Home phone News

BT’s free evening calls to begin at 7pm

Friday 29 January, 2010

By Becca Talbot - becca@consumerchoices.co.uk

You won’t be able to make free evening calls with BT until 7pm from April 1, as the telecoms moves the times of its free evening and weekend calls plan.

BT (www.bt.com), Britain’s biggest home phone provider, is contacting customers by email and post to alert them that free evening calls won’t start until 7pm rather than the current 6pm from April 1st.

To compensate, customers will be able to make free calls until 7am rather than the current cut-off of 6am. The change only affects customers on BTs Evening and Weekend calls plan.

In a series of moves, BT’s daytime call prices will also go up to 5.9p per minute, and the call connection fee - a one-off charge for each call made outside of your inclusive calls - is also increasing from 9.3p to 9.9p per call.

A spokesman for BT said that it was all part of a move to encourage the 4.7 million customers on the BT Unlimited Evening & Weekend Calls package to switch to the anytime calls plan.

BT’s Unlimited Anytime Plan costs £4.95 a month - just 17p a day - and includes all calls to UK local and national landlines, as well as calls to 0870 and 0845 numbers at any time. It is free for the first three months to new subscribers signing up before 28 February 2010. Customers also have to pay BT’s line rental fee.

The spokesman added: "It's important to remember that BT is still cheaper than Virgin Media for the set-up fee and daytime calls even after these changes.

"As regards the switch of daytime hours to 7am-7pm this brings us into line with the standard daytime hours for mobile operators. While early evening is a busy time for short, organisational calls, the peak hour is later, between 8pm-9pm when customers have time to settle down for a longer chat."

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