Quote:OK - would somebody give me either a draft or the facts about average geographic UK rates and I'll willingly stick my head above the parapet?
You mean the average price for calls starting 01 and 02 as opposed to 084/7?
On a normal home BT phone line one can make a call to a geographic number starting 01 or 02 for as little as 2p with
http://www.call18866.co.uk. The call then still costs 2p even if your call lasts 4 hours.
Of course you can currently call uk 01 and 02 numbers for nothing at all with
http://www.voipbuster.co.uk and
http://www.voipcheap.co.uk But then you have to be prepared to use a computer to make your call and buy a voip headset or handset.
The BT deal for geographic numbers is 3p per minute weekday daytime and 5.5p for the first hour in the evenings and at the weekends. Other providers like TalkTalk and Onetel charge slightly less than BT for geographic numbers. But then you can also get 24/7 inclusive calling plans to geographic numbers for under £10 per month. TalkTalk currently give you the first 3 months of their all inclusive plan free. Their advertising wrongly describes this as all uk "landline" calls being free for 3 months.
0870 calls cost 7.5p per minute weekday daytime with BT and almost no one seems able to undercut them as they charge their competitors more for terminating these calls. You can call 0870 for 5p per minute though with
www.dialaround.co.uk on their 0844 access number. Off peak no one is able to undercut the BT 0870 rate of 4p per minute in the evening and 1.5p per minute at the weekend. 0845 cost 3p per minute weekday daytime with BT and 4p per minute with other people like TalkTalk. Off peak the BT 0845 rate is 1p per minute or 60p per hour.
Then there are BT phone boxes where a 15 minute call to an 01 or 02 number costs 30p but a 15 minute call to 0845 and 0870 costs £1.75 at all times. A 15 minute call to an 0844 or 0871 number costs £2.05 for 15 minutes from a BT Phonebox.
And what about mobile phones. Vodafone, Orange and Three exclude 0870 from their bundled minutes and charge a premium rate of up to 50p per minute depending on the plan you are on.
There are so many outrageous differences between non geographic and geographic numbers pricing wise that it positively makes my blood boil to hear most of the morons who work in these call centres brazenly still telling customers that calls cost just the BT local or national rate.
I think there's some more information in Dave's locked threads at the top of this section of the discussion forum.