I am currently having to leave www.yourcalls.net who I have had a serious disagreement with and am trying to decide whether to go back to BT or to another telco such as PostOffice HomePhone or Primus (who currently have a new WLR deal where you pay your line rental direct to them).

As a result I thought it was useful to do a survey on which non BT telcos using ex BT lines where you pay all your line rental to them (so called WLR or LLU phone providers) still allow use of Indirect Access phone services like www.18185.co.uk etc

So if everyone reading this thread could also take part in the above Poll it would be very much appreciated.

Two things are critical to my own decision making process on switching telcos:-

1. The telco I move to must allow use of Indirect Access Services such as www.18185.co.uk and www.1899.com as many WLR/LLU phone services that you can take ex BT lines to from companies like TalkTalk and Sky now tend to block use of the Indirect Access services like 1899.  If this is the case on your line you will get a message similar to "Indirect Access Services are barred on this line.  Please contact your telephone company for more information" when you try dialling the four or five digits of the Indirect Access code.  Even if you have not signed up with 1899 or a similar service on your line you should still get a message saying you have not yet signed up with them on your line if Indirect Access is not currently barred.

(b) The contract period must be as short as possible and preferably no more than one month.  Unfortunately this seems to very much limit my choice at the present moment as incredibly BT, who installed my ancient copper wire phone line 18 years ago, think I should sign a one year minimum term contract as punishment for ever having left them whilst most of their competitors apart from Post Office Homephone (no minimum contract) have a 12 month minimum contract with only Primus seeming to have a shorter 6 month contract.  But I am loathed to go to Post Office Homephone because they do not offer an Anytime calls package and their call charges for chargeable calls in the weekday daytime to 01/02 numbers are now 4p per minute + 8p connection!

So in order to  better inform my decision if you can respond to the Poll above and then post in the thread to say which telco you are currently with and whether they allow or block Indirect Access (1280, 18185 etc) and also indicate what you think the minimum contract term is with your current telco for a new customer bringing across an existing ex BT line from another telco in the thread then I would be very grateful.

If I don't wish to be signed up for minimum of either 12 or 18 months of minimum contract slavery then my only choices seem to be either Post Office HomePhone for phone only with no minimum contract term (i.e. the original BT deal before they joined the telecoms mafia cartel) or www.thephone.coop with a minimum 3 month contract followed by 30 days notice.  In reality this is just a 2 month contract to all intents and purposes as you can give the 30 days notice after you have been a customer for 2 months with no extra penalty they tell me.  The 3 months does not auto renew every 3 months in the way favoured by BT and the other bastardos of the telecoms world.  Unfortunately their broadband products all have 18 month contract terms so they can forget that.

www.thephone.coop is appealing from the point of view of being a small CoOp company with only 30 staff with real people who give you their surnames on the end of the line but unfortunately their Anytime Call plan also seems very overpriced.  However their deal for old fashioned chargeable calls at all times is fairly good with a minimum charge of only just over 1p per call on one of their two basic call plans but as there is no free evening or weekend calls with that and their mobile calls are expensive by anyone's criteria it is vital I should be able to still use 18185.  They seem to think I will be able to use Indirect Access but can't seem to give me a cast iron guarantee of that before I become a customer.

If anyone is a customer of PostOffice Homephone here (fairly likely) or The Phone CoOp (fairly unlikely) and can tell me about using Indirect Access (i.e 18185, 1301 etc) it would be very much appreciated.

I suppose on balance if PostOffice HomePhone still allow Indirect Access I will go there due to also getting the free evening and weekend 01/02 calls and the free weekend mobile calls.  If they have barred Indirect Access and The Phone Coop have not then I will go there.

Well you can ask BT for a Temporary line - no minimm term, standard call rates, everything else as normal.  But there's an extra £100 fee on setup ....

irrelevant wrote on Aug 14^th, 2009 at 5:01pm:

Well you can ask BT for a Temporary line - no minimm term, standard call rates, everything else as normal.  But there's an extra £100 fee on setup ....

Why do I have to pay BT £100 to reconnect a line that is already physically connected to BT Openreach's network and where no engineer from BT Openreach or yourcalls.net or BT Retail is visiting my property or the phone exchange.  All that is changing is where the billing record for the line is invoiced to.

This is just deliberately competitive behaviour to blackmail you in to taking their discount packages so that you then become locked in to rolling 12 month contracts you can't leave.  The BT Weekend Calls Plan line rental is over 50% more expensive than BT Standard line rental but BT Standard had no minimum contract terms for customers rejoining BT from another telecoms provider.

How can Ofcom possibly justify the absurdly competitive practices now going on in the telecoms industry so that all the big names land grab as many customers as possible and then try to chain them down so they can't leave?  BT charge £137 or whatever it is a year minimum for my line rental and my life giving water company pipe only charges £10 per annum standing charge!  If I buy Shell petrol one week they aren't allowed to make it a term condition of getting my petrol from them that I can't fill up with anyone else than Shell for the rest of the year................

before you sign up to POST OFFICE BROADBAND/HOME FONE, please read reviews on POST OFFICE BROADBAND REVIEWS.youre letting yourself in for a load of hastle,i know,JUST joined them,FOOL i am.wish i had read reviews 1st.

glasgowtam wrote on Aug 20^th, 2009 at 7:16pm:

before you sign up to POST OFFICE BROADBAND/HOME FONE, please read reviews on POST OFFICE BROADBAND REVIEWS.youre letting yourself in for a load of hastle,i know,JUST joined them,FOOL i am.wish i had read reviews 1st.

Hi there glasgowtam and firstly many thanks for both joining the forum and posting in this thread.

I regret to say that rightly or wrongly yesterday I gave the transfer instruction for just my phone line alone to move to Post Office Homephone but not my broadband.  My broadband is staying where it is with www.adsl24.co.uk as I use more than 5Gb data per month (the PO Homephone cheap service) and I am prepared to pay £5 per month more than P O Homephone's so called unlimited service to have a genuinely decent broadband service with ADSL24.

My decision on the phone line front is on the basis that P O Homephone clearly do still allow Indirect Access (they say in their terms and conditions that they reserve the right to restrict your use of your phone for outgoing calls if you use the Indirect Access facility too much which therefore implies that it clearly is not barred and as I will be using 18185 there should be no way for them to know how much I am using it as they will not be billed for those calls unlike a call via say 1280 with BT on one of their lines) and that a PO Homephone only line only requires 14 days to move elsewhere.  I was with P O Homephone before and there is nothing in particular wrong with the phone service.  It is the broadband service that is rubbish, which is why it is cheap.

At the end of the day if I have any problems I can move elsewhere with 14 days notice but my only issue then is that most other phone line rental companies now have a one year minimum contract (including BT) and only www.thephone.coop (3 months and then 1 months notice after the first 2 months) and Primus Home Saver (6 months auto renewing contract) have a shorter notice period. :o >:( :'(

I am now with Post Office Homephone and am having no trouble at all making weekday daytime calls with 18185 while I let evening and weekend 01/02, 0845 and 0870 calls route with P O Homephone who offer them free for up to an hour at those times.  In addition weekend calls of up to an hour to UK mobile numbers are also free. [smiley=tekst-toppie.gif]

So if anyone needs to leave a telco they are with and doesn't want to move to another one with a minimum one year contract then P O Homephone seems to be a pretty good bet with its notice to leave them again of only 14 days. [smiley=thumbsup.gif]

NGMsGhost wrote on Sep 19^th, 2009 at 10:54am:

I am now with Post Office Homephone and am having no trouble at all making weekday daytime calls with 18185 while I let evening and weekend 01/02, 0845 and 0870 calls route with P O Homephone who offer them free for up to an hour at those times.  In addition weekend calls of up to an hour to UK mobile numbers are also free. [smiley=tekst-toppie.gif] So if anyone needs to leave a telco they are with and doesn't want to move to another one with a minimum one year contract then P O Homephone seems to be a pretty good bet with its notice to leave them again of only 14 days. [smiley=thumbsup.gif]

They are not "free", they are inclusive, to receive them included you need to pay the line rental, therefore NOT "free"!

Free = at no cost, exempt from charge etc.

derrick wrote on Sep 20^th, 2009 at 10:37am:

They are not "free", they are inclusive, to receive them included you need to pay the line rental, therefore NOT "free"! Free = at no cost, exempt from charge etc.

Derrick,

I am only too well aware the calls are not genuinely free as P O Homephone's line rental is about £1.75 more than some of the cheapest companies in the marketplace but all those companies have a 12 month minimum contract term that I refuse to be enslaved by (I may either move from here or let out my place within the next 12 months).  Also the Post Office's best cheap deal in an area like this with no cheap LLU providers is on its combined phone and broadband package where for only £8.75 extra on top of the line rental you can have basic broadband with a 5Gb per month allowance.  However I have not gone for the latter (a) because it has a 12 month minimum contract and (b) because P O Homephone broadband has a reputation for shocking quality with speeds falling to near nil at peak times.

Nonetheless the free mobile call thing at the weekend is worth quite a lot as there are a couple of people I know who are only contactable by mobile and a 60 minute call at 5p per minute is worth £3.  The free evening and weekend 0845 call thing is far less valuable because the vast majority of the 0845 numbers for which no geographic alternative can be found have closed their doors to the public at 5pm or 5.30pm before the 0845 calls become free at 6pm.............

I still am at a loss to understand why P O Homephone do not also have an Anytime calls plan add on option given that everyone else in the marketplace does.

NGMsGhost wrote on Sep 20^th, 2009 at 10:54am:

I still am at a loss to understand why P O Homephone do not also have an Anytime calls plan add on option given that everyone else in the marketplace does.

They do to a certain extent....

Unlimited anytime calls to all other Post Office home phone users


However not to everyone though

How would you know if you were telephoning someone, if they were Post Office home phone users or not?

sherbert wrote on Sep 20^th, 2009 at 11:10am:

They do to a certain extent.... Unlimited anytime calls to all other Post Office home phone users

Completely useless though, just as it was when that was what TalkTalk offered.  Am I expected to get everyone I know to move their phone service to P O Homephone?  I think not.  Also most of the people I would need to call in the weekday daytime are large organisations and I definitely can't influence their choice of phone company and nor indeed can they even move to Post Office Homephone (the clue is in the word home I think).

The free weekend mobile calls deal is potentially worth a fortune to parents who have children at college who only have a mobile phone to call them on.

Coming back to the original topic of this thread I am rather disappointed by the high percentage of you who still seem to have your phone line with BT. :o

NGMsGhost wrote on Sep 20^th, 2009 at 11:16am:

Coming back to the original topic of this thread I am rather disappointed by the high percentage of you who still seem to have your phone line with BT. :o

I am afraid I am one of your disappointments, NGMsGhost. ;)

Ok, perhaps I could get it cheaper but my quarterly bill from BT which includes Broadband option 1, telephone option 2, calls, line rental, VAT and everything else comes to £75, which is about £5.80 per week. These options suit me and I have to speak as I find, but I have never had any problems with BT, connections, customer service  or Broadband. Ok my speed never gets beyond 2 Mbs but that does not cause me any inconvenience.

So, for the price of a couple of pints of beer a week, my charges, to me don't seem excessive......No doubt you will disagree!!! ;)

I would be interested in your views NGMsGhost. :)

NGMsGhost wrote on Sep 20^th, 2009 at 10:54am:

derrick wrote on Sep 20th, 2009 at 10:37am: They are not "free", they are inclusive, to receive them included you need to pay the line rental, therefore NOT "free"! Free = at no cost, exempt from charge etc. Derrick, I am only too well aware the calls are not genuinely free as P O Homephone's line rental is about £1.75 more than some of the cheapest companies in the marketplace but all those companies have a 12 month minimum contract term that I refuse to be enslaved by (I may either move from here or let out my place within the next 12 months).  Also the Post Office's best cheap deal in an area like this with no cheap LLU providers is on its combined phone and broadband package where for only £8.75 extra on top of the line rental you can have basic broadband with a 5Gb per month allowance.  However I have not gone for the latter (a) because it has a 12 month minimum contract and (b) because P O Homephone broadband has a reputation for shocking quality with speeds falling to near nil at peak times. Nonetheless the free mobile call thing at the weekend is worth quite a lot as there are a couple of people I know who are only contactable by mobile and a 60 minute call at 5p per minute is worth £3.  The free evening and weekend 0845 call thing is far less valuable because the vast majority of the 0845 numbers for which no geographic alternative can be found have closed their doors to the public at 5pm or 5.30pm before the 0845 calls become free at 6pm............. I still am at a loss to understand why P O Homephone do not also have an Anytime calls plan add on option given that everyone else in the marketplace does.

They are NOT free at all!

My gripe is people, (including the telcos), calling them free when they are not!
If they where free you would not need to pay a line rental, so stop the use of free and use the correct word "inclusive"



NGMsGhost wrote on Sep 20^th, 2009 at 11:16am:

Coming back to the original topic of this thread I am rather disappointed by the high percentage of you who still seem to have your phone line with BT. :o

I am still with BT for line rental, because to change to practically anywhere else, as I have CPS and BB with Virgin, would cost me more than the £21.24 I pay in total for line rental, BB and CPS with inclusive, (not free), weekend and evening calls, because Virgin said if I moved to PO Home phone for my line rental and calls, that would mean I would no longer be on a bundle and my BB would cost me £18. per month.

I looked at moving to the Tiscali re this offer, (option 2); - http://www.tiscali.co.uk/products/talk/index-talk.html?code=ZZ-NL-12WU&srccode=COD_616  this would only save £1.25 per month after the initial 3 months offer, but am unsure about Tiscali's service, as I believe they had/have a lot of issues.

derrick wrote on Sep 20^th, 2009 at 11:51am:

They are NOT free at all! My gripe is people, (including the telcos), calling them free when they are not! If they where free you would not need to pay a line rental, so stop the use of free and use the correct word "inclusive"

So we share the same gripe then Derrick as I feel exactly the same way as you.  I would rather P O Homephone only charged £9 per month line rental and did not give me these so called "free" extras.  No doubt if BT Retail weren't allowed to offer Caller Display on a so called "free" basis to BT Privacy customers (so they can get them listed by TPS and then stop their competitors calling them) then the charge for Caller Display made by BT Wholesale/Openreach wouldn't be anything close to the £1.75 per month that BT's competitors mainly all charge for the service.  Caller Display is a built in hardware feature of mobile networks for which they don't charge anything but BT are still allowed by OfCoN to charge for a 25 year old feature as though it were a luxury extra on a landline. :o >:(

My only point was that while being forced in to the arms of P O Homephone after a disagreement with my last supplier (yourcalls.net) and finding P O Homephone the only company without a long term contractual commitment at least they offer some useful additional features for their otherwise high line rental charge (my monopoly water company only charge £5 for 6 months standing charge).  But yes I agree it would be better if they only charged £9 per month line rental.  But it is BT who have started all the rot with the lunatics at Ofcom deregulating their pricing and BT then abusing it by massively increasing the per minute charge for 01/02/03 calls and bringing in larger and larger connection fees every other month.  It is OfCon and BT that are principally to blame.  Because BT still has Significant Market Power in the telecoms industry and most of you lot haven't even left them (something I take pride in having done) the rest of the industry having to follow them on pricing is more or less inevitable.

I still plan to move completely to a mobile network for my broadband and get rid of my ripoff landline when connection speeds on mobiles and robustness of mobiles exceed landlines and/or it is a much cheaper deal for those of us in living in country non LLU areas.  This must come sooner than in LLU areas because fixed line broadband but not mobile broadband is more expensive in the countryside (in the countryside our main penalty is mobile broadband being slower due to the greater distance from the transmitter).

NGMsGhost wrote on Sep 20^th, 2009 at 5:10pm:

Caller Display is a built in hardware feature of mobile networks for which they don't charge anything

Before someone else says it - this is untrue, the charge for Caller Display is part of the high per minute rates paid to call from and to mobile networks.

SilentCallsVictim wrote on Sep 20^th, 2009 at 6:44pm:

Before someone else says it - this is untrue, the charge for Caller Display is part of the high per minute rates paid to call from and to mobile networks.

Please quote your factual source for this statement SCV.  Also with BT call charges soon reaching over 5p per minute for ordinary 01/02 calls in the weekday daytime it will be hard to spot much difference in these high per minute rates compared to mobile phones.

Or were you perhaps referring to the high call termination charges by mobile networks compared to landlines? ;)

NGMsGhost wrote on Sep 20^th, 2009 at 5:10pm:

derrick wrote on Sep 20th, 2009 at 11:51am: They are NOT free at all! My gripe is people, (including the telcos), calling them free when they are not! If they where free you would not need to pay a line rental, so stop the use of free and use the correct word "inclusive" So we share the same gripe then Derrick as I feel exactly the same way as you...................... .

Then stop calling them "free" as they are not!

Try not paying your line rental then see if they will supply you with the free, inclusive calls. they won't because you are not paying them anything!

Even 0800, 0808, 0500,100, 999, 112, are not free from your landline for the same reasons I mentioned above, if you don't pay your line rental you will not receive the calls!

FREE = NO charge!

The only,(?), true free calls, (to the caller), are 0800, 0808, 0500, 100, 999,112, called from a, (BT?), payphone, as to receive them inclusive from a landline means you are paying a line rental, therefore a charge!

There is no reason for the long post, or for you, (and others), to keep calling them "free", similarly to not calling 0845 "local rate", WE don't do that because it is misleading, so is calling the inclusive calls "free"!


Even BOGOFF's in supermarkets are not one "free", as you have to buy one to receive another one, therefore a charge! FREE = NO charge!