You also have still have not answered why Yourcalls.net has now backtracked on the previous commitment given by someone who was or still is a member of your staff (known by the forum name of macminiuser) on the www.saynoto0870.com discussion forum to the effect that "we don't limit the use of the line in any way if you do 'transfer' it to us.  You can still use 1899, 18186, 18866, access numbers like Telediscount/Dialwise etc, broadband is unaffected etc.  Technically, you could CPS your calls elsewhere if you really wanted to - there's nothing to stop you from doing so" and "I don't know about anyone else, but I'm a staunch 18185 man for calls to mobiles.  I wish them all the best" and "By all means use Dialwise or Telediscount or calling cards or Skype or whatever - but when you need to have an important conversation and can't be dealing with dropped calls and echoey scratchy lines, you won't have to sell your granny to dial direct from your Yourcalls.net line - that's where we're coming from". (see Post Number 4 at www.saynoto0870.com/cgi-bin/forum/YaBB.cgi?num=1161955510/0#0) ; The same member of your staff also made posts to this effect in the www.moneysavingexpert.com discussion forum's home phone calls section.  So can I therefore take it that as with your company deliberately misleading me on 18th February that my 0845 and 0870 calls were part of my calls package or still incorrectly describing the cost of 084 and 087 prefixed calls as Local Rated and National Rated calls that your company just thinks it can tell customers one thing and then do another thing without advising customers it has changed its policy?

I have carefully checked the emails your company has sent me in the last 18 months and not one of them advises me of an alteration to your Terms & Conditions removing my right to use the Indirect Access service.  As BT Retail makes a profit while still allowing its customers to use the Indirect Access service (albeit that they are required to do so by regulation) then I cannot see why your company is unable to also do the same?  I take line rental, Caller Display and the Anytime Calls package from yourcalls.net each month for a cost of over £15 per month or £180 per annum but are you telling me that you cannot make a profit from me unless you also force me to make all my mobile phone calls with you at uncompetitive rates in the weekday daytime?  You could not stop me having a mobile phone with bundled minutes to call mobiles cheaply and avoid using your service that way so why should you be able to stop me calling them on a cheaper carrier than yourcalls.net on my landline using a service that Ofcom's predecessor OFTEL introduced with the very purpose of ensuring more competition in telecoms prices for the consumer.  But now no one seems to want competition in the telecoms industry and you all seem to want to try to lock consumers in to 12 or 18 months contracts in which the customer cannot shop around at all.  This may be justified on a mobile phone contract where an expensive new handset is given to the customer as part of it but how is it justified on a domestic landline where your company is making no up front capital investment in me as a customer whatsoever.  BT Openreach's own document on this technical facility actually confirms that the sole purpose for its creation is in fact anti-competitive.  See http://www.openreach.com/orpg/products/wlr/downloads/isdn2_specific/WDA_PRODUCT_... - "You are therefore able to ensure that all your End User’s calls are routed over the network of your choice, helping you to maximise your call revenues".

Mr Bloodworth you had every opportunity to just rectify the small and quite simple problem I had with your company in it turning off Indirect Access on my phone line when I did not want you to do so but now due to your stubborn intransigence over this matter you force me to pursue with Ofcom the question of your deliberate and persistent breaches of their General Conditions over the description of 084 and 087 prefixed phone call costs on phone bills (for which your company clearly ought to be fined by Ofcom but inevitably will not be), your failure to make available to customers a full price list of all call types a customer can make on their phone line with yourcalls.net and your earlier failure to comply with Ofcom's amended General Condition requiring you to include 03 calls in call packages covering 01 and 02 calls for over 6 months.  There is also the matter of the misleading price indication about the cost of 084/7 calls given by your company on 18th February and your failure to refund most customers for the cost of those calls throughout the entire period of that misleading price indication unless they made a complaint to your company.

Is the reason for your continued unwise intransigence on this matter therefore perhaps because BT Openreach now simply refuses to authorise any new connections using their WLR service for yourcalls that do not deny the customer Indirect Access functionality?  I strongly suspect that this is the real reason I cannot have my Indirect Access functionality back with yourcalls.net but that neither you or BT Openreach are prepared to admit that this is the case.

I look forward to your further comments on this matter.

Yours sincerely,

NGMsGhost - I have posted a reply to you over at MSE: http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=1596609.

Before you rip me a new one, I don't work for Yourcalls.net any more, having left on principle.  The principle being I didn't want to work for a bunch of cowboys, and that I was largely ineffectual in getting them to change any of their "a customer's happiness has no bearing on whether or not we expect them to pay" policies.

Although I now work for Verizon so I've somewhat jumped out of the frying pan and into... well, an even bigger frying pan.

-------- Original Message --------
Subject:      Threat to Unilaterally Terminate My Phone/Broadband Line Without My Agreement
Date:      Tue, 14 Jul 2009 19:13:42 +0100
To:      Owen Bloodworth <owen.bloodworth@comms-factory.com>
CC:      fleur.jarman@comms-factory.com, 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, 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, enquiries@otelo.org.uk
References:      <911D5CF54CAAD24F9222151C54D0579E77F14A72AB@ms01.ONEBILLTELECOM.COM>

Dear Mr Bloodworth,

Threat to Unilaterally Terminate My Phone and Broadband Line Without My Agreement

I have only today read your email dated 3rd July 2009 as I have been away from home first on holiday and then for other reasons for most of the last month.  Your assumption that I had therefore transferred all my call traffic away from yourcalls.net was therefore completely incorrect as I had simply not been at home in order to make any further chargeable calls with your company for most of the intervening period, although I do recall making at least two chargeable mobile phone calls with yourcalls.net at some point in June as well as a chargeable (on my yourcalls.net bill) 0871 call that allowed me to make a mobile phone call more cheaply than at the rates charged by yourcalls.net as well.

Ironically since returning home yesterday I now find that I can once again make use of the 18185.com Indirect Access calls service on my phone line, even though you claimed in your earlier email that being unable to use Indirect Access functionality on my yourcalls.net line was now one of your default new product features and also part of your company's revised terms and conditions.

On the basis that yourcalls.net and/or its contracted wholesale line rental supplier (BT Group) has now restored my ability to use Indirect Access services I therefore now have no wish to move my business away from your company but if of course due to what I would tend to regard as being a rather immature fit of corporate peak you continue to insist that I do so then I would politely request that I be given a little longer to initiate such arrangements and that you do not under any circumstances give unilateral instructions to disconnect my telephone line.  Were my phone line and consequently my broadband service from another unconnected supplier to be disconnected by such action I would be forced to instigate the most vigorous form of complaint about your company's behaviour with both Otelo and with Ofcom.  I think an interesting legal dispute about my loss of broadband service with my contracted supplier (Entanet Group via www.adsl24.co.uk) would be likely to result if you were to take any such action.  A more responsible suggestion on your part would surely have been that you would arrange for my phone line to transfer back to BT by a certain date if I did not take steps to transfer it to another telecoms supplier. Of course perhaps you may tell me that you are not empowered to transfer my line back to BT if you no longer want my business instead of terminating my phone line without my agreement?

With reference to your mention of posts about your company's new refusal to allow your customers to use Indirect Access services that may exist in threads on the www.moneysavingexpert.com and/or the www.saynoto0870.com discussion forums I think you ought to focus rather greater attention on why your company has now taken business decisions that directly contradict assurances previously given on those forums by one of your then members of middle management (a forum member by the name of macminiuser) when I brought my business to your company specifically on the basis of assurances given by that member of your staff that it was not your company's policy to block any customer's use of Indirect Access services.  Of course I note that you also fail to comment on other unacceptable actions by your company such as charging me for 03 calls that should have been part of my Anytime Calls package in direct violation of a revised Ofcom General Condition.  I find it a little odd that you should take such grave exception to my being dissatisfied as a customer with actions by your company that are in themselves inherently inflammatory and provocative but do not seem to think it was in any way wrong for your company to fail to implement an amendment to Ofcom's General Conditions on the date required by Ofcom.

-------- Original Message --------
Subject:      Threat by Yourcalls.net to Unilaterally Terminate Phone/Broadband Line Without My Agreement
Date:      Tue, 14 Jul 2009 20:48:22 +0100
To:      steven.robertson@openreach.co.uk
CC:      tim.barclay@openreach.co.uk, amy.chalfen@openreach.co.uk, anne.heal@openreach.co.uk

Dear Mr Robertson,

Threat by Yourcalls.net to Unilaterally Terminate Phone/Broadband Line Without My Agreement

I thought that you and some of your colleagues might be interested in the below email dialogue with Owen Bloodworth of Comms Factory/YourCalls.net regarding the sudden denial of my ability to access Indirect Access functionality with services such as www.18185.co.uk on my domestic phone line for which the underlying delivery agent appears to be BT Openreach (via Wholesale Line Rental).

The history is that staff from yourcalls.net formerly posted on the www.moneysavingexpert.com and www.saynoto0870.com discussion forums that it was not their company's policy to apply Indirect Access Call Barring to their customer's phone lines before I decided to join them as a customer in late 2007 after a disagreement with Post Office Homephone about their switch from an 0800 to 0845 customer service number and charging me for calls to numbers staring 03 that should have been within my free off peak calls allowance.  More recently I temporarily withdrew my payment mandate with yourcalls.net after they tried to charge me for 0845 and 0870 calls in March and April that they had previously indicated in an email were now part of my inclusive call minutes only to change their mind after the event and decide the calls were only free for those who also took broadband with them.  After this although I provided a new credit card number when the dispute was resolved yourcalls.net still failed to take a payment correctly then and temporarily barred all outgoing chargeable calls access on my line and after it was restored Indirect Access functionality for all Indirect  Access codes on my line was barred (previously Indirect Access functionality had been available).  I queried this with Mr Bloodworth and he maintained it was an intentional act by yourcalls.net and that I was breaching their terms and conditions by using Indirect Access.  But now after a few weeks away from home I return to my home to find that my ability to use Indirect Access functionality has mysteriously returned.

Meanwhile Mr Bloodworth appears to have suffered a fit of peak and has threatened to disconnect my phone line if I do not place an order to move to another phone company by July 17th even though I am now happy to remain with yourcalls.net following restoration of Indirect Access functionality.  I think there are a large number of policy issues connected with a WLR operator threatening to terminate the line of a customer who does not owe them any money due to a personality clash when such an act would also disconnect the customer's broadband service and when the phone company  does not provide the broadband service.  I would have thought that if they no longer wish to keep as a phone line customer the most power they should have is to forcibly revert the customer's line to BT Retail unless the customer expresses a preference for an alternate telecoms company or notifies them that he wishes the line to be ceased.  I should also add that in all the circumstances I would go back to BT Retail were BT Retail not ludicrously demanding a 12 month minimum contract on a piece of wire they installed 18 years ago and where they are making no investment whatsoever in me coming back to them as a customer.  I do not want to be in that position as I may possibly leave this address (either by renting my flat out or by selling it) during the next 12 months.  In either circumstance I would not continue to be the BT customer and might not have a phone line of my own at the address I moved to.

I think someone at BT Openreach needs to investigate if yourcalls.net is entitled to act in this way by threatening to cut off my phone line without my permission when I am not in debt to them and would consequentially also be disconnecting my broadband service that I do not even take from yourcalls.net/Comms Factory Group.  Perhaps you could also investigate why BT Openreach allegedly (according to staff at yourcalls/net who I have challenged this with) provides yourcalls.net with phone call cost information that causes them to give me misleading price indications under the Consumer Protection Act 1987 in my online phone bills by calling 0845 numbers calls "Local Rate" calls and 0870 numbers "National Rate"

I look forward to your comments.

Welcome back from holiday, NGMsGhost. You are back on your usual form keeping us abreast of your plight and your usual non-succinct correspondence.

Having read through the e-mails you have posted today I am left wondering what it is you are actually moaning about. All telephone providers except BT can choose which numbers and access codes they allow their customers to connect to.

You are free to leave YourCalls.net if its service offering no longer comes up to that which you desire. This is the principle of a free market where consumers choose their provider, a process which you are often quick to champion for telecommunications services.

It is interesting to note that you regard the telephone line to your premises as yours. As someone who proclaims to have studied economics, I thought that you would understand that private companies have no obligation to enter into a service agreement with any consumer.