BT do week end AND evening calls (up to an hour) for free if you sign up to the 12 month contract.

Primus Saver Option  2 CPS gives free evening and weekend UK 01/02/03 calls of up to 1½ hours each for £0.00 per month - 30 day contract.

After so many months the free evening calls disappear and then at the end of the 12 months the contract auto renews for another 12 months with you committed to paying the extra for the free evening calls plan for the next year and unable to leave (without big penalties).  BT won't tell you when the contract auto renews (you will have to remember to cancel at the right time) and this is the whole point of their suckering you in with the initial free evening calls offer.

This First Telecom plan is interesting for someone who is sometimes home on weekdays but doesn't make enough calls in total to justify paying the extra for BT Option 3 or equivalents.  Obviously no one can beat TalkTalk's broadband and phone deal but then you have to accept both a crap slow broadband service and sign up for 18 months.

Also this First Telecom plan has no connection fee and no per minute rounding up on weekday daytime calls.  Again pretty unusual these days.

People are often busy when the renewal comes through and put it on one side.  That is what they are relying on.  Also BT might forget to send their renewal letter and blame it on the post or email spam filtering (if using online billing).  

I repeat if BT intends to go on offering these attractive call plan deals and to offer customers excellent service then why do they need to lock anyone in for a 12 month term?

Unlike a broadband connection fee there is no high up front initial connection fee or one off free broadband wireless router cost being subsidised so why do they need to lock you in for an extended term?  Presumably only because they expect to recover the free evening calls period by you then paying the full cost of the evening calls plan (formerly Option Two) for the next year or two?  

It would appear you have never moved home for instance then and that you are an undemanding broadband customer (not downloading movies or other large files).  BT consistently get one of the worst customer ratings for broadband at www.dslzoneuk.net  Even TalkTalk now do considerably better than BT and their rating is rising month by month while BT's is not.

I am mystified at this bizarrely sense of loyalty and warm fuzzy feeling that some people seem to feel towards staying with the old bloated, highly inefficient state monopoly operator.

I have always found BT to have some of the rudest and most indifferent customer service staff of any company I know.

That is not mose people's experience of BT as a company.

Still there always has to be the exception that proves the rule.

oldharryrocks wrote on Apr 15^th, 2008 at 7:06pm:


They only do that because Ofcom says they have to as the incumbent telco with Significant Market Power.  If they didn't have to do that they would stop you calling with other companies at the very first opportunity.  Look at how they have rushed to lock people in to 12 months rolling contracts as soon as Ofcom removed controls that stopped them from doing so.  When you are as large as BT there should be no need for 12 month rolling contracts.  When you are building up a brand like TalkTalk or Tiscali and giving huge subsidies to new customers there are more reasons to lock them in contractually at the outset.  Also your BT line rental is only as high as it now is because you are paying to give BT customers who are too idle to move elsewhere or use other carriers free weekend calls as a way to squash out innovative companies like yourcalls.net (who now canot compete)

I have more time for yourcalls.net and PostOffice Homephone neither of whom have to let you make calls with their competitors but both of whom choose to do so because they want to offer a service directoy equivalent to what is available with BT.

BT would force me to sign a 12 month minimum contract to return to them even though there is no cost to them in my line going back to them.  As a result of this they will never enjoy my business again.