Confusing pricing? How hard do you find it?

http://www.theguardian.com/money/2015/dec/23/mislead...

It's a bit like the energy suppliers. Very difficult to tell the true cost unless you spend loads of time to work it out

Not that difficult, just add together the broadband price and line rental, if there is an offer for say six months, work out the amount the whole thing will cost you over 18 months. Talk Talk is a bit more complex as you have to add together the simply broadband, the fibre and then the line rental, still easy enough.

I'm swapping line rental (voice only ) providers from BT to Pulse8 i currently pay BT around £18.70 per month for their Any time call plan line rental at last years price (lrs @£169.90) =£14.16 per month
This years price is (£194.40 LRS) so £16.20 per month plus same unlimited calling plan which i was offered a deal on @£5 per month (until it gets increased min term no doubt)

So i opted to pay £14 per month (inc caller id) + any calls that i make , @ pulse 8's prices that's a lot of calls/time on phone to spend as much as i do now
last month they charged me 93p for 8mins 33secs due to over running the 60mins limit for free calling the same time /call type would of cost me only 68p( 1hr 8mins) with pulse 8
BT are loading their losses onto line rental and call pricing ,and that for those who do want or need those loss leading products /deals isn't a right or fair way to treat those customers ,

That's how we decided to keep ours at a low cost per call and with out line rental at £11.40 per month and local/national calls costing just 1.2 pence per minute you need to make a lot of calls before the overpriced BT line rental would be cheaper!

In reply to a post by vivaciti:

That's how we decided to keep ours at a low cost per call and with out line rental at £11.40 per month and local/national calls costing just 1.2 pence per minute you need to make a lot of calls before the overpriced BT line rental would be cheaper!

precisely that and their rip off call set up fees on top of any chargeable calls

It's not easy, but that is the idea.

ISPs rely on customers to fall for the free broadband or whatever bit.

I add up the cost of line rental and broadband then divide by the contract term. Of course that doesn't include call costs. And don't forget to add in things like LRS, if you can afford to pay up front.

Also for those who go with the likes of the big players, they tend to push call plans, one, is it BT, is now £7pm for Anytime. That's a 583 minutes on your tariff, on top of those paid for by the line rental difference.

I doubt if many Anytime buyers use anything like that.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Also for those who go with the likes of the big players, they tend to push call plans, one, is it BT, is now £7pm for Anytime. That's a 583 minutes on your tariff, on top of those paid for by the line rental difference.

I doubt if many Anytime buyers use anything like that.

Our household certainly does! We are on an anytime call plan with TalkTalk Business which includes unlimited calls to UK 01/02/03 numbers & mobiles. Our monthly usage is at least 5000 mins but this also includes calls made from 5 family mobiles as TTB (I think BT as well) allow you to use your landline calling plan on a smartphone app - obviously you need a data connection. You can even use the app abroad. So its a bit over simplistic to state that that BT's £7 odd pm anytime calling plan will only give you 583 mins landline calls when in fact it also includes 0845/0870 calls & also allows you to use your calling plan on your & friends/family members' smartphones.

Edited by deleted (Thu 24-Dec-15 05:03:41)

In reply to a post by tommy45:

In reply to a post by vivaciti:

precisely that and their rip off call set up fees on top of any chargeable calls

This is the real rip off. What started off as a couple of pennies is now over 17p per call.

And remember, that includes all calls where there is an answerphone and you don't get to complete the purpose of the call

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

Not that difficult, just add together the broadband price and line rental, if there is an offer for say six months, work out the amount the whole thing will cost you over 18 months. Talk Talk is a bit more complex as you have to add together the simply broadband, the fibre and then the line rental, still easy enough.

Another issue with purchasing broadband is that even if you can understand the pricing you still don't know what what speed the service will actually deliver. The connection speed will these days likely be near the pre purchase estimate but the useable download speed may well be much less due to contention on the backhaul connection. The Post Office offer a cheap service from non LLU exchanges but IME the backhaul is often underconfigured, leading to a low dowload speed.