Home phone News

Home phone price hike after VAT increase

Tuesday 5 January, 2010

By Becca Talbot - becca@consumerchoices.co.uk

BT, TalkTalk and Plusnet are just some of the UK’s home phone suppliers that have increased line rental and call charges following a government decision to raise VAT.

Over 20 million BT (www.bt.com) customers will have seen their line rental charge rise from £11.25 a month to £11.54 at the start of the New Year, as Britain’s home phone suppliers hiked their prices in line with the government’s 2.5% VAT increase.

As well as increasing its line rental cost, BT has also put the price of its Anytime Call Plan up by 4p, from £4.95 a month to £4.99, and hiked its rates for calls to mobiles and international calls.

Customers on BT’s Weekend Calls and Evening & Weekend Calls tariffs will see the price of making a call in the daytime increase from 4.5p per minute to 5.4p per minute. The call connection fee with BT - a one-off charge that applies to all calls made outside of a customers’ call plan - has also risen from 9.05p per call to 9.3p per call.

Simon Piper, business development manager at Homephonechoices.co.uk, said: “These price hikes will affect BT customers who don’t use their inclusive calls wisely. A five minute call made during the day for a customer on the BT Evening & Weekend Call Plan will now cost nearly 5p more, at 36.3p.”

Piper suggests that all customers on unlimited evening and weekend plans should reconsider their tariff if they make a lot of calls during the day: “It’s not just BT customers that need to beware of these price hikes; other suppliers have also increased costs for daytime calls.”

“It may be worth considering switching to an unlimited anytime calls plan. You should compare prices and calling rates to see if you can find a better deal,” advised Piper.

Home phone and broadband provider Plusnet has increased its line rental cost from £10.95 to £11.25 a month; and the price of daytime calls on its evening and weekend call plan have increased from 4.5p a minute to 5.25p per minute.

Before the New Year, another of the UK’s largest phone and broadband companies, TalkTalk (www.talktalk.co.uk), raised its line rental charge from £11.25 to £11.49 a month. However its daytime call charges haven’t increased - TalkTalk offers all customers free local calls at anytime, and national calls are charged at 4.5p per minute during the day.

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