying 0845/0870 numbers to businesses, ;D even in that area their charges/rates are not competitive.

Quote:

TELECOM PLUS - under the name of Utility Warehouse Discount Club charges 2p per minute anywhere in the world, using CPS, and they also take over the LINE RENTAL from BT, saving about 50p per month + VAT, I've been a customer for 8 months and am really happy!

Sounds a good deal - thanks for the post, BAT21Tiger.  I'll look into it!

BAT21Tiger wrote on Dec 1^st, 2005 at 3:09am:

Sorry, missed something on the url, should be: https://www.utilitywarehouse.co.uk/store/index.taf?exref=068029 the earlier url will just throw up an error so I have discovered....

www.18185.co.uk has calls available to loads of other international destinations for 0.5p per minute.  And www.1899.com lets you make a weekday daytime call for 3p per call however long.

Also if I went for the Telecom thingamajig line rental it would bar me from using any pefix carriers like 1899 or 18185 and may or may not let me access competitor services that use 084 and 087 and 09 call access routes?

So unless someone can halve BT line rental I am likely to stick with BT for the time being.  Longer term I'm heading over to voip call routing.

Well its 1st December and 1899 have only charged me 3p connection fee each for the three calls I have made today.  So it looks like the price rise to 4p only applies to 18866.

Can 18866 customers confirm that they are now being charged 4p connection from today.  Even if you are about to become an ex 18866 customer making one call to check this out at 1p extra could possibly be afforded in the cause of research? ;) :o

gdh82 wrote on Dec 1^st, 2005 at 10:30am:

Quote: TELECOM PLUS - under the name of Utility Warehouse Discount Club charges 2p per minute anywhere in the world, using CPS, and they also take over the LINE RENTAL from BT, saving about 50p per month + VAT, I've been a customer for 8 months and am really happy! Sounds a good deal - thanks for the post, BAT21Tiger.  I'll look into it!

2p to anywhere in the world using CPS would of course be a good deal if it was true.But alas its not. I have their latest pricelist  in front of me.With their Economy Intl Saver added £1 a month extra.Here are a few prices taken at random.China 18p a min. India 23p a min,Thailand 30p a min.All calls charged at these rates all the time no evening or weekend rates.Their are numerous suppliers who can beat their intl rates even the 2p ones.

I can confirm 18866 charged me 4p as from November 30. Amusingly (or annoyingly actually!) I still never get their newsletter despite having registered for it three times using different email addresses in the mistaken hope they'd send to at least one of them, yet a friend who left 18866 two months ago DOES get their newsletters. I must now go to 1899. Didn't so far as I felt sure they'd go up too.

Barry Doe

barrydoe wrote on Dec 1^st, 2005 at 8:51pm:

I must now go to 1899. Didn't so far as I felt sure they'd go up too.

I also thought the 1899 connection fee would increase to 4p but it definitely hasn't.  Had it done so I would have made all future calls with 18185 and begun investigating voip phone call options more actively.

I can't think what Finarea's business logic is in increasing the 18866 connection fee yet again whilst leaving the 1899 connection fee alone? [smiley=thumbdown.gif]