well... there's good news and there's bad news.  the good news is the new sign-up process has been deployed:

[url="https://www.yourcalls.net:443/Features/SignUp.aspx"]https://www.yourcalls.net:44...[/url]

It looks lovely, and is much more helpful than the old application form... however, one of the directors at the last minute decided they were going to pull the plug on the CPS option - you can see on the first section of the signup page where there is clearly meant to be more than one option - it's all there, ready to go but the guy in charge made the decision to switch it off.  (from what I understand, it could be switched on again relatively easily - all the infrastructure is there and has been tested).

So, basically I lose.  Sorry everyone, but I give up - I've pushed as hard as I can at this end.

If you're in the market for a no-contract CPS £4.99 a month anytime UK calls package, send an email for the attention of the decision maker, Ben Giddings: customer.services@yourcalls.net telling him you want the Anytime product but without the line rental.

Clearly the powers that be aren't listening to me, but I'm sure with your persuasion, we can get him to turn it back on.

Have i missed something, how are BT Unlimited Weekend Plan Customers ( Formerly Option 1 ) paying for other customers inclusive weekend calls?

On 3rd June I spoke to yourcalls.net and we ascertained that for some reason they had trouble processing the card payment, even though I have no issues with the Mastercard in question.  Following this and having now successfully taken the outstanding payment using the same credit card they then de-restricted my line so that it was again available for outgoing calls on their Anytime calls plan.  However when I tried to make a call last night (4th June) to a mobile number using the 18185 indirect access code I received a BT Global generated network message saying I did not have access to any indirect access services on my phone line and I should contact my telephone service provider for any further queries about that.  After calling yourcalls.net today and carrying out various tests we have also now established that I cannot use 1280 or any other indirect access code, even though they say they have changed nothing on their system to bar or restrict my use of indirect access services.

I strongly suspect that the decision to bar my phone line access to indirect access services is not one that has been taken by Yourcalls.net customer service staff but reflects some change in contractual terms between BT Global (Wholesale/Openreach) so that any new customer for WLR access services has access to indirect access services automatically barred to them so that they are forced to make all their calls with their WLR telecoms provider.   This is no doubt sold to www.yourcalls.net (or their parent company Comms Factory Ltd of Premium House, The Esplanade, Worthing, West Sussex, BN11 2BJ.) on the basis that it is more profitable for them but the reality is that BT actually offers the service because it is good for it commercially because most customers with WLR providers who formerly used indirect access services will now be so furious that their indirect access services have been barred by their current telecoms provider that they will immediately feel like leaving their current provider and moving back to BT Retail (where BT is required by regulation to allow access to all indirect access code services).  Another of BT's longstanding little tricks in that regard is that if I have trouble connecting to another phone number because the call is misrouting to the wrong number and I ring 100 on my yourcalls.net line (or before that PostOffice Homephone) and allow the BT operator to connect the call (made necessary by a network defect) the next thing I find will be a £4 operator connection fee on my phone bill that I was not warned about.  But if I was a BT Retail customer and called the operator on 100 the call would be connected by the operator at normal rates and the discretionary operator fee would not be charge to BT Retail's own customers.  All of this amounts to a well established pattern of anti competitive behaviour by BT to try and force customers who have moved to WLR elsewhere to come back to BT Retail and become locked in to a 1 year rolling contract with BT as a result of doing so.

As my service for making calls with yourcalls.net was only temporarily suspended due to an administrative error on their part in taking payment and as I did not change my contractual terms with them I would now be very grateful if BT Global (aka BT Wholesale, aka BT Openreach) could lift the bar to indirect access services on my phone number (XXXXX XXXXXX) that it has imposed without my own or yourcalls.net's apparent permission and without me being notified of any altered contractual terms that allowed such a bar on indirect access services to be imposed.  If this does not happen I intend to pursue the matter with vigour with Otelo and Ofcom as an example of particularly abusive anti competitive behaviour by BT Group designed to limit the success of its commercial rivals in selling phone services that make use of the BT Global Wholesale Line Rental platform.

-------- Original Message --------
Subject:      Unauthorised Implementation of Indirect Access Calls Barring By Yourcalls.net
Date:      Fri, 05 Jun 2009 19:08:54 +0100
To:      ian.livingston@bt.com
CC:      hanif.lalani@bt.com, gavin.patterson@bt.com, colin.forward@comms-factory.com, mike.thornley@comms-factory.com, owen.bloodworth@comms-factory.com, stuart.mcintosh@ofcom.org.uk, stewart.purvis@ofcom.org.uk, claudio.pollack@ofcom.org.uk, peter.phillips@ofcom.org.uk, ed.richards@ofcom.org.uk, OfcomAdvisoryCommitteeEngland@ofcom.org.uk, acodp@ofcom.org.uk, anna.bradley@communicationsconsumerpanel.org.uk, dominic.ridley@communicationsconsumerpanel.org.uk, jonathan.may@oft.gov.uk, john.fingleton@oft.gov.uk, vivienne.dews@oft.gov.uk, david.saunders@competition-commission.org.uk, rachel.merelie@competition-commission.org.uk, igor.tracchia@finarea.ch, service@finarea.ch, info@finarea.ch, clive.hillier@ofcom.org.uk, gareth.davies@ofcom.org.uk

Dear Mr Livingston,

Thank you for your below reply to my email indicating that you are willing to assist the CEO of yourcalls.net in addressing the issue I am facing with the unwanted introduction of Indirect Access calls barring on my phone line if www.yourcalls.net are not able to achieve its removal in conjunction with their usual account person at Openreach.

On further researching the matter I see that the announcement I now experience when I try to dial an Indirect Access code (“Sorry, you may not use indirect access codes from this line. Please contact your
telephone Service Provider.”) is detailed in Section 2.19 IA - Call Barring on Page 16 of Ofcom's document to be found at www.ofcom.org.uk/telecoms/groups/wholesale_line_rental/working_papers/wlr_e2e.pd... entitled Wholesale Line Rental "Industry End to End Process Description".  Also according to the document "Indirect Access Call Barring (IACB) is a network based feature which rejects any outgoing call attempt by an End User using an Indirect Access code."  Since yourcalls.net deliver their entire service using Wholesale Line Rental I find it curious that their customer service staff would seem to be totally unaware of the contents of this document or of a call barring message that they have possibly allowed to be introduced on to one of their customer's phone lines.  Nonetheless I feel sure that the technical ability to remove this restriction from my phone line ultimately lies with BT Openreach rather than with www.yourcalls.net

Regards,

-------- Original Message --------
Subject:      Hiding Behind Terms & Conditions Re Indirect Access + Breaches of Ofcom General Conditions
Date:      Mon, 08 Jun 2009 19:32:21 +0100
To:      owen.bloodworth@comms-factory.com
CC:      ian.livingston@bt.com, gavin.patterson@bt.com, colin.forward@comms-factory.com, mike.thornley@comms-factory.com, stuart.mcintosh@ofcom.org.uk, stewart.purvis@ofcom.org.uk, claudio.pollack@ofcom.org.uk, peter.phillips@ofcom.org.uk, ed.richards@ofcom.org.uk, OfcomAdvisoryCommitteeEngland@ofcom.org.uk, acodp@ofcom.org.uk, anna.bradley@communicationsconsumerpanel.org.uk, dominic.ridley@communicationsconsumerpanel.org.uk, jonathan.may@oft.gov.uk, john.fingleton@oft.gov.uk, vivienne.dews@oft.gov.uk, david.saunders@competition-commission.org.uk, rachel.merelie@competition-commission.org.uk, igor.tracchia@finarea.ch, service@finarea.ch, info@finarea.ch, clive.hillier@ofcom.org.uk, gareth.davies@ofcom.org.uk, chris.rowsell@ofcom.org.uk, fleur.jarman@comms-factory.com, colette.bowe@ofcom.org.uk, philip.graf@ofcom.org.uk, robert.thelen-bartholomew@ofcom.org.uk, hanif.lalani@bt.com, michael.rake@bt.com, tony.chanmugam@bt.com

Dear Mr Bloodworth,

Hiding Behind Terms & Conditions Over "Indirect Access" Availability Removal vs Repeated Breaches of Ofcom General Conditions by www.yourcalls.net

I am in receipt of your below email in relation to the blocking of the Indirect Access facility on my phone line (telephone number ***********) by yourcalls.net and/or BT Openreach.

I must say that I am very disappointed indeed by your response as it clearly represents the apparent easy way out for you without having to then bother to take the time and trouble to actually investigate how the block on Indirect Access on my phone line came in to effect and/or why I and many other longstanding customers with YourCalls.net have continued to be allowed to use Indirect Access regardless of what you now claim is in your Terms & Conditions.  However given that companies can change their Terms & Conditions at any time to a customer's disadvantage I am perfectly prepared to believe that you amended your Terms & Conditions to contain that clause just before you emailed me.  Why should I have any faith at all in what your company tells me when you are still in breach of an Ofcom General Condition related billing guidance by describing calls to 0845 and 0870 numbers on customer bills as being a  "National Rated Call" and a "Local Rated Call" when Ofcom has specifically told you that you must no longer make such claims about those numbers.  Even more incredibly you still describe 0844 numbers as being a "Local Rated Call" as you did for my call on 9th April 2009 at 12.27pm to 0844 2484951.  I am sure that if I actually called an 0871 number you would probably and try still describe that as being a "National Rated Call", despite them being no such thing and regulatory responsibility being imminently in the process of being transferred to PhonePay Plus.

I find it a bit much that you refer me to abiding by your Terms & Conditions that you had not notified me, at any time in the last 18 months with you as a customer, that you had altered when you felt quite free for six or more months after August 2007 to breach Ofcom's amended General Condition requiring calls to 03 numbers to be charged at 01/02 rates (with yourcalls instead charging them at g9 multimedia rate) and then also felt at liberty to make a deliberately misleading price indication on February 18th 2009 by sending me an email telling me that my 0845 and 0870 calls were now covered by my Anytime calls plan only to send an email on 8th April saying that had been an error and that only customers who also switched their broadband service to you would get 0845 and 0870 calls included in their calls package (unlike BT customers who would get them without taking broadband from BT).  Then to add insult to injury you indicated you intended to only not charge for the 0845 and 0870 calls on which you had given customers a misleading price indication that they were now free between 18th February 2009 and 28th February 2009 and that you appeared to require us the customer to pick up the tab for your error from 1st March 2009 to 8th April 2009.  Only after a complaint did you agree to refund the cost of those 0845 and 0870 calls from 1st March to 8th April 2009 and your company then still refused to correct the invoices it had sent me to correctly show the status of those calls as being free calls.  So I don't think I need any lecturing in abiding by Terms & Conditions by your company when you seem to feel quite free to breach Ofcom General Conditions on a regular basis knowing that lethargic and telco friendly Ofcom will of course fail to impose any financial penalty at all for these flagrant breaches of their own rules by one of the companies that also pays the membership fees of their staff.