BT are about (October 06) to implement a 10% call price hike and yet nobody appears to have noticed. Not a mention in any of the mass circulation media. BT have achieved the ‘smoke and mirrors’ increase by abolishing the current 5p minimum charge and introducing a 3p “set up charge” - at first glance this may appear to be a price reduction.  On top of this cheeky little move, BT have also introduced ‘whole minute call charging’ to replace the current ‘per second billing’.  Both measures appear benign, but the overall effect is a 10% increase in call cost for calls averaging 15 minutes in length.

I have produced a computer program that generated 500 random length calls lasting from 6 seconds to 30 minutes.  The results have been based on the normal 3p/minute day time tariff.

The current cost of 500 calls is £223.95 (Average call cost 44.70p)
The new cost of 500 calls will be £246.54 (Average call cost 49.20p) - An increase of 10.1%    

Recalculation for 500 calls lasting from 6 seconds to 20 minutes, produces an increase of 14.2%

This price hike was cleverly disguised and announced under the camouflage of  ‘call option reductions’. The increasing use of non-geographical number, means that more calls will be excluded from BT’s call options anyway.

See also this thread on the recent BT hikes.

BT recently covered the nation's billboards with messages, the most cynical of which has got to be "BT has cut its call package prices", with a web address (www.bt.com/millions) that leads to pages with more propaganda on.

NGM, whole minute charging will not apply to calls to 0870 numbers, it will only apply to UK geographical calls, international calls and UK mobile calls. The rate of 0870 numbers will go down to 7p/min during the daytime, but will still attract the "call setup fee".

kk, perhaps you can adapt your program to look at how much this will cost consumers who are calling mobile phones from BT landlines. At 13p/min for calls to the four GSM networks (O2/Vodafone/Orange/T-Mobile) during the daytime, with whole minute charging, an aborted call to an answering 'service' will cost 16p !! 

The other thing to note here is that Talk Talk have followed BT like sheep. They have also introduced whole minute charging and connection charges at roughly the same time. This is discussed here.

Hi NGM

The 3p connection fee is on top of the 7.51p per minute call rate for 0870

kk wrote on Sep 30^th, 2006 at 2:53pm:


Dave claimed that 0870 was actually going down from 7.51p to 7p per minute as well so I assume BT will claim the average result leaves the average 0870 caller better off as most calls are longer than 6 minutes?.........................

Its a shame that Dave still seems unable to make any comment on DaveM making a vitriolic attack yesterday on a new lady forum member in Geographical Requestss in a thread that has now been deleted.  And this wouldn't be the first time DaveM has done this kind of thing either.

kk wrote on Sep 30^th, 2006 at 4:01pm:


An undertaking as to Stephen Carter's next career move perhaps?

kk wrote on Oct 6^th, 2006 at 6:18am:


Suggest you send these figures to your MP and ask him to refer the matter to the Parliamentary Ombudsman as an example of Ofcom failing in their duties to promote competition and protect the UK Citizen Consumer.

Ofcom outline the procedure for complaining about them via the ombudsman on their own website:-

www.ofcom.org.uk/about/accoun/complaints/

Quote:


I had hoped Ofcom was out of date on the Parliamentary Ombudsman using an 0845 number but unfortunately can see that sadly they are not.  You might therefore care to throw in an additional complaint with your MP to get the Ombudsman to investigate their own inappropriate use of a number that hugely discriminates against citizens calling from overseas and mobile phones and from anyone with a fixed price 01/02 landline calling plan.

The fact that the Parliamentary Ombudsman uses an 0845 number surely says it all!