I've had an email from BT saying my 'broadband discount' ends soon - I reckon I'm already paying too much but cannot log on to my BT account to see details of my package despite going through their reset procedure :(
I think that I have unlimited calls on one BT landline and unlimited broadband - so what should I be paying.
It would be nice to have comparisons before I call them on Monday :)
Andrew
On one landline, I have: BT Phone unlimited Anytime calls BT Broadband, Up to 17Mb download speed (whatever than means!) BT Call Protect BT Answer 1571
Bill for May-June, excluding phone calls was
BT Answer 1571 £2.50 BT Broadband and Calls Package £40.99 BT Unlimited anytime calls £8.99 Total Rental and other charges £52.48
All the following are line rent + broadband, but call package is extra. Mos t are cheaper if you prepay for the year.
Origin Broadband Pay £124.99 for the year in advance* for line rent and broadband, equi valent to £10.42/mth. Anytime calls £5.99/mth extra.
Sky with a £75 Gift Mastercard cash-back You pay £18.99/mth for the year, and with the £19.95 upfront it's equivalent to £20.65/mth (excl calls & new line fee if charged). If y ou'd spend the £75 Mastercard and you factor it in it's £172.83 o ver a year, equivalent to £14.40/mth. Anytime calls £4/mth extra.
BT Fibre New Customers Equivalent to £22.49/month but you must do the M&S and Mastercard gift cards cash-back.
BD ADSL New Customers Equivalent to £20.32/month but again you need to do the cash-back clai m. Calls from £1.65/month extra.
All detailed at
Owain
Plusnet 80/20Mb fibre = £19.99 Line rental inc Evening/Weekend calls £17.99 (£1 increase due soon) Caller Display £0.99
18 month discount £7.49 Referral discounts £3.25It doesn't quite add up, but overall I seem to pay £28.55/month I could pay the line rental annually and save £3.50/month
Im paying 40 a month for unlimited broadband, and PAYG phone#
Chris Hogg brought next idea :
Wow, v expensive!
Plusnet
Broadband upto 17Mb (actually getting 16Mb) Inc line rental, free anytime calls UK (upto 1hour), 2000 minutes of mobile calls per month, caller ID, loads of email addresses, but no webspace. Cost us £26.98 pm when we signed up November, but they just changed it to £27.98 pm. We got a £50 cheque back, a month after signing up with them.
Plusnet could not offer the price as first advertised on one of their offers recently for here as some areas they class as high cost to serve and when you get to the details the cost is more. I still accepted whatever they offered which was one of the packages where you pay a lot up front for line rental , that lead to BT retentions asking if they could make an offer on similar terms which undercut them slightly though the exact details are in a drawer somewhere, I think we got caller display or something for free and as we were still using an old home hub 1.5 from yonks ago , I wanted something with a couple more Ethernet ports so persuaded them to provide the latest Version 6 F.O.C to persuade me to stay. I know purists frown on BT Routers but it does the job. staying with BT saved the hassle of notifying every one of a new email etc but for me another advantage was still being able to use the BT Fon setup as part of the package. My elderly mother as a minimal package with just enough for her emails and limited browsing with small ISP ( eclipse?) when I go and stay to do a weeks chores or hospital runs I max it out but using the fon facility from her neighbours BT set up avoids earache for doing that.
G.Harman
The key variables seem to be:
Line rental and landline package BB speed Freebies/extras - things like TV box, router, SIM card, contract period, installation.
I pay about £50/month with BT at the moment for their c.100Mb.
I'm in the process of changing and think I'll go for Talktalk's £31.50 month c.75Mb - it's not quite the cheapest but it does come with what looks to be a half decent mobile deal (200 mins/500MB). And I've more or less given up the will to keep comparing.
Yes, we pay by DD so these things tend to creep up un-noticed. Was £32/month when I signed up two-and-a-half years ago, but that included a £10 discount introductory offer, so in reality it's gone up by about
25% in that time (say £42 to £52). Still a lot though.But I doubt I'll change. It works for me, and I rather take the attitude that better the devil you know...
But is all that an introductory offer? To compare, you'd need the normal price.
My last bill was 47.69 including 13 quids worth of extra phone charges. But also including the discount (19 quid) for paying the line rental annually.
I use the i-player etc services quite heavily.
I sincerely hope TalkTalk have improved their service. I ended up with them by default after several ISP takeovers. And they were the pits. Regular outages. And days to get them fixed as in their opinion it was always 'my' end. And even worse comms.
BT has been OK since changing to it. Some years ago. Not perfect - but I don't even expect that these days.
And it doesn't seem to have got much better:
But it's so difficult to draw a conclusion - they're not far below BT. And as one of the largest providers, they're more or less bound to have most complaints (so far as i can tell - they don't seem to weight their ratings).
In the past 10 years or so I've used BT I haven't had a single problem. I think I'll just have to cross fingers.
At one time I ended up with a talktalk provided service after they took over the ISP I was with. Overnight the service went downhill' Their customer service policy seems to bend the truth. "We don't block or throttle ports" means "we just turn them off during busy time - you can fully use them without throttling at 3am." At one time they were blocking text only Usenet from around mid-day to midnight!
+1 I stayed with them for around a month befre purchasing a more expensive product from someone else.
I've been on Talk Talk for years and not had any problems.
I has a problem with their email a few month ago. Could have been down to using this ancient machine, though. Changing the password eventually sorted it - but may have been a coincidence. Only one outage - and the phone line too. Noticed a guy was working on the box at the end of the road, and caught him as he was packing up. He sorted it there and then - very impressed with that. Even although he'd probably caused the problem. Not surprising when you saw the rat's nest inside the box. ;-)
Just struck a deal with BT the other day. Time to renew the discounted landline rental and I thought their price was too high for 17Mb (max available to me). I have two mobiles on BT at present, low usage £5 each with discount for being BB customer. I hardly ever use the landline to make calls. Zen has a very good deal at present for landline rental and unlimited BB
Are you paying BT anything at all? Yes? Then it's too much.
None of that matters, other than speed. What matters is what happens when it goes wrong. Do you have to wait 40 minutes to speak to some pod person in Mumbai who wants you to wave a dead chicken over it, or do you get through to someone who speaks English and understands the technology?
Especially the 1571.
When BT introduced a charge for that I got a letter/email(?) telling me that I could have a basic service for free or an enhanced service (own recorded message, couple of other not very necessary to have items) for a fee.
I took the basic service for free
so few people who ring me on my LL want to leave a message (if they don't get answered they will just ring my mobo) why pay the extra?
tim
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