Hilarious!
What with Phorm and now this it's hilariously obvious that BT is run by people with a single brain cell between 'em. Or: half a brain cell, then.
We're just one of the thousands of UK families who make all our calls via 18185. The account was simple to set up. Viewing call traffic online is simple. There's no monthly prepayment. All UK calls at whatever time of day or night are free. There's a 5p connection charge.
It took us no more than a quarter of an hour to reconfigure the "address book" dialling on our home phones to read: 18185 XXX (exchange) xxxxxx (number) and that was it.
Last month our phone bill for UK calls, some of them pretty lengthy, came to £3.60, made up of the call connection charge alone.
The month before it was £2.80. The month before that (we were away during that period) £1.10.
Obviously, we also use 18185 for all our international calls: the extent to which 18185 undercuts British Telecom's charges is deeply gratifying.
At the end of the day, British Telecom is a grubby, corporate bottom feeder run by people with neither brains nor skill. That being the case, BT is so-oo easy to outflank, the company isn't worth bothering about.
PS: Yes, like others here, we too have received invitations to secure great value-for-money from BT by upgrading our account. The invites came by email and snailmail. As BT is on our BT Internet SPAM blocking list, the company's emails can't even get through the company's blocking (wunnerful.) The snail mail goes straight in the bin unopened.
The only additional profits BT will be able to accrue where domestic customers are concerned is from those least able to afford it / least able to protect themselves. That's bad for them -- but it's also a potential killer for British Telecom: every constituency Member of Parliament in the UK knows there's no greater voter mileage than bashing BT and / or British Gas. It's fun. It's easy. And it shafts British telecom's expensive PR & Marketing operation right where it hurts.
I look forward to BT carrying on down the route of hidden 1,000 % price increases -- the more it does so, the more it provides ever greater ammunition to the consumer campaign to end this sleazy scamming monopoly.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
