I have just discovered that BT intend to start charging customers £4.50 excess on telephone bills that are not settled by direct debit even if payment in full by cheque is made upon immediate receipt of the telephone bill.    This is little short of money grabbing by BT who are already charging well above other providers for basic services.   Watch your telephone bills from May 2007!! >:(

Supersearcher wrote on Feb 24^th, 2007 at 9:03pm:

I have just discovered that BT intend to start charging customers £4.50 excess on telephone bills that are not settled by direct debit even if payment in full by cheque is made upon immediate receipt of the telephone bill.    This is little short of money grabbing by BT who are already charging well above other providers for basic services.   Watch your telephone bills from May 2007!! >:(

I agree that it is unfair to charge so much for those more who pay promptly. But BT is increasing its charge and not introducing it from scratch. It costs £4.50 per quarter or £1.50 per month to pay by non-DD, an increase of £1.50 per quarter or 50p per month.

Also, bear in mind that these days prices are generally quoted per month even though bills are still sent quarterly.

Supersearcher wrote on Feb 24^th, 2007 at 9:03pm:

who are already charging well above other providers for basic services.

What basic Telephone  service,s are you referring to ?

At least BT  allow payment by non dd methods  unlike Talk Talk and other suppliers.

Their charges for payment by non dd, look  reasonable compared to Virgin Media (Ntl/Telewest ) wopping £5 a month. ;)

Obviously the argument will go that those who insist on paying by cash on a service where they can run up large call bills they don't have to pay for in advance are proven to be bad credit risks as a class and so imposing this extra charge is the only way to cover that cost of payment defaults directly.  The only alternative would be to further put up the line rental charge to everyone and for the rest of us to cross subsidise the bad payers.  And by first offering the discount for paying by DD and now reversing that into a larger extra charge for paying by cash (which simply grabs the attention more of those paying by cash as to the extra cost and provides a bigger incentive to change to DD) they make it a virtually self fulfilling prophecy that  the only people paying by cash will not have a bank account and so tend in the main to be mainly very bad credit risks indeed.  Anyone who simply hates DDs is I think now living in the past as they are one of the safest and best protected ways to pay.

However this whole issue does raise the question of the underlying fairness of BT's Phone Line Rental charges, which in my view are monstrously high when compared to other utilities in the home.  Also since the higher charges come from the risk of people defaulting on paying the bill then why can't BT come up with a prouct where people credit their account in advance with cash for call costs and then spend this down to zero at which point they can't make any more calls.  In that way it should be possible to offer cash customers a service at the same price as non cash customers.

Although cheque users are often old and crusty unfortunately many of them are also cheque book thieves.  So again this is why cheque as well as cash is being charged an extra fee to reflect the higher risk.

Like it or not we are moving to a cashless society for all but all very small transactions made in person at retailers.

Quote:

... this whole issue does raise the question of the underlying fairness of BT's Phone Line Rental charges...

Fairness?  We live in a market economy, since when does fairness come into the equation?

lompos wrote on Feb 25^th, 2007 at 7:21pm:

Fairness?  We live in a market economy, since when does fairness come into the equation?

I don't think BT's phone line rental charge is a market price.  It is a price that by clever and false accounting and over estimating the value and servicing costs of its copper wire network that it has conned Ofcom (with its many ex BT employees) into accepting and that is now the price all other companies are following, largely due to the excessive charge levied for BT's WLR service.

Look at standing charges for gas, electricity and water and the fact that they are beween £0 and £3.50 per month and you will start to realise there is something wrong with BT needing £11 per month.

NGMsGhost wrote on Feb 25^th, 2007 at 7:43pm:

lompos wrote on Feb 25th, 2007 at 7:21pm: Fairness?  We live in a market economy, since when does fairness come into the equation? Look at standing charges for gas, electricity and water and the fact that they are beween £0 and £3.50 per month and you will start to realise there is something wrong with BT needing £11 per month.

If you odnt use your gas pipes then fine, but when your line is switched on but you odnt dial, what about the other information it recieves. You know, incoming calls.
Should you have that facility for nothing?

darkstar wrote on Feb 27^th, 2007 at 8:46am:

If you odnt use your gas pipes then fine, but when your line is switched on but you odnt dial, what about the other information it recieves. You know, incoming calls. Should you have that facility for nothing?

Yes I should have that facility for very little because BT earns revenue for terminating and very often also for originating every one of those calls.  They earn this revenue from what the caller pays as part of their call charge.

Anyhow I don't argue I should get line rental for nothing but merely for a fair charge reflecting the real cost of maintaining the old copper line.

The problem is that the value of making calls has fallen to almost nothing and so the whole of BT's creaky, inefficient and overpriced infrastructure is being propped up by the high line rental charge.

As we keep going round in circles I may as well sum this up to every other time we have debated this:

Experts: It costs £9pcm to maintain line

NGM (non expert): No it doesnt, you lie to prop up BT. You corrupt people you.

Me: Experts have more knowledge than me or you. Best belive them on that number until other figures come along.

NGM: NOOO NEVER! I am right and you must all listen as I will rant on for hours about corruption and blah blah blah.


Sums it up pretty much.

Darkstar:-

I love your blinkered faith in 'experts'.
WMD, 45mins........???
Say no more.

darkstar wrote on Feb 28^th, 2007 at 8:39am:

As we keep going round in circles I may as well sum this up to every other time we have debated this: Experts: It costs £9pcm to maintain line NGM (non expert): No it doesnt, you lie to prop up BT. You corrupt people you. Me: Experts have more knowledge than me or you. Best belive them on that number until other figures come along. NGM: NOOO NEVER! I am right and you must all listen as I will rant on for hours about corruption and blah blah blah. Sums it up pretty much.

All I can say is you are someone who clearly has the wool pretty easily pulled over your eyes.  I imagine that someone like you would never for instance question why several hundred patients of Dr Harold Shipman died because he is the expert and you are the lay person so you would always defer to an "expert" who must always apparently be right.

The fact of the matter is that BT is a bloated monolith with huge inefficiencies in its business that will never be tackled until the time when a wired connection for a decent and low cost broadband speed is eliminated.  Unfortunately telecoms seem to have been regulated wrongly so that the marginal cost of making each phone call is allowed to fall almost to nil for many 01/02 calls, resulting in BT Wholesale (an operating division of the one BT PLC) needing to make a lot of its revenue on just the line rental.  By contrast for gas and electricity transfer of product on the network is charged at a price that makes money so the network does not have to be propped up with excessive standing charges just to have the line connected.

I also feel insulted that you consider me not to have the necessary expertise because I do not work for BT and that you feel no one outside BT can apparently understand its operating model (a BT company man if ever there was one therefore despite your previous claims).  The reality is that phone line rental standing charge connection prices are out of step with other utilities and there does not seem to be any good reason for that other than the regulator being afraid of the upsetting of the existing fixed line applecart that would ensue if the BT monopoly over charging high line rental prices for huge sections of UK line rental (either directly or via WLR) was brought to an end.

NGMsGhost wrote on Feb 28^th, 2007 at 9:29am:

darkstar wrote on Feb 28th, 2007 at 8:39am: As we keep going round in circles I may as well sum this up to every other time we have debated this: Experts: It costs £9pcm to maintain line NGM (non expert): No it doesnt, you lie to prop up BT. You corrupt people you. Me: Experts have more knowledge than me or you. Best belive them on that number until other figures come along. NGM: NOOO NEVER! I am right and you must all listen as I will rant on for hours about corruption and blah blah blah. Sums it up pretty much. I also feel insulted that you consider me not to have the necessary expertise because I do not work for BT and that you feel no one outside BT can apparently understand its operating model (a BT company man if ever there was one therefore despite your previous claims).

You really dont bother reading anything do you? OFCOM ARE NOT BT!!!! Its OFCOM who made the entire revue and INVESTIGATION. Yes I have faith in experts as they ahve become experts and have actually checked all the facts and figures. The day that NGM can show me why it costs less than the ammount OFCOM have claimed than I will starts to listen, until then we have 1 official pricing given and tahst what we have to use.
Its got nothing to do with BT, its got nothing to do with anyone. I dont care about the damned company, I care about people saying something is wrong JUST because they dont agree with it. You heve no proof at all, youre like one of the people who claim that the first moon landing was fake, that the Montreal Screwjob was a work and that Dianna was killed by MI5.

Simple balancing act for you:

Conclusion provided by people who had done all the research > conclusion done by theorist

Edit: firestop, my faith in experts is there until prooven otherwise, or until a sytudy made by another body can at least challange with better than 'well i think'.

NGMsGhost wrote on Feb 28^th, 2007 at 9:29am:

I imagine that ...

I would be interested to hear how telecoms would have existed in this country if BT had been closed down, asset-stripped, or split up into factions and then taken over by venture capitalists who expect 40% return on their money, then spend more on lawyers than engineering staff, like the railways have done.

Would broadband have been developed in their labs earlier or later, and would the management who could see no business case for it, and were worried about losing pstn revenues to VoIP, have held sway over the engineers for even longer?

It isn't misapplied regulation that affects how balances are struck between amortising long-term capital investments against day-to-day running costs and near-zero actual marginal cost of calls; it's interest rates and accountants.

It's rather a paradox that you seem to suggest keeping BT call charges higher, making it uncompetitive, which is how we got saddled with revenue-sharing from cheaper providers in the first place.

If the British BT model is so great then why does everyone in business in the USA to seem to have 0800 numbers. ::)

As to darkstar I think by now he has amply demonstrated why he has a life long career as a BT customer service person obediently trotting out the latest company propaganda ahead of him.

NGMsGhost wrote on Feb 28^th, 2007 at 11:31am:

If the British BT model is so great then why does everyone in business in the USA to seem to have 0800 numbers. ::)

I think you mean 1-800

??? non sequitur - those businesses here that chose to have revenue-sharing numbers did so originally with cheaper calls providers than BT

It's a poor idea comparing with USA anyway, as line rentals are proportionately higher, and almost all landline deals have some zero-tariff calls automatically included

andy9 wrote on Feb 28^th, 2007 at 11:49am:

It's a poor idea comparing with USA anyway, as line rentals are proportionately higher, and almost all landline deals have some zero-tariff calls automatically included

Where has the higher phone line rentals?  Here or the USA or does that vary by State and location over there?

NGMsGhost wrote on Feb 28^th, 2007 at 11:31am:

As to darkstar I think by now he has amply demonstrated why he has a life long career as a BT customer service person obediently trotting out the latest company propaganda ahead of him.

I HATE working for BT, recently a company wide email was sent around warning all the workers not to discuss BTs polocies on forums and the like because of me. Who do you think broke the news to an admin here about BT getting rid of the ICP and LUS?
BT wont give me a contract with them (yep, Im agency employed) as I keep getting warnings on my file as I challange BT policy in public and am seen as a 'troublemaker' as I try to do whats best for customers rather than hitting my targets.
You are obsessed with where I work and seem to think that Im defined by my job. Get real, start to look at how often I disagree with BT, then look at the fact that THE TOPIC OF HOW MUCH LINES COST TO UPKEEP IS DEFINED BY OFCOM NOT BT.
But your personal vendetta against BT makes you blind to that.

So again: why is your opinion a better guide than the official reports and stats?

~ Edited by Dave: Personal comments removed

darkstar wrote on Feb 28^th, 2007 at 12:21pm:

Get real, start to look at how often I disagree with BT, then look at the fact that THE TOPIC OF HOW MUCH LINES COST TO UPKEEP IS DEFINED BY OFCOM NOT BT.

But Ofcom has many former BT employees in its ranks with BT pensions and has many employees who go back to BT having learned how to get what they want from the regulator.

Most of Ofcom's acceptance of line rental prices was based on submissions by BT - most of which are RED Acted for commercial confidentiality in their crucial sections.  It wasn't based on original Ofcom research independently gathered (and most of that is rigged to suit Ofcom's politically spun objectives anyway).

The UK has a very expensive entrenched fixed line operator with very high operating costs and deriving a lot of its cashflow and income from line rental.  To challenge that might bring the whole thing tumbling down and a BT breakup with separation of network ownership from phone call provision.  That might bring real pain in the short term but in the long run might bring far greater benefits if the total lack of competition in line rental with everyone simply following the BT leader was brought to an end.

There is a huge range of standing charge options on gas and electricity because it is properly competitive and there isn't on phone calls in BT only line areas.  Surely you can see that must be something to worry about? :-/

Since you have policy based views on things you are clearly doing completely the wrong job.  The only people who last in customer call centres long term just want a nice simple job where they don't have to think too much about anything and where they never challenge the official company line. :'(

NGMsGhost wrote on Feb 28^th, 2007 at 12:36pm:

darkstar wrote on Feb 28th, 2007 at 12:21pm: Get real, start to look at how often I disagree with BT, then look at the fact that THE TOPIC OF HOW MUCH LINES COST TO UPKEEP IS DEFINED BY OFCOM NOT BT. There is a huge range of standing charge options on gas and electricity because it is properly competitive and there isn't on phone calls in BT only line areas.  Surely you can see that must be something to worry about? :-/ Since you have policy based views on things you are clearly doing completely the wrong job.  The only people who last in customer call centres long term just want a nice simple job where they don't have to think too much about anything and where they never challenge the official company line. :'(

To answer both these:

1)I agree that only having BT availability is a risky buisness for sure. I am hoping that cable will become more and more freely available in order to increase compatition (though most cable charges are at a similer price).  Hopefully Sky and Virgin sort out the TV fued quickly so Virgin can concentrate on the phone side of it.

2) IF I stay at BT I would want to work in the complaints team so I can help people out. Otherwise I want to work in a book store (I love books :P).
Either way as I am becoming my partners carer soon i will be getting part time hours either way.

I am sorry if I appeared perhaps a little patronising previously leading to your own heated comments.

You accept there are many faults with BT but you still seem to still have a touching faith in Ofcom.  I think that is where you have not made the same journey as most of us who have been fighting the 084/7 battle for this long (10 years for me) and trying to persuade OFTEL and Ofcom to take the correct action over 084/7.

If you had then you would realise that there are almost no real experts at all at Ofcom but only a bunch of highly paid careerist charlatans who are quite content to change their so called expert opinion in order to please their New Labour masters and ensure that they climb ever higher up the greasy but every well remunerated Ofcom pole.

Ofcom just doesn't seem to have any people of principle who would take a stand for the consumer to the possible detriment of their job prospects working there.  The hard bitten headhunter type approach they use to finding all senior staff st Ofcom is such that they only tend to recruit ambitious careerist yes men/women keen on achieving the highest job position and salary possible but who are not prepared to disclose that most of their efforts at achieving so called competition are a sham due to leaving BT as the only supplier of fixed line phone infrastructure still in a huge number of UK homes.

I do have complaints about the gas and electricity system but only to the extent that it takes a ridiculous 6 weeks to change suppliers rather than the maximum 1 week it should take and that I can't force the gas and electricity company to relocate their meters at their expense out of a locked landlord storage cupboard where they originally installed them 17 years ago and into my home.  But on gas and electricty you will find tariffs with a standing charge, tariffs that have a higher price for the first x units per year and no standing charge and tariffs like Equipower with no standing charge and the same price for all units for all customers regardless of how they pay.  But on phone line rental you will find everyone charging near to £11 per month because BT is so dominant in the total marketplace that nobody thinks they need to out compete BT on phone line rental cost and/or the WLR system doesn't enable them to do so for all those suppliers.

I think the journey you need to make is to realise not just that BT is a large faceless corporate that doesn't let its call centre workers behave like human beings but that the whole damn system is rotten and that most of the so called experts are usually self serving careerists intent on their next promotion and the highest possible salary.  There are people in employment without such motivations and capable of putting the public interest first (which is what staff at a non profit making regulator should do) but these days they sadly seem to be getting rarer and rarer. To date I have not come across one such person at Ofcom.

andy9 wrote on Feb 28^th, 2007 at 11:23am:

I would be interested to hear how telecoms would have existed in this country if BT had been closed down, asset-stripped, or split up into factions and then taken over by venture capitalists who expect 40% return on their money, then spend more on lawyers than engineering staff, like the railways have done. Would broadband have been developed in their labs earlier or later, and would the management who could see no business case for it, and were worried about losing pstn revenues to VoIP, have held sway over the engineers for even longer? It isn't misapplied regulation that affects how balances are struck between amortising long-term capital investments against day-to-day running costs and near-zero actual marginal cost of calls; it's interest rates and accountants. It's rather a paradox that you seem to suggest keeping BT call charges higher, making it uncompetitive, which is how we got saddled with revenue-sharing from cheaper providers in the first place.

You make a very interesting point, andy9, and one which has crossed my mind before. OK, so 'if' is a big word, but it was privatised by the Tory government which the ethos that competition would bring prices down. I do not like being lied to.

At the time I imagined that the one telegraph pole near me would be joined by other telegraph poles as competitors built their networks. But of course that was never going to happen. Look at BT's main competitor, cable, or Virgin Media as it is now known. IIRC it started off as separate companies. I know round here it was Yorkshire Cable, but inevitably individual companies have been swallowed up and now are one. The thing is that cable was only installed in urban areas where there was going to be plenty of business. Anywhere else and they didn't want to know.

As I said elsewhere, telephone isn't like gas and electric because they have one distribution network with many different providers putting in and taking out the gas/electric. With telephones, the network you connect to is operated by the telco you are with (unless you're with a LLU provider, but it's still a BT pair of copper wires). So this means that my original vision of competition being brought about by having several different providers' networks running down every street was not far off.

Now look at the mobile infrastructure in this country. It started off privatised and if we take the four public GSM networks, O2, Vodafone, Orange and T-Mobile we see that they have had to build their networks to cover the same areas. So we have areas of the country that aren't covered by some or all networks and we have urban areas where there are, in effect, four times as many base stations as is techincally necessary to provide a mobile telephone service in that location.

I have applied andy9's thinking to this and come to the conclusion that we have a quarter of the coverage we could have and/or we are paying four times as much as we need to because of this waste in equipment. Whilst I accept that this guestimate may be out, I do think that there is something in it and that is wastage of infratsructure when privatisation was supposed to get rid of this.

Also, we now pay through the nose to call someone on another network versus our own. It is also cheaper to call destinations abroad than other networks on some tariffs. People changing numbers is commonplace. With a mobile being mobile it stands to reason that even if someone moves to the other end of the country, they can keep the same number. But the network operators make it cheaper to take out 'new' contracts because statistics of 'new' subscribers are more important than a basic technical requirement that someone should keep the same number. All of this has been brought about by privatisation and the supposed need for competition, but all these years later we still have to put up with it.

Consider other industries like motor industry. Pretty much every manufacturer has a dealership in every town. So there is uniform coverage and choice there. But compare the need to have a separate outlet (dealership) for every car manufacturer and a telephone network which must have 100% coverage. That's cables down every street or radio base stations every how every often.

NGMsGhost wrote on Feb 28^th, 2007 at 1:04pm:

I am sorry if I appeared perhaps a little patronising previously leading to your own heated comments. You accept there are many faults with BT but you still seem to still have a touching faith in Ofcom.  I think that is where you have not made the same journey as most of us who have been fighting the 084/7 battle for this long (10 years for me) and trying to persuade OFTEL and Ofcom to take the correct action over 084/7.

Apology accepted, I also apologise for calling you a moron. Unacceptable behaviour and I should have known better.
I have faith in most authority figures until they prove otherwise to me, or when I get information to teh contrary. Up to now Ofcom mearly seem inept to me, not corrupt.

darkstar wrote on Feb 28^th, 2007 at 1:38pm:

Apology accepted, I also apologise for calling you a moron. Unacceptable behaviour and I should have known better. I have faith in most authority figures until they prove otherwise to me, or when I get information to teh contrary. Up to now Ofcom mearly seem inept to me, not corrupt.

Sadly having met a number of Ofcom's senior staff I do not believe ineptness is in any way the problem and nor is it conventional corruptness in the sense of money changing hands.  However it is corruptness in the sense of the body failing to fulfil its principal duty under the Communications Act 2003 to protect the best interests of the UK citizen consumer.

I believe the senior staff of Ofcom are mainly motivated to help their old colleagues and possibly future colleagues too in the telecoms industry run as profitable a business as they possibly can and/or to do the bidding of Tessa Jowell and New Labour ministers to not regulate in a way that damages the businesses of important New Labour friends like Rupert Murdoch.  And the main reason they in turn want to do that is to obtain as much career advancement as they personally can and/or possibly even honours such as a knighthood or peerage in the case of their most senior staff and of course career advancement does usually also mean more money for the people involved, even if not by direct transfer processes from the telcos, which clearly would be illegal and I am also equally sure are not happening.

Perhaps that is what you have yet to learn about Ofcom.  That it is not inept at all but merely very good at turning a deaf ear to those interest groups that do not suit the agenda it is actually pursuing, whatever it say is its principal duty in the Communications Act 2003.

andy9 wrote on Feb 28^th, 2007 at 11:23am:

I would be interested to hear how telecoms would have existed in this country if BT had been closed down, asset-stripped, or split up into factions and then taken over by venture capitalists who expect 40% return on their money, then spend more on lawyers than engineering staff, like the railways have done.

With the railways it is maintainance that has been affected. Accountants see safety as a business risk and this is what you get. The same applies to telecoms, the only difference being that it's not lives lost, but a worse service. Take repairs to phone lines. It could take days to get a phone line working again when it goes faulty. It's a real backwards-step and good service should be the first and foremost principal.

Dave wrote on Feb 28^th, 2007 at 1:56pm:

It could take days to get a phone line working again when it goes faulty. It's a real backwards-step and good service should be the first and foremost principal.

Transco come out in just one hour 24 hours a day for any gas problem of even modest concern (like a gas regulator I had fail in fully open position the night before I was going on holiday).  BT frequently already take several days to fix things and don't work Saturday afternoon, Sundays or Bank Holidays usually unless thousands of customers are affected by the fault in question.

As long as an adequate Service Level Agreement is in place as well as suitable large penalties for not hitting the relevant targets all should be well.  It is the lack of adequate fines and powers given to most UK regulators that leads to things going down hill.  And company directors should go to prison if their gross negligence leads to people being killed.

darkstar wrote on Feb 27^th, 2007 at 8:46am:

NGMsGhost wrote on Feb 25th, 2007 at 7:43pm: Look at standing charges for gas, electricity and water and the fact that they are beween £0 and £3.50 per month and you will start to realise there is something wrong with BT needing £11 per month. If you odnt use your gas pipes then fine, but when your line is switched on but you odnt dial, what about the other information it recieves. You know, incoming calls. Should you have that facility for nothing?

Exactly. NGMsGhost, as far as I can see in this country we have examples of both extremes. We have landlines where we pay rental in return for cheap calls and mobiles where we don't pay rental (in the true meaning of the word) and we pay extortionate rates. Any 'rental' on a pay monthly service is mainly to cover the inclusive minutes and the handset. Outside inclusive minutes you pay as much, if not more than you do on pay as you go! This is all in an effort to penalise those who use more minutes that they have, thus they should choose the right amount of minutes in advance. How do you do that? And those who don't use all their minutes pay a greater average pence per minute! Yet you make no mention of this NGM.

Whilst you could account higher per minute charges to lower fixed 'rental' fees, the more calls you make the more you pay for these 'rental' charges that you should have paid as a fixed amount.

darkstar wrote on Feb 28^th, 2007 at 12:41pm:

IF I stay at BT I would want to work in the complaints team so I can help people out. Otherwise I want to work in a book store (I love books :P). Either way as I am becoming my partners carer soon i will be getting part time hours either way.

Hmmm.  Having dealt with the BT High Level Complaints team staff even they don't really seem able to help you out.  They just come up with rather more bizarre and elaborate excuses BT still for not doing what customers want.

I would definitely try a book store if I was you.  So much more human and rewarding than a call centre.

Sorry to hear about your partner.  That sounds bad.  I have no idea of course what age you are.

Yeah well complaints has always been my thing to deal with wherever I worked in the past (and as that included McD's Im good at it ;)), i like to help people.
As for me and my partner, Im 26 and shes 21. She has both Cystic Fibrosis and Muscular Dystrophy. Fun eh.

But Im considering getting a job in Waterstones, like you say you can be more personal. And no Call handling Time targets.

Edit: I dindt think you used BT. So why did you have to deal with them? If you odnt mind me asking.

Dave wrote on Feb 28^th, 2007 at 2:05pm:

And those who don't use all their minutes pay a greater average pence per minute! Yet you make no mention of this NGM. Whilst you could account higher per minute charges to lower fixed 'rental' fees, the more calls you make the more you pay for these 'rental' charges that you should have paid as a fixed amount.

I wasn't talking about mobiles but only about fixed line phone calls.  There is far more choice available in mobiles including Pay As You Go with no line rental and very cheap off peak rates.  I only spend about £20 a year on calls on my mobile phone.

There should be far more variety on fixed line rental structures than there is.  The current set up is blatantly a cartel with everyone playing follow the BT leader.

darkstar wrote on Feb 28^th, 2007 at 2:13pm:

Yeah well complaints has always been my thing to deal with wherever I worked in the past (and as that included McD's Im good at it ;)), i like to help people. As for me and my partner, Im 26 and shes 21. She has both Cystic Fibrosis and Muscular Dystrophy. Fun eh. But Im considering getting a job in Waterstones, like you say you can be more personal. And no Call handling Time targets. Edit: I dindt think you used BT. So why did you have to deal with them? If you odnt mind me asking.

Sorry to hear about your partner.  Its just not fair for anyone to have all those afflictions at such a young age.

So far as Waterstones is concerned don't forget they are a big faceless corporate.  They probably have targets for the number of books the store shifts each month, although its hard to see how that could be linked to individual employees.  Aren't there any small independent bookstores still or antiquarian bookstores?

NGMsGhost wrote on Feb 28^th, 2007 at 2:18pm:

darkstar wrote on Feb 28th, 2007 at 2:13pm: Yeah well complaints has always been my thing to deal with wherever I worked in the past (and as that included McD's Im good at it ;)), i like to help people. As for me and my partner, Im 26 and shes 21. She has both Cystic Fibrosis and Muscular Dystrophy. Fun eh. But Im considering getting a job in Waterstones, like you say you can be more personal. And no Call handling Time targets. Edit: I dindt think you used BT. So why did you have to deal with them? If you odnt mind me asking. Sorry to hear about your partner.  Its just not fair for anyone to have all those afflictions at such a young age. So far as Waterstones is concerned don't forget they are a big faceless corporate.  They probably have targets for the number of books the store shifts each month, although its hard to see how that could be linked to individual employees.  Aren't there any small independent bookstores still or antiquarian bookstores?

Both are genetic, so she has had them all her life. ;) But thanks for the words anyhow.

The only bookstores near me are Waterstones and WHSmiths, and the Waterstones has a better selection so I want in there. The only independant bookstore has a very....select group of over 18s who visit it. So I can live without that!

NGMsGhost wrote on Feb 28^th, 2007 at 12:36pm:

But Ofcom has many former BT employees in its ranks with BT pensions and has many employees who go back to BT having learned how to get what they want from the regulator.

NGMsGhost you appear to view every employee of every company you disagree with as taking on the views of that company as a whole. Any company is driven by the decisions/views of its senior management and not by being able to employ enough people (lower down the chain) who agree with the company's why and wherefores of doing things. It is these people who you are saying put their views to Ofcom and not call centre workers like darkstar.


NGMsGhost wrote on Feb 28^th, 2007 at 12:36pm:

It wasn't based on original Ofcom research independently gathered (and most of that is rigged to suit Ofcom's politically spun objectives anyway).

And your views are no different. You frequently introduce political critism into the topic rather than looking at positive ways that the system could/should be improved.


NGMsGhost wrote on Feb 28^th, 2007 at 12:36pm:

The UK has a very expensive entrenched fixed line operator with very high operating costs and deriving a lot of its cashflow and income from line rental.  To challenge that might bring the whole thing tumbling down and a BT breakup with separation of network ownership from phone call provision.  That might bring real pain in the short term but in the long run might bring far greater benefits if the total lack of competition in line rental with everyone simply following the BT leader was brought to an end.

Of course, breaking it all up is good in such a network. That was what was done with the railways with fatal consquences. The engineers (remember them, who actually keep it working) could see it coming, but outsourcing and fragmentation means each bit has to chase its own targets. Or more to the point, been seen to be efficient. That means that the perception of what's happening overules actually having a safer railway network because it's more expensive. The same thing appears to be happening in telecoms but it's not lives at stake but the quality of service and the innovation that is suffering, such as taking longer to fix faults at the same time as putting prices up.


NGMsGhost wrote on Feb 28^th, 2007 at 12:36pm:

There is a huge range of standing charge options on gas and electricity because it is properly competitive and there isn't on phone calls in BT only line areas.  Surely you can see that must be something to worry about? :-/

Yes, but the gas network is operated by one entity. Electricity is the same company in one area, but with different suppliers.


NGMsGhost wrote on Feb 28^th, 2007 at 12:36pm:

Since you have policy based views on things you are clearly doing completely the wrong job.  The only people who last in customer call centres long term just want a nice simple job where they don't have to think too much about anything and where they never challenge the official company line. :'(

So all those companies who have moved or are moving call centres to India are full of people who believe in it? Do the office staff who have gone to India to train them, knowing that when they come back their job might well have gone as a result really embrace the company's direction? Of course not!!!


NGMsGhost wrote on Feb 28^th, 2007 at 2:05pm:

Dave wrote on Feb 28th, 2007 at 1:56pm: It could take days to get a phone line working again when it goes faulty. It's a real backwards-step and good service should be the first and foremost principal. Transco come out in just one hour 24 hours a day for any gas problem of even modest concern (like a gas regulator I had fail in fully open position the night before I was going on holiday).  BT frequently already take several days to fix things and don't work Saturday afternoon, Sundays or Bank Holidays usually unless thousands of customers are affected by the fault in question.

Firstly, with gas and electricity there are obvious safety issues that mean that they must be dealt with straight away. With gas and electricity you connect to one supply, pipe or cable. With the telephone every subscriber must have their own pair back to the exchange. Therefore, a fault that affects you will usually not affect your neighbours. I'm not saying it's any less important though.

What it means is that the fault is more difficult to find as it could be anywhere. This is especially true with intermittent faults. How many times have you heard of a gas pipe with an intermittent leak?

You appear not to take into consideration how the system is engineered and what implications this might have on how it should be structured. You are more interested in behaving like a member of upper-management who has lost touch with what the job entails at the sharp end.

NGMsGhost wrote on Feb 28^th, 2007 at 2:05pm:

As long as an adequate Service Level Agreement is in place as well as suitable large penalties for not hitting the relevant targets all should be well.  It is the lack of adequate fines and powers given to most UK regulators that leads to things going down hill.  And company directors should go to prison if their gross negligence leads to people being killed.

And this quote just emphasises what I said in my last paragraph. "Service Level Agreements" and fines are simply like big sticks you beat organisations in because you believe it will do as you want.

I remember when Arriva Trains Northern operated my local train line. The recorded announcer was forever "sorry" that the train was delayed. They were £2 million for "poor performance". To this day I would not do business with Arriva unless I had to such as if a bus service is operated by it.

But how does money out of the system help? How is this positive? At the end of the day, companies will have a tendancy to put up prices rather than lowering them.


NGMsGhost wrote on Feb 28^th, 2007 at 2:13pm:

I wasn't talking about mobiles but only about fixed line phone calls.  There is far more choice available in mobiles including Pay As You Go with no line rental and very cheap off peak rates.  I only spend about £20 a year on calls on my mobile phone. There should be far more variety on fixed line rental structures than there is.  The current set up is blatantly a cartel with everyone playing follow the BT leader.

Choice means everything, what rubbish!

Why would I want to choose which hospital I go to? A choice on medical care should be based on medical reasoning. As I am not medically qualified, it is a choice I cannot make because the two (or more) choices look the same to me. Step in the marketeers who have no medical qualifications but can spin it to make it look good. I would rather my decision of anything be based on fact than perception else it defeats the who concept and the only beneficeries are those who are offering the choice because they can offer a lower rate service whilst purporting to be "the best". If I go down to the furniture store and choose something, my choice is based on the physical properties and the looks of the product. With telecoms, BT operates the network anyway, so the choice of the services of the network and those that operate it is made anyway.

So the 'choice' is which advertising material looks the best, all designed by people who have no understanding of the technical workings of their business. And how much are we all paying to have all these different offices of different telcos operating independantly? How is this better than BT as a whole?

I thought that the original reason was to provide a cheaper, better and more efficient service to the consumer...

Dave are you by any chance a Socialist Worker or even a Member of the Communist party?  I am a disillusioned Conservative who sees many, many faults in the market system (usually associated with monopolies and cartels) but found even more with nationalised industries.  Do you know how long it took to get a phone line in the days of the GPO which you seem to view with rose tinted spectacles.

The market system can work if there is tough regulation and above all where customers have a choice.  Where there is a private monopoly or a cartel that is a near monopoly high prices and bad service usually follow.  The reason the current fines do not work is because they are not nearly high enough.  They need to be hundreds of millions in some cases and contracts need to be terminated with penalties if the company does not perform or deliver the service.

Perhaps you could lay your cards on the table and tell us if you think there should only be one airline in the UK with 1970s price levels in real terms and only one make of car in one colour (that would be fair after all wouldn't it as no one would be any better off than anyone else).  Your comments that people should not be able to choose the hospital they use I find very worrying. Real old style socialist rationing.  So if someone knows a hospital has a very high death rate on the operation in question they should still be forced to go there should they? :o

I have always respected your knowledge of telecoms.  But I do find what now emerges to be apparently your personal politics to be distinctly alarming.

Dave wrote on Feb 28^th, 2007 at 3:23pm:

With telecoms, BT operates the network anyway, so the choice of the services of the network and those that operate it is made anyway.

Ever heard of fully unbundled LLU? ;) ::)

NGMsGhost wrote on Feb 28^th, 2007 at 3:39pm:

Dave are you by any chance a Socialist Worker or even a Member of the Communist party?  I am a disillusioned Conservative who sees many, many faults in the market system (usually associated with monopolies and cartels) but found even more with nationalised industries.  Do you know how long it took to get a phone line in the days of the GPO which you seem to view with rose tinted spectacles.

There are many critical comments about Labour by you, but not critial of Conservatives, I would not know this. Did you prefer the Thatcher years then?

I will be the first person to say that comments I made in the above posts are somewhat 'idealistic' and at one extreme. But the other extreme is to say break it up and fragment it because that is always better isn't always the best either. But when I see that the competition that was supposedly introduced for our benefits is really just benefiting private investors at our expense, I do wonder what sort of telephone service we would have had it been left as a public utility.

The same thing is happening with the Royal Mail. It's network can be likened to the telecoms network whereby there must be a post box every so often and where deliveries must be made everywhere. Then by the same token it must compete with the Virgin Medias who take the rich pickings.

At the end of the day, the reason we are here is the same. I do not expect there to be one make, model and colour of car no. That's an extreme example of which you seem to be at the other end of the scale at times. I like to balance things out! I also repeat what I've just said about the fact that what is now BT started out as a public utility and compare that to the motor industry which didn't.

It is also worth looking at internet service providers which, like mobile telephones, have always been operated in a competitive way because that's how it's been done since day 1.


NGMsGhost wrote on Feb 28^th, 2007 at 3:39pm:

The market system can work if there is tough regulation and above all where customers have a choice.  Where there is a private monopoly or a cartel that is a near monopoly high prices and bad service usually follow. …

But the key thing here is that BT as it currently is is the network infrastructure in this country. It has not become a big monopoly because of poor regulation, or greed, but because it was a public utility. It is poor regulation and planning that has left us in the current state we are in today.

So the exercise of privatisation and introducing competition hasn't achieved what were the original objectives. That is not to say that it would not work if operated differently. But this puts me in mind of the thing you said about speed cameras:

Dave wrote on Feb 23^rd, 2007 at 7:01pm:

Similarly, speed cameras generate that much revenue for the government that it must be a sizeable chunk of the Chancellor's budget. This is wrong as the point of a speed camera is to stop people breaking the speed limit. Therefore the 'fines' are not working. This is not to say that speed cameras should be scrapped, per se.

And your response...

NGMsGhost wrote on Feb 23^rd, 2007 at 7:09pm:

Yes it is because more and more money making civil liberty infrining Big Brother speed cameras enforcing speed limits that aren't sensibly set don't stop accidents from happening and contrary to the New Labour lies peddled most accidents have very little to do with absolute speed.  Most of it is down to poor road design and reckless and careless driving.

So what you're saying is that if a certain solution does not work is that it is wrong through and through and not because the way it has been implemented is wrong?

My statement was not based on my knowledge of certain locations or situations that speed cameras are worthwhile, but by the fact that I know little about road design. Similarly, the argument of scrapping the BBC licence fee so often surrounds the fact that what is currently on the BBC is not to one's taste, but avoids considering what will happen if revenue from advertising is the driving force of one of the nation's principal broadcasters. The fact that the current system may or may not be the best way of running things is also not discussed often enough.


NGMsGhost wrote on Feb 28^th, 2007 at 3:39pm:

… Your comments that people should not be able to choose the hospital they use I find very worrying. Real old style socialist rationing.  So if someone knows a hospital has a very high death rate on the operation in question they should still be forced to go there should they? :o

Perhaps the hospital example is an extreme one, but your principal is based on the fact that you see that the 'system' allows for hospitals that have high death rates, for example. It also means that the all important statistics which are published must have graphs on death rates. The fact that statistics can be engineered to show or not show what one wants means that I don't see what basis they are for choosing hospital.

Also, by choosing you are introducing competition and therefore the possibility that one hospital could close because of this. The thing is that we don't want hospitals to purport that they are 'better' than their neighbouring ones, or better than any others within the country for that matter, but that they are the best they can be.

Dave,

I can't quite work out your own position really.

You seem to imply you are a non political person and rather disapprove of politics and politicians but then all your actual beliefs seem to be what I would call Old Labour.  That is that you think it would be much fairer for the State to only operate one telco, one hospital system, one school system and so on and for the state to decide when you will get these services.  I think they tried a system like that in the Soviet Union but general reports were that it didn't work too well.  ::)

I agree the way the rail network was broken up hasn't worked that brilliantly but actually there haven't really been any more serious train crashes than there were under British Rail.  Its just that when there is a crash various militant rail trade unionists are very fast to suggest it must be due to privatisation.  And this incident with the Virgin train and the previous one some years ago also with the missing locking bar on the points are worrying but begin to look more like a poor points design issue than necessarily lazy and totally useless contractors.

There is a balance to be struck. I would have private competition but with very tough regulation and intervention if companies are behaving like cartels or are recklessly negligent despite previous attempts to suggest they improve their processes.  On hosiptals having an NHS is a reasonable thing to do but if a hospital is really bad people should be allowed to avoid it as that will force it to improve and employ new management.  Under the old system you had to go and have the opearation and if you died because the hospital was not very good at what it did well then tough luck.

Most of the problems with 084/7 come from bad regulation failing to force full price disclosure at point of sale and an appalling regulator never doing anything to explaing its totally inexplicable national telephone number plan.  Businesses will generally compete properly given a proper regulatory framework.

Well there we are.  We will perhaps have to agree to disagree on some of the issues.

NGMsGhost wrote on Feb 28^th, 2007 at 5:40pm:

You seem to imply you are a non political person and rather disapprove of politics and politicians but then all your actual beliefs seem to be what I would call Old Labour.  That is that you think it would be much fairer for the State to only operate one telco, one hospital system, one school system and so on and for the state to decide when you will get these services.  I think they tried a system like that in the Soviet Union but general reports were that it didn't work too well.  ::)

What I'm after is a solution to the problem. How they are described from a political perspective is irrelevant.

As I said, it's probably idealistic that a single state owned telco would work. Although I do wonder how it would have worked if private telcos had built the network. They would surely all like to have covered the urban areas leaving rural areas to someone else.

Anyway, to cut to the chase, there's nothing to distinguish between different providers, thus what's the point in such a choice? The differences come with extras such as caller display and anonymous call rejection which we are charged an arm and a leg for. The price differential is that small that it's not worth changing. A telephone service is a telephone service.

Perhaps when telephone services provide extras like TV services aswell, then there will be a variation between them. Indeed, why must we pay for a PSTN service even if we only want a broadband connection? Fair enough, some line rental is fine, but the telephone service should be separate just as broadband is.


NGMsGhost wrote on Feb 28^th, 2007 at 5:40pm:

There is a balance to be struck. I would have private competition but with very tough regulation and intervention if companies are behaving like cartels or are recklessly negligent despite previous attempts to suggest they improve their processes.

At present Ofcom would have us believe that competition is flourishing, but the reality appears to be that they are all much of a muchness. NTL even admitted that it was raising its price of line rental to match that of its rivals. What sort of industry is this?

I think that the way in which the price of internet access has come down shows how the competition has worked fine there. But with telephones the scales are over to one side because of the power of BT.

But what I can't understand is the attitude of people who expect that BT would roll over and accept that it is going to loose customers as competition takes hold. That is an inevitable fact, but how many businesses operate with the strategy that they will allow competitors to take away their business? And how can this go down well with shareholders?


NGMsGhost wrote on Feb 28^th, 2007 at 5:40pm:

Most of the problems with 084/7 come from bad regulation failing to force full price disclosure at point of sale and an appalling regulator never doing anything to explaing its totally inexplicable national telephone number plan.  Businesses will generally compete properly given a proper regulatory framework.

And this is a big big industry as we know. But this is how the UK's privatised telecoms industry carries on. The costs of calling these numbers are anti-competitive and, assuming that a caller doesn't avoid them by using alternatives and calls the 084/087 number provided by the company they are calling, they will probably pay more than any savings that can be made by switching provider. What I'm saying is that I think that the 084/087 charges puts any price differential well and truely in the shade. So what's the point in it???

Dave,

I'm with nearly all of what you said in your last post but don't agree with you that politics is not a relevant issue as the growth of 084/7 is almost directly dependent on the despicable, far too large and heavily politically influenced regulator Ofcom, which does not act on a neutral basis to promote proper price competition but instead engages in emperors new clothes style competition where it pretends customers transferring to WLR means there is more competition in the market place but in reality customers have only moved for cheaper call prices and not because there was any better deal on line rental.  In gas and electricity there is only one company maintaining each network to the customer's door (Transco for gas or several large regional electricity companies like EDF Energy) but the 20+ companies you can choose who sell you the gas or electricity supplied via those single supply networks seem to be able to afford to offer deals that have no standing charge with a slightly higher price per unit for all units or a standing charge paid by much higher initial units followed by subsequent lower priced units once you hit a certain threshold or you can have a conventional standing charge and lowest price per unit.  The tariffs without a standing charge are likely to suit you on any supply where you only use a very smaller number of units per year like a separate garage supply or a little used country cottage.  Such a tariff for phone would also be perfect for somone who only needed their phone line to take a broadband service.

It seems quite wrong that I have to pay BT for a Customer Discount Scheme (Option 1) with lower call prices than their old Standard rates to subsidise cheaper prices for those customers who do route calls with them.  The old BT Standard Rate line rental of £28.50 per quarter was blatantly the real actual cost of providing a phone line while still being profitable for BT.  Now I have to £33 a quarter to cross subsidise BT to have cheaper calls for their customers On Options 2 and 3 in particular and also on Option 1 so they won't move to competitors.

The behaviour of BT's rivals on line rental since BT's line rental price and minimum charge price increase proves that BT does still have massive Significant Market Power and thus it should not be allowed to set its own prices.  Especially when its reaction to being allowed to change its own prices is to raise them between 10% and 20% on calls and line rental for everyone except those who make all their calls with BT using BT Option 2 and 3.  This is not fair when we have to still use the BT line to get broadband, even if we want to use Voip for all our calls.

There is a lot of moaning now about bank charges but the banks were up front about those charges and there was considerable variation between banks.  Yet there is almost no variation on line rental or 084/7 call prices worth billions a year and the telesoms regulator thinks it is fine for some reason (mainly in my view because it means lots of profits for business).  But I'm quite sure that the OFT and the Competition Commission wouldn't think it was fine at all if they controlled regulation of this industry in terms of fair competition and pricing instead of Ofcom.

The only solution to Ofcom seems to be to close it down because it is hugely expensive and represents the worst sort of New Labour political spin in claiming constantly to serve the UK Citizen Consumer while actually working against their interests and to help telco interests night and day.  The minutes of those despicable NTS focus group meetings that Ofcom holds tells us everything one needs to know about which side Ofcom is really on and who Ofcom thinks are its real masters.  And of course the Telcos directly fund Ofcom instead of funding for it coming out of taxation as it does for the OFT and the Competition Commission. Since Ofcom sees the Telcos and Broadcasting Cos as its main customers and clearly does not see consumers in that light that is apparently why it bends over backwards to be helpful to them and largely treats consumers as third rate citizens it only has to pay lip service towards.

This is not an issue about whether privatisation works.  It is really an issue about a totally failed regulator that should be either broken up into more relevant parts or hugely reformed.  Its Chief Executive also needs to be someone with a pro consumer agenda (as per OFT and Competition Commission) and not someone with a pro big business agenda.

NGMsGhost wrote on Mar 1^st, 2007 at 12:16pm:

…And of course the Telcos directly fund Ofcom instead of funding for it coming out of taxation as it does for the OFT and the Competition Commission. Since Ofcom sees the Telcos and Broadcasting Cos as its main customers and clearly does not see consumers in that light that is apparently why it bends over backwards to be helpful to them and largely treats consumers as third rate citizens it only has to pay lip service towards.

I was not aware that the telcos pay for Ofcom. Who decides what the size of the Ofcom budget will be and how much each telco will contribute?

Dave wrote on Mar 1^st, 2007 at 4:04pm:

I was not aware that the telcos pay for Ofcom. Who decides what the size of the Ofcom budget will be and how much each telco will contribute?

See www.ofcom.org.uk/media/news/2006/03/nr_20060331


Quote:

Ofcom is funded by payments from broadcasting licensees and communications providers as well as from payments for the management of the UK radio spectrum. In its Tariff Tables for April 2006-March 2007, published today, Ofcom sets out an overview of the fees due from industry for the coming financial year. Operating costs are allocated to each sector according to the extent of work proposed for that sector in 2006/7. The per-sector costs are then divided between regulated companies according to a number of factors including relevant company revenue. Details of individual company fees are not disclosed. Ofcom’s proposed work programme is set out in its Annual Plan, which was published in draft for consultation on 14 th December 2005. The final version of the Annual Plan will be published on 4th April 2006. Key points include:    * For the third successive year and in line with its commitment to be an RPI-x regulator, Ofcom will operate under a budget which is lower in real terms than the operating budget for the previous year. At £129.5m the operating budget for 2006/7 will be 5% lower in real terms than the operating budget for 2005/6 and 12.6% lower than the budget for 2004/5.    * Greater efficiency savings and the rephasing of some projects means that Ofcom expects to complete its work for 2005/6 £3.5m under budget. Those efficiency savings will be remitted back to industry – in line with Sections 38 and 347 of the Communications Act 2003 – in the form of reductions in regulatory fees for 2006/7.

NGMsGhost wrote on Mar 1^st, 2007 at 12:16pm:

It seems quite wrong that I have to pay BT for a Customer Discount Scheme (Option 1) with lower call prices than their old Standard rates to subsidise cheaper prices for those customers who do route calls with them.  The old BT Standard Rate line rental of £28.50 per quarter was blatantly the real actual cost of providing a phone line while still being profitable for BT.  Now I have to £33 a quarter to cross subsidise BT to have cheaper calls for their customers On Options 2 and 3 in particular and also on Option 1 so they won't move to competitors. The behaviour of BT's rivals on line rental since BT's line rental price and minimum charge price increase proves that BT does still have massive Significant Market Power and thus it should not be allowed to set its own prices.  Especially when its reaction to being allowed to change its own prices is to raise them between 10% and 20% on calls and line rental for everyone except those who make all their calls with BT using BT Option 2 and 3.  This is not fair when we have to still use the BT line to get broadband, even if we want to use Voip for all our calls.

I agree at this point.


Quote:

There is a lot of moaning now about bank charges but the banks were up front about those charges and there was considerable variation between banks.  Yet there is almost no variation on line rental or 084/7 call prices worth billions a year and the telesoms regulator thinks it is fine for some reason (mainly in my view because it means lots of profits for business).

I also agree with this.


Quote:

The only solution to Ofcom seems to be to close it down because it is hugely expensive and represents the worst sort of New Labour political spin in claiming constantly to serve the UK Citizen Consumer while actually working against their interests and to help telco interests night and day.

The problem existed however even when it was Oftel (smaller).


Quote:

And of course the Telcos directly fund Ofcom instead of funding for it coming out of taxation as it does for the OFT and the Competition Commission. Since Ofcom sees the Telcos and Broadcasting Cos as its main customers and clearly does not see consumers in that light that is apparently why it bends over backwards to be helpful to them and largely treats consumers as third rate citizens it only has to pay lip service towards.

I knew Teleco's fund Ofcom but I wasn't aware of whether it's gov funded via our tax.

NGMsGhost wrote on Mar 1^st, 2007 at 12:16pm:

The old BT Standard Rate line rental of £28.50 per quarter was blatantly the real actual cost of providing a phone line while still being profitable for BT.  Now I have to £33 a quarter to cross subsidise BT to have cheaper calls for their customers On Options 2 and 3 in particular and also on Option 1 so they won't move to competitors..

I heard a word called inflation today. And someone mentioned a pay rise. :P

NGMsGhost wrote on Feb 28^th, 2007 at 5:40pm:

Dave, I can't quite work out your own position really.

Going back to the previous discussion on privatisation and competition in the telecoms market, in a nutshell I cannot see how it is 'choice'. To me, it's like trying to force a square peg into a round hole. At the end of the day it's not like a car, for example, where the consumer has choice and going up the chain, the vehicle manufacturer has choice of what parts to use and so on and so forth.

For those who just want a telephone line, the difference between most telcos is just a pound or two at most. But the whole point of competition is really to compete with BT. And how do you connect to these competitors, through BT. That's either using BT Wholesale or LLU (local loop unbundling) whereby you use BT's copper wires back to its exchange where the other telco installs its equipment.

So in reality this choice leaves you paying BT for part of the service. What's more, if there is a break in service, it is not necessarily to do with your own telco and could be a BT fault. This introduces buck-passing, something which we are familiar with in the railway industry. It means that people's perception of whether one telco is any good or not is distorted.

It's a similar situation with ISPs, for example, when people may decide to change because their connection is not working. Of course there are many reasons why this may be the case and it may be due to their own equipment like the router or wireless connection.

So factors which are out of the non-BT telco's control affect how its customers perceive it, namely BT's part of the circuit.

With electricity it's one company that operates the network at various stages (i.e. national and local level). Electricity usually either works or it doesn't. Telephone faults are quite often intermittent which naturally means they tend to be harder to trace. No amount of "service level agreements" or potential 'fines' for late repairs will make such faults easier to find.

Thus, a "customer satisfaction survey" is quite meaningless after such a fault. A question such as "Do you think that the time it took BT to repair the fault and got your service working again is acceptable?" is a preposterous one. I have no idea of the fault so I cannot comment. I don't doubt that having explained the problem to the engineer that what he tried what he considered to be the most likely cause. The question should therefore be "Do you think that the time it took from reporting the fault to the engineer's first visit is acceptable?"

Perhaps the fairest way to operate the system is to have the local loop operated by a separate company to BT so that we have a similar setup to the electricity and gas networks. I'm not sure what other implications this has as I've not considered them. There may be more disadvantages than advantages that I haven't thought of.

I know we now have Openreach, but that's still part of BT and thus the choice of moving away from BT isn't really that.

I've heard rumours that BT are introducing a £5 charge for people terminating their service with BT. However, I can't find reference to this on BT's website, and I've long since recycled my "BT Update". The only reference to a £5 I could find is for people cancelling during their minimum contract period (who also have to pay off the full contract - which, funnily enough, is what I thought you had to do anyway).

Can anyone confirm whether there is a £5 charge for all customers who leave BT? Anyone still have the  Update magazine handy?

Its not true. They were considering it, but decided against it.

just retrieved the March 2007 BT Update from the recycling bin. It says:


Quote:

Changes to your conditions of BT telephony service: From 1 May 2007 we will replace the existing charges for customers ending their service early. In their place is a policy that requires customers to pay the outstanding line rental for the 12 months minimum term of their contract.  Customers moving home and transfering BT service to their new address will be subject to a new minimum term from the date of start of service at the new address. From 1 May 2007 we will also introduce an administration charge of £5 (incl VAT) for all customers who cease service with BT. This charge will not apply to customers moving home, if they transfer BT service to their new address.

speaks for itself.

~ Edited by Dave: Quote box tidied up

I've just realised, I'm on "paper-free" billing, so when will I be informed of the new terms and conditions? The "update" webpages don't mention this charge, and anyway, they need to notify customers of the change.

I was just about to swtich to cable anyway as it's a good deal since I already have broadband. Now I'll simply make sure I do so before 1 May. Well done BT!

Trust me Lompos, BT wont be charging this. They have decided against it after 'customer consultation'.

BT e mailed me today stating that the extra charge for not using DD will be 50pence a month.

"Thank you for your e-mail dated 19/3/07 regarding the payment processing fee.

With regards to your e-mail I would like to inform you that you have to pay 50pence extra per month if you don't pay through direct debit."

gary

gary350 wrote on Mar 20^th, 2007 at 5:59pm:

BT e mailed me today stating that the extra charge for not using DD will be 50pence a month. "Thank you for your e-mail dated 19/3/07 regarding the payment processing fee. With regards to your e-mail I would like to inform you that you have to pay 50pence extra per month if you don't pay through direct debit." gary

Yes, that was what they announced.  Not paying by DD already costs £1 per month more (you don't qualify for the £1/month discount) and, from 1/5/07, you'll pay an extra 50p - taking the difference to £1.50 per month or £4.50 per quarter.

I raised with BT the matter of penalty charges for customers not paying by Direct Debit.  This is what they replied:

"In summary, the effect on any individual customer will be either 50p up or 50p down a month. Let me explain why. The £4.50 a quarter increase will be offset by a £3 a quarter cut in line rental for non-Direct Debit customers so the net effect is £1.50 a quarter or 50p a month."

The March 2007 BT Update seems to confirm this.

Do BT have someone employed thinking of ways to claw back 10p here 10p there or are they just testing the water.

gary

Wouldnt 99% of companies have someone to think of ways to earn them more money? You know, to try to make more profit and all.  ;)

And just to point out, I am not condoning the charge. Just making a minor point.

gary350 wrote on Mar 22^nd, 2007 at 10:44am:

Do BT have someone employed thinking of ways to claw back 10p here 10p there or are they just testing the water.

In a nutshell, that's what I've always thought.

Minimum call charge goes up from 5p to 5.5p. Then BT scraps it in favour of the (at first apparently cheaper) 3p connection charge, but with whole minute charging. This means a daytime call to a 01/02 number BT Together Options 1 & 2 is now a minimum of 6p and that's only upto 1 minute. Upto 2 minutes costs you 9p!

I could go on and on with the other covert increases that are marketed as making things "simpler".

Charging per whole minute. With today's technology there's no excuse and reason other than greed. Would it be allowed if your butchers charged to the nearest whole 100g, 500g or even 1kg. Would it be allowed or would the authorities have something to say?

Dave wrote on Mar 22^nd, 2007 at 1:00pm:

Minimum call charge goes up from 5p to 5.5p. Then BT scraps it in favour of the (at first apparently cheaper) 3p connection charge, but with whole minute charging. This means a daytime call to a 01/02 number BT Together Options 1 & 2 is now a minimum of 6p and that's only upto 1 minute. Upto 2 minutes costs you 9p!

OTOH, Virgin Media customers, apart from being charged £5 per month extra if they don't pay by DD (as opposed to BT's £1.50 per month) are now to be treated to a 'follow the leader' change to per minute billing from 1/5/07.  That'll mean a less than a minute chargeable UK 01/02 call will cost an incredible 9p (6p connection and 3p for the first minute).

Thank heavens for BT, Primus Saver Option 2, 18185, 1899, 18866, Orchid diallers and the MSE Callcheckers!

Heinz wrote on Mar 22^nd, 2007 at 1:22pm:

OTOH, Virgin Media customers, apart from being charged £5 per month extra if they don't pay by DD (as opposed to BT's £1.50 per month) are now to be treated to a 'follow the leader' change to per minute billing from 1/5/07.  That'll mean a less than a minute chargeable UK 01/02 call will cost an incredible 9p (6p connection and 3p for the first minute).

The more this happens the more I become convinced that the whole industry is corrupt and needs investigating by the Competition Commission or whoever.

IMO people's inability to do simple maths and prefer to take note of promotional material that paints a nice tidy picture which only includes headline rates and charges has a lot to do with it. To the providers' benefit "whole minute billing" is 'boring'.

It will be good to see a programme like Panorama do an investigation on this. Instead, we are all tangled up in the premium rate antics of the mainstream broadcasters in this country. The fact that many people are scammed by reverse billed SMS messages is not interesting to the media.

The fact that BT has increased its charge for non-direct debit customers from £1 to £1.50 is big news, but VM's £5 gets no mention!!!

From the Virgin website here:


Quote:

Phone – changes to our call charges    * From 1st May 2007 the way your call charges are calculated is also changing. Instead of charging to the nearest second, calls will be rounded up to the next minute.    * So for example, a call that lasts 4 minutes and 50 seconds will be rounded up to 5 minutes. This will affect customers with call plans, those with bundled minutes (Talk Anywhere) and all other telephony customers in the same way

So that's all calls then!  :o

BT charges per second for 08 and 09 numbers.