From today's Daily Mail:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=373447&in_page_id=1770


Quote:

BT has made more than £17million in the last six months by charging customers for a privacy service it is advertising as "free". --------- However, BT did not make clear that it would continue charging some 1.7million customers who were already paying £1.75 a month - or £21 a year - for caller display. It failed to spell out that these customers would have to cancel their existing service and then register for BT Privacy in order to avoid charges.

This just highlights the depth of dishonesty within the UK telecommunication industry and, more importantly, the abject failure of the regulator to provide any consumer protection and redress agaisnt this deceit. Ofcom really does need to be disbanded. It is incompetent, impotent and wholly clueless.

Any BT shareholders could also write to the CEO of BT.
OK, possibly slow, but companies do take note - even if the action is not always either full or immediate.

Should complain to the ASA about OfCom.

Isnt exactly comunicating is it! if only.

I'm sure Mr Livingston will be only too pleased to make it free in the future and use it to justify that prices are coming down.  ::)

It's also strange that Ms Jillian G Lewis, Customer Services Director, neglected to mention that the line rental was going up, in her introduction in December's BT Update leaflet. In fact, it appears not to be worthy of a mention in the entire leaflet!  ::)

I think you all possibly miss the point that if BT abolised the charge for their normall caller display service for all customers then they would not be able to justify charging their competitors who buy Wholesale Line Rental from them for Caller Display provided to those customers.  And of course we all know that the whole point of BT Privacy is an attempt by BT to fight back against Ofcom having twisted its arm to raise its own line rental so as to make its BT Wholesale Line Rental product seem cheaper (another outrage but typical of Ofcom's absurd ideas of improving competition).

So it is actually again Ofcom who are to blame for not forcing BT to make Caller Display free for all customers underlyingly using the BT fixed line network when clearly CLI protects against malicious and silent calls and has no real cost to BT to actually operate.

Also were CLI to be universally free on BT physical lines then some of us might at least consider switching our line rental to a WLR provider although we would then have to start using a voip provider given that WLR firms are stupidly not compelled by BT to allow services like 1899 and 18185 to operate on their lines.  It seems that Ofcom's ideas is that call revenue must cross subsidise the loss these companies still make on the basic WLR line rental product whereas I would contend the cost of WLR should be set at a level where a company can make a profit even if a customer only uses it for just Line Rental and routes their voice calls on other networks.

See my other thread on BT maliciously stripping CLIs on all calls coming into the UK from overseas so as to deliberately sabotage the busineses of 1899, 18866 etc.  A complaint that has reached deadlock and is about to go to Otelo.

Here is the thread  www.saynoto0870.com/cgi-bin/forum/YaBB.cgi?num=1137062164/0

Excellent article by the way by Sean Poulter at The Daily Mail.  This man is really becoming something of a journalistic hero on telecoms stories and he is the only journalist on my email list who has ever actually telephoned me or emailed me back to discuss emails to Ofcom etc that I have copied him in on.

Keep up the good work Mr Poulter.

There was an Early Day Motion chaired by Sharon Hodgson in October.

Quote:

EDM 840 That this House believes that British Telecom should automatically make available its free BT Privacy Service to stop unwanted calls to all customers who previously signed up to the service at a cost of £21 a year; and is astonished that BT has no plans to alert paying customers to the fact that the service is now free if they subscribe to BT Privacy and that they say it is up to customers who subscribed in the past to request the change.

Details here.

Dave wrote on Jan 24^th, 2006 at 7:10pm:

There was an Early Day Motion tabled by Sharon Hodgson in October. EDM 840

I see this Parliamentary EDM has 60 signatories compared to 52 now for the anti 0870 motion.

See http://edmi.parliament.uk/EDMi/EDMDetails.aspx?EDMID=29163 and http://edmi.parliament.uk/EDMi/EDMDetails.aspx?EDMID=28872&SESSION=875

Disgraceful though the BT ripoff on still charging many customers for Caller Display when registering for BT Privacy would make it free (and even if you are already registered with the TPS that still doesnt't count unless you register for BT Privacy on top) I would have thought that the 0870 ripoff was even more pervasive and far more costly for most telecoms customers (like it costs them over £100 a year rather than £21 a year).  Also the 0870 ripoff affects all telephone customers whereas the BT Privacy ripoff only affects BT customers not using a Wholesale Line Rental service with another telecoms provider.

I can only assume that because Sharon Hodgson has far more Labour Parliamentary colleagues than the Democratic Unionist MPs this encourages more other people to sign up.  The other strange thing is that many of the signatories of the 0870 and BT Privacy motions do not overlap.  For instance although exactly the same Democratic Unionists have signed up and so have strong anti 0870 supporrters Peter Bottomley and Vince Cable there is incredibly no Lord Tyler of the Lib Dems signed up to the BT Privacy motion.  Somebody needs to go through this list and spot all the people not on the 0870 one and then alert them to that EDM's existence as I am sure they would also sign the 0870 one too if they realised it was there.  Andrew Rosindell and John Randall are two more staunch anti 0870 supporters (who have each asked Parliamentary questions on the issue) but they have not signed this motion.  In fact the fact that it has been tabled by a Labour member seems to have rather put off many of the less well informed (on telecoms issues) Tories from signing up.