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.

Well that is some price hike - the UK local & national calls have more than doubled and previously there was no call connection charge (cost me less than 20p for a 5 minute call yesterday). I've only been on Zen Fibre and phone for 2 months, I hope they honour the price I signed up for the rest of my 12 month contract period. Yet to hear anything from Zen on this.

Hi, the prices mentioned in the thread are for new orders only.

EDIT: should have also mentioned that they relate to our residential Line Rental product not our Business Line Rental products

Edited by ajays (Thu 25-Feb-16 22:45:23)

In reply to a post by ajays:

Hi, the prices mentioned in the thread are for new orders only.

EDIT: should have also mentioned that they relate to our residential Line Rental product not our Business Line Rental products

Sorry but your prices for line rental are expensive being a whole £1 less than BT means little , then you do as they do,those other robbing ..... do and go and charge a connection fee and top that with a £0.11p pm call fee Are you all sheep have to copy each other ? These charges are unreasonable for a dying technology I pay £14.00 pm LR which includes Caller ID inc) 1p pm calling charges my last months bill wasn't as much as Zen's line rental, and that was moderate use on calls for me

This but you save save xxxx off your bb (if you also have bb bundled) is a false economy imo , because you would still be paying over the going rate for line rental and calls

Edited by tommy45 (Fri 26-Feb-16 02:22:33)

Quite agree. I have avoided contract tie-in and connection fees for years.for years. !2.70 inc v.a.t for line and caller display is what I pay now. 1p ish for calls for a few years now.

Edited by professor973 (Fri 26-Feb-16 08:41:09)

While your comments are fair... and I agree that Broadband providers shouldn't be using line rental to boost profits or cover costs for other service's, business is business at the end of the day, and they answer to investors...

Pulse8 don't do that 'yet' AFAIK... so if you've such a problem with it, I would take your complaints to Ofcom and rally for tighter regulation on the sale of telecoms services...

There's no point moaning at a customer service representitive who's in no position to make the changes...

If people have such a problem with line rental then I suggest they do go to a provider that isn't incorperating any discounts or offer's into there charges,

one thing I can tell you is though is the more customers such providers like Pulse8 get, the higher the chances they'll need to increase prices, and I can near guarentee you that it will be line rental they'll hit first.

The best thing about providers such as Pulse8 in my book, is no contract tie-in and line rental cost. Cheap calls with no connection fee is nice, but not a be all and end all in my book, as I already get 1p calls via sipgate and Skype. Roll on the proposed naked Broadband.

In reply to a post by professor973:

The best thing about providers such as Pulse8 in my book, is no contract tie-in and line rental cost. Cheap calls with no connection fee is nice, but not a be all and end all in my book, as I already get 1p calls via sipgate and Skype. Roll on the proposed naked Broadband.

they are trialling their SOGEA in the area that i live at the moment but no ISP has any info regarding this on their web sites, and i bet if you rang around a few most wouldn't have a scooby do what you were talking about , so how is anyone supposed to be able to take part in such trials? and also they don't include any details of pricing

Edited by tommy45 (Fri 26-Feb-16 20:59:01)

In reply to a post by tommy45:

they are trialling their SOGEA in the area that i live at the moment but no ISP has any info regarding this on their web sites..... so how is anyone supposed to be able to take part in such trials? and also they don't include any details of pricing

Probably because it is a trial. These trials are often at no cost, or the same as the nearest comparable service until launch.

Additionally, they are likely contacting existing customers they have for their trails instead of looking for those who are not yet customers.

Matt

In reply to a post by professor973:

The best thing about providers such as Pulse8 in my book, is no contract tie-in and line rental cost. Cheap calls with no connection fee is nice, but not a be all and end all in my book, as I already get 1p calls via sipgate and Skype. Roll on the proposed naked Broadband.

Yes, I agree, however how long such things will last I don't know...

I too also look forward to SOGEA, I assume at some point in the future they will be looking to phase out E side copper completely though many years away from that yet.

the sad fact is with ofcom not regulating voice services, the vast majority of CP's have jumped on the ripoff voice services bandwagon as its a profit machine.

Wouldnt it be funny if a new mobile technology got rolled out tomorrow that done away with the low mobile limits and as such became suitable for a consumer home based broadband solution, overnight these voice revenues would be under huge threat, but as it is thats not the case.

Voice revenues are already falling rapidly, hence why voice line rental and call bundles are changing rapidly

Also for those thinking this will save a fortune, I doubt it, as based on the faceplates those providers looking to use SOGEA are still going to be doing phone/broadband bundles, just that the voice is across the broadband segment.