That's a very good point.  The thing is I'm not going to complain and rock the boat with them with regard to this just yet as I still prefer the per call charge than the per minute charge most other providers charge.

They increased it in March and again now in September so I'll wait and see if they increase it again but I can't see that happening as then they would be dearer than Call1899 unless of course they plan on increasing their charges?

If you set up a direct debit with call18866 then you can tell your bank that you have been charged incorrectly and they have to put the money back immediately.  It's the Direct Debit guarantee.   8)

I would point out that nobody here or on the MSE Forums appears to have had any problems.

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No email here and I am a regular customer.  They have emailed me to tell me about price cuts so this is pretty shoddy behaviour .  If I hadn't read this thread I would have carried on in blissful ignorance for weeks which is pretty shoddy.  I will make a complaint to them.  Must be a clear breach of trading standards rules not to notify customers of a price change, especially when they have an automated announcement system but leave the connection charge out.

Why does most of modern business seem to rely on fleecing the current customer who has already been captured.

The moment to take more active steps on Voip nears.

Does anyone here use VoipBuster and does it actually work if you have the right kit?

Here is my message of complaint to 18866.

I filed this as a complaint about my bill on the basis that it was most likely to actually get looked at and receive a reply from them.

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Message of Complaint to 18866 about increased connection charge:-

Dear 18866,

You have changed your connection fee for uk geographic calls from 2p to 3p but have failed to email customers to tell them about this.  This means that I did not know about the increase for several days after it had happened but it could have been weeks and weeks until I had looked at my next invoice.

Given that your call price announcement feature does not include the connection in the announcement fee this is sigraceful sharp practice by 18866 of the worst possible kind.

I was a loyal customer of yours who promoted your service extensively but now you have breached my trust and shown that you are untrustworthy sharp operators.

I will be acquiring a voip handset and begin making my calls via voip in retribution for this bad behaviour by your company.

Yours in extreme disappointment.

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But still a nasty taste, possibly spreading to the sister companies? 
In any event I am working my way round advising all my clients using them. 

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I never seem to have done that in the last year or so.  And that's in the course of making thousands of calls with 18866.

Of course there has been the odd time when I have forgotten to diall 18866 altogether or when I have been making an 0845 call and have forgotten to dial the 1280 prefix for BT to avoid TalkTalk.  I only have TalkTalk for their 30 minutes a month of free mobile phone calls.

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Why not teach 18866 a lesson by routing all your calls with 1899 and closing your 18866 account and sending an email to say that their own disgraceful dishonesty is the reason for the loss of your custom.

Of course 1899 charge the same price but at least they haven't tried to deceive me about their call prices so far, whereas 18866 have.  Therefore 1899 deserve my business and 18866 do not.  Also 1899 mobile calls are cheaper so in short why use 18866 any more.

One may or may not be giving one's business to another part of the same operation in a Procter & Gamble and Unilever washing powder kind of a way.  That aspect seems far from clear.  Although I suspect that each variant (18866, 1899 and 18185) is a franchise?  Otherwise surely it would be far better to consolidate them all and then do press or tv advertising for one indirect prefix number?

Also 18866 haven't even replied to my email today so I definitely did the right thing in closing my account with them.