Skytalk Line Rental

We've had a letter from Sky offering us line rental with our Skytalk package, it's slightly cheaper than BT, not a lot but in these troubled times every little helps.

If we do go for it we have to report any phone faults to Skytalk who then pass it onto BT.

Would it cause any problems for Zen Support, in the event of a fault on my line requiring BT investigation, if we did change to Skytalk for line rental rather than BT?

It should not, as Zen will still access the same bit of BT to report a broadband fault, i.e .BT Wholesale.

BT Retail if that is who your rental is with now report phone faults to Openreach for them to look into, and Sky do exactly the same.

Bear in mind though...

You won't necessarily be able to use alternative call carriers - so while BT may not be cheapest on all calls, once you're with anyone else you may not be able to use any alternatives on a call-by-call basis - as only BT are obliged to provide this.

If sky don't currently stop this, they are expected to I believe (as do many of the other alternatives).

My sister had a BT line and chose their Sky's rental package along with I think their broadband package. Pretty sure it was Sky...

Anyway, one day her land line stopped ringing. She could make outgoing calls but the phone refused to ring for inbound calls. I won't go in to detail because her story was so long but suffice it to say she was forced to cancel the Sky land line package so that BT could fix things. Something about passing the buck between the two and refusing to talk to each other because of data protection. Etc.

Oh and she was charged for installation and early cancellation by various companies until they woke up and realised it was their own faults - both Sky and BT I believe.

Now these things happen particularly with large companies but what actually had her really, really, p----- off was the amount of time she spent in call queues with Sky. I suspect that alone gave reason to go just with BT again.

I'm sure it works fine for most people - just be alert :-)

Thanks for the replies MrSaffron, therioman and jmkgreen.

We'll have a think about it, but I'm tending to think it's not worth the hassle for the sake of saving around �1/month...

Have you looked at the various bt packages we found we saved money when we swapped to the anytime plan �4.95 +�10.50 line rental, they also do the evening and weekend for �10.50 a month which includes your line rental I think you have to sign up for paperless billing and it is 12 months contract, however ti might save you a few bob

I'm with BT for my line rental and I make an annual saving of �33 a year (�18 for the direct debit and �15 for paperless billing)


http://www.productsandservices.bt.com/consumerProducts/displayTopic.do?topicId=19353

Reason I left BT Retail for line rental, was annoyance when I'd taken calls to a CPS, and then found bills went up, as I was not makeing any billable calls with BT, i.e. they charge for caller ID if you do not make a small number of calls with them.

I dug around the documentation and found the clause that covers this, but it caught me out, and I usually try to read the various bits as they used to arrive in the post.

Had a phone fault last week, reported Monday, Openreach around on Thursday, though line had largely being fixed by Openreach fixing the neighbours line on the Wednesday. Line had been getting worse, but waited until it was very bad and made the call centre had trouble hearing me

Should add that its a normal persons account I have, not some special journo type account either.

Edited by MrSaffron (Thu 16-Oct-08 15:15:14)

Yes I too prefer to stick with BT for my line rental for the reasons youv'e already mentioned.

If you sign up for the telephone preference service caller ID is included free, there is no charge for the preference service it's supposed to stop cold callers, it doesn't but worth it for the caller ID