Zen phone line offer - complete rip off

I have ben with Zen for broadband for many years and as a ISP they are great. No issue whatseover. Reassuringly expensive - I really dont mind paying for a quality broadband experience.

BUT......

They want to sell me the following for a bog standard line rental service:

Line rental £16.99/ month
Call connection fee 16p/ call
UK local & national from 11p/ minute
Mobile from 11p/ minute

Here are some facts

Line rental £9.50/ month from Openreach for all Communications Providers
Call connection fee 16p/ call - At wholesale level there is no connection fee. This is pure profit on a call being answered.
UK local & national from 11p/ minute - wholesale cost is about 0.5p per minute, no connection fee or minimum call charge
Mobile from 11p/ minute - wholesale cost about 1.5p, no min call charge or connection fee.

That is a total rip off. It's a phone line.

Not defending the pricing, but some of these "features" appear in most providers' tariffs.

TalkTalk for example wants about £17 for their phone line too. I think Zen charges a bit more on the broadband if you don't take their phone line, so they're both likely using it as a cash cow

I think most phone companies charge about 10p/min for mobiles

I wasn't actually aware that there was a connection fee. It's a good job we don't make many outgoing calls!

Edited by deleted (Thu 25-Feb-16 15:26:30)

Yep... about the same with 'most' providers to be honest..

Phone line rental funds alot more than the line itself it seems

Same as"Most" being the bigger ISP's who rely on Bundling Voice and data services in order to make a profit But not the same as most providers at all as there is quite a few smaller providers who are offering line rental at a cheaper price ,and on a monthly contract,with no Rip off connection charges and calls to most uk numbers from 1p pm

So BT Sky TT and Zen You can all stick your line rental where the sun don't shine for me ,I have had enough of being ripped off and subsidising BT offers for new customers (when i was a BT consumer line rental customer)

In reply to a post by tommy45:

Same as"Most" being the bigger ISP's who rely on Bundling Voice and data services in order to make a profit But not the same as most providers at all as there is quite a few smaller providers who are offering line rental at a cheaper price ,and on a monthly contract,with no Rip off connection charges and calls to most uk numbers from 1p pm

Why the hell did you point out what I had already said!!!

I said MOST... last time I looked the majority of the broadband market was BT, Sky, TalkTalk....ect..

I don't class providers like Pulse8 or AAISP as a majority... as you said yourself...

They may have bigger customer bases, but that doesn't make them the majority of providers , and ulike you i count every provider regardless of how many customers they have

hmm hmm what ever helps you sleep at night I guess!

Edited by mlmclaren (Thu 25-Feb-16 17:06:52)

I agree that Zen's deal is not exactly "great value" or really that good a deal. They've bumped it up as it used to be much better, but they've caught the same marketing based disease as everyone else where they want phone line and broadband bundled and distort the price of the former to make the latter look good.

However, the wholesale cost from Openreach is not the end of the cost to the provider, so there is other cost involved - so whilst I agree it's a poor deal, it's not directly comparable to the wholesale part of the cost.

Aye it's a rip off at those prices , I pay £11-40 a month line rental and no call connection charge ,also use 18185 that costs 0.5 pence connection and the call is free

Welcome to rip off UK !!

Hi,

Thanks for your feedback. I can honestly say we do read and take on board customers comments.

However, I'm not sure its fair to say our Line Rental and calls are a "Total rip off"

1st of all, customers who take Line Rental alongside more or less any of our broadband services will save £5.40 off the monthly broadband price.

Also, the monthly price for our Line Rental is lower than many of our biggest competitors. For example...
Zen Line Rental £16.99
BT Line Rental £17.99
TalkTalk £17.70
Sky £17.40
EE £17.50

plus we offer a 1 month contract

The same can be said for our call connection fee and call costs.
Call connection fee;
Zen 16p
BT 17.06p
TalkTalk 17p
Sky 16.9p

Calls to mobiles per minute;
Zen 11p
BT 13.65p
Sky 11.5p
TalkTalk 11.5p

We also bill our calls by the second rather than rounding up to the next full minute. So make a 30 second call and pay for 30 seconds not a full minute.

When it comes to the wholesale cost, as others have said in this thread, its not the end of the costs to us. The list of costs is long and complex so the wholesale cost and the retail price are not directly comparable.

And finally, we don't force our customers to take Line rental, unlike some of our competitors. Its the customer's choice and for many I believe its a choice that will see them better off each month.