I am currently having to leave www.yourcalls.net who I have had a serious disagreement with and am trying to decide whether to go back to BT or to another telco such as PostOffice HomePhone or Primus (who currently have a new WLR deal where you pay your line rental direct to them).

As a result I thought it was useful to do a survey on which non BT telcos using ex BT lines where you pay all your line rental to them (so called WLR or LLU phone providers) still allow use of Indirect Access phone services like www.18185.co.uk etc

So if everyone reading this thread could also take part in the above Poll it would be very much appreciated.

Two things are critical to my own decision making process on switching telcos:-

1. The telco I move to must allow use of Indirect Access Services such as www.18185.co.uk and www.1899.com as many WLR/LLU phone services that you can take ex BT lines to from companies like TalkTalk and Sky now tend to block use of the Indirect Access services like 1899.  If this is the case on your line you will get a message similar to "Indirect Access Services are barred on this line.  Please contact your telephone company for more information" when you try dialling the four or five digits of the Indirect Access code.  Even if you have not signed up with 1899 or a similar service on your line you should still get a message saying you have not yet signed up with them on your line if Indirect Access is not currently barred.

(b) The contract period must be as short as possible and preferably no more than one month.  Unfortunately this seems to very much limit my choice at the present moment as incredibly BT, who installed my ancient copper wire phone line 18 years ago, think I should sign a one year minimum term contract as punishment for ever having left them whilst most of their competitors apart from Post Office Homephone (no minimum contract) have a 12 month minimum contract with only Primus seeming to have a shorter 6 month contract.  But I am loathed to go to Post Office Homephone because they do not offer an Anytime calls package and their call charges for chargeable calls in the weekday daytime to 01/02 numbers are now 4p per minute + 8p connection!

So in order to  better inform my decision if you can respond to the Poll above and then post in the thread to say which telco you are currently with and whether they allow or block Indirect Access (1280, 18185 etc) and also indicate what you think the minimum contract term is with your current telco for a new customer bringing across an existing ex BT line from another telco in the thread then I would be very grateful.

Well you can ask BT for a Temporary line - no minimm term, standard call rates, everything else as normal.  But there's an extra £100 fee on setup ....

before you sign up to POST OFFICE BROADBAND/HOME FONE, please read reviews on POST OFFICE BROADBAND REVIEWS.youre letting yourself in for a load of hastle,i know,JUST joined them,FOOL i am.wish i had read reviews 1st.

I am now with Post Office Homephone and am having no trouble at all making weekday daytime calls with 18185 while I let evening and weekend 01/02, 0845 and 0870 calls route with P O Homephone who offer them free for up to an hour at those times.  In addition weekend calls of up to an hour to UK mobile numbers are also free.

So if anyone needs to leave a telco they are with and doesn't want to move to another one with a minimum one year contract then P O Homephone seems to be a pretty good bet with its notice to leave them again of only 14 days.

derrick wrote on Sep 20^th, 2009 at 11:37am:


Derrick,

I am only too well aware the calls are not genuinely free as P O Homephone's line rental is about £1.75 more than some of the cheapest companies in the marketplace but all those companies have a 12 month minimum contract term that I refuse to be enslaved by (I may either move from here or let out my place within the next 12 months).  Also the Post Office's best cheap deal in an area like this with no cheap LLU providers is on its combined phone and broadband package where for only £8.75 extra on top of the line rental you can have basic broadband with a 5Gb per month allowance.  However I have not gone for the latter (a) because it has a 12 month minimum contract and (b) because P O Homephone broadband has a reputation for shocking quality with speeds falling to near nil at peak times.

Nonetheless the free mobile call thing at the weekend is worth quite a lot as there are a couple of people I know who are only contactable by mobile and a 60 minute call at 5p per minute is worth £3.  The free evening and weekend 0845 call thing is far less valuable because the vast majority of the 0845 numbers for which no geographic alternative can be found have closed their doors to the public at 5pm or 5.30pm before the 0845 calls become free at 6pm.............

I still am at a loss to understand why P O Homephone do not also have an Anytime calls plan add on option given that everyone else in the marketplace does.

sherbert wrote on Sep 20^th, 2009 at 12:10pm:


Completely useless though, just as it was when that was what TalkTalk offered.  Am I expected to get everyone I know to move their phone service to P O Homephone?  I think not.  Also most of the people I would need to call in the weekday daytime are large organisations and I definitely can't influence their choice of phone company and nor indeed can they even move to Post Office Homephone (the clue is in the word home I think).

The free weekend mobile calls deal is potentially worth a fortune to parents who have children at college who only have a mobile phone to call them on.

Coming back to the original topic of this thread I am rather disappointed by the high percentage of you who still seem to have your phone line with BT.

NGMsGhost wrote on Sep 20^th, 2009 at 11:54am:



They are NOT free at all!

My gripe is people, (including the telcos), calling them free when they are not!
If they where free you would not need to pay a line rental, so stop the use of free and use the correct word "inclusive"


NGMsGhost wrote on Sep 20^th, 2009 at 12:16pm:



I am still with BT for line rental, because to change to practically anywhere else, as I have CPS and BB with Virgin, would cost me more than the £21.24 I pay in total for line rental, BB and CPS with inclusive, (not free), weekend and evening calls, because Virgin said if I moved to PO Home phone for my line rental and calls, that would mean I would no longer be on a bundle and my BB would cost me £18. per month.

I looked at moving to the Tiscali re this offer, (option 2); - http://www.tiscali.co.uk/products/talk/index-talk.html?code=ZZ-NL-12WU&srccode=C...  this would only save £1.25 per month after the initial 3 months offer, but am unsure about Tiscali's service, as I believe they had/have a lot of issues.

NGMsGhost wrote on Sep 20^th, 2009 at 6:10pm:

Before someone else says it - this is untrue, the charge for Caller Display is part of the high per minute rates paid to call from and to mobile networks.