Telephone costs question

Hi, I have a BT landline. I recently changed broadband supplier to Be and we are much happier with the speed and quality of service. My flatmate and I both have our own iphones. Although we don't really use the BT phone line much the quarterly bill is still quite high. What we'd really like to do is disconnect the landline. - But we want to keep on receiving the broadband. This is probably obvious to someone technical but do we have to keep on paying BT a monthly line-rental? Is there an alternative. There used to be a incoming calls only option but I'm told this is not available. - Sarah

You have to pay someone for the line rental. The line rental covers the physical line itself whether you make calls on it or not. The physical line is required to get your broadband - the broadband fee pays for the additional equipment and service provided for the broadband service itself.

Cheapest you'll get is around the £10.50 mark for the line rental - though £11.50 is more common now.

WIth BT Retail its £11.54, but may be higher depending on how you pay them.

Andrew Ferguson, andrew@thinkbroadband.com
www.thinkbroadband.com - formerly known as ADSLguide.org.uk

Thanks for clarifying this. the simplest thing may be to simply remove the phone but keep paying the bill..
Somehow our quarterly bill is never less than £200. Even though we don't use the phone much. . If I try to phone BT it is impossible to get through.- Sarah

Quarterly bill should be about £40 if you don't make many/expensive calls.

Check your bill for where the other £160 is going? On calls?

1999: Freeserve 48K Dial-Up => 2005: Wanadoo 1 Meg BB => 2007: Orange 2 Meg BB => 2008: Orange 8 Meg BB

If you want to pay the lowest you can get line rental from Primus:

http://www.primussaver.co.uk/homephone.html

Thats £9.99 and includes free evening/weekend landline and national calls

As XRaySpex says - that's ludicrous. The bill should show the numbers called and the cast per call.

Bob's broadband basic info/help site:
www.robertos.me.uk
ISP history: Demon dialup >> Freeserve dialup >> BT Broadband >> Prodigynet >> Newnet >> O2 Standard.
Purple Cloud for domain, email and web space.

Hi Sarah

If you email me at btcare@bt.com with your account details, I can have your bills looked at to see why the charges are so high.

Stuart

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

Thanks for clarifying this. the simplest thing may be to simply remove the phone but keep paying the bill..
Somehow our quarterly bill is never less than £200. Even though we don't use the phone much. . If I try to phone BT it is impossible to get through.- Sarah

Have you checked your bill on-line to see where the costs are coming from. Something is not quite right there and needs urgent investigation. Good luck

Len

Zen 8000 Active. Netgear DGN2000 Router.
Windows 7 Pro 64bit ; Windows XP Pro SP3 and iMac 9.1 and MacBook both running Snow Leopard

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

Thanks for clarifying this. the simplest thing may be to simply remove the phone but keep paying the bill..
Somehow our quarterly bill is never less than £200. Even though we don't use the phone much. . If I try to phone BT it is impossible to get through.- Sarah

As others have said that is definitely an issue. If you are not making calls then something is (or BT billing is wrong). Was a time that some sky boxes would dial the speaking clock every night and rack up a bill. Or if a PC has a modem and is connected to the phone line then it could have a rogue dialer on it. Could be other rogue dialers depending on what is connected to the phone line (or maybe there is some cross-charging going on and you are getting someone else's bills).

Failing all of this are you certain you (ie the household) are not making the calls? If you are then it is entirely within your own control.