Home phone News

Home phone suppliers hike call prices

Thursday 1 April, 2010

By Becca Talbot - becca@consumerchoices.co.uk

BT and Virgin Media customers will see their bills increase from today, as the two home phone giants hike their daytime call costs and call connection fees.

Two of Britain’s biggest home phone suppliers have increased their prices today, leaving many BT (www.bt.com) and Virgin Media (www.virginmedia.com) customers facing bigger bills for the rest of the year.

BT has increased its daytime call rates from 5.4p per minute to 5.9p per minute, and hiked its call connection fee (a one-off cost that you pay per call, regardless of its duration) from 9.3p to 9.9p, meaning a 10 minute call during the day to a national or local landline will now cost 68.9p.

Virgin Media has also increased the price it charges for daytime calls, from 6.5p per minute to 7.5p per minute. Virgin’s call connection fee has also gone up by 1p, to 11p per call. Give cost of 10 min call as above.

Virgin Media customers have also been hit with another blow, as their line rental has gone up from £11 a month to £11.99 a month - making the cable phone line provider more expensive than BT, which charges £11.54 a month if you pay by monthly direct debit and take paperless billing.

Simon Piper, business development manager at Homephonechoices.co.uk, said: “If you’re on an evening and weekend calls package but you tend to make a lot of calls during the day, it is worth considering a switch to an anytime call plan, to save money on your bills.”

BT has also changed the time its free evening calls start, from 6pm to 7pm. Rival home phone provider TalkTalk (www.talktalk.co.uk) copying the move, but it won’t start until 1 June. In both cases, the evening rate will apply until 7am, rather than the 6am cut-off before.

Piper said: “You may have thought it an April Fool’s joke, but from today BT’s evening calls will start at 7pm. This means any calls made before 7pm will be charged at the more expensive daytime rate of 5.9p per minute.”

Piper advised customers worried about the price hikes or unhappy about the change in time for evening calls to consider switching their home phone service to a cheaper supplier.

“From today, new customers can sign-up for the Primus Home Phone Saver tariff for just £8.99 a month. This includes line rental and free unlimited evening and weekend calls - it’s the cheapest package in the UK,” added Piper.