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Bures

ULTIMATE Member
Currently with BT with free weekends and evening calls. I would like to transfer away (out of contract) to another provider, but after searching I cannot find one that provides these calls with NO contract.
Other companies seem to want to lock you in for 12 months.
The only one I found was the Post Office, but the cost was nearly as high as BT, hence no advantage in moving.
Any suggestions ?
 
Sadly most ISPs that bundle voice services will lock you in to a 12 month contract, especially if you also take line rental. This is a fairly normal practice for the industry. I could be wrong but PlusNet do have monthly contract options for their broadband and phone services, though it usually means accepting a higher activation fee instead of it being free.
 
Mark,

With Plusnet the line rental is £11.25 per month.
Not worth the hassle of changing from BT ( well they are BT anyway)
Keep looking at Primus and YourCalls.net which unfortunately carry a 12 month contact with a cheaper line rental, but reviews seem to be thin on the ground.
Its when something goes wrong that you find the pitfalls
 
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More often than not "free calls" have to be met with either long term contracts, minimum call charges, call connection fees, calls rounded to the nearest minute, or high call charges at all other times (as reflected in BT's recent round of price increases). Afterall there is nothing free about the minutes, they ultimately have to be paid for!

We offer 1 month line rental and call contracts, without any of the gimmicks. It's only 1 pence per minute (exVAT) at any time to local or national numbers. I guess you need to work out how many minutes you use off-peak and whether the savings at other times make this a justified switch (http://www.icukhosting.co.uk/telecoms/talk_overview.asp).

If you want a comparison I'll be more that happy to provide you one for peace of mind.

Paul Barnett
ICUK
 
Paul,

Men can make a phone call and get to the point immediately, unfortunately my wife takes at least 60 mins just to say "Hello"
Even at your exceptional rate of 1p per minute I would still accrue a hefty call charge bill.
Thanks for the offer, much appreciated but my best option is the free weekend/evening package with no long term contact,
 
As long as the call is made within the "free" call period then you're laughing. The moment you make calls outside of this window the costs associated with the call can be really quiet high. Our offering is more business orientated where by cutting our minimum call charges can make really significant savings.

PS My girlfriend has the same issues saying "hello" in less than 60 minutes too... I just don't get it :)

Paul Barnett
ICUK
 
@ Paul

...but while what you offer may not suit Bures, you can expect to gain a customer in about six weeks time as a result of that post. :laugh:

When I read it, my first thought was "That's odd - I thought icuk only did business phone deals, not residential". Perhaps I didn't read your page properly when I looked some time ago, or perhaps residential is something recent, I don't know, but, whatever, I see that it does mention "a complete portfolio of single analogue PSTN, PSTN Multi-Line, ISDN 2 and ISDN 30 solutions for residential and business users".

Line rental at £9.85 plus VAT and UK landline geographic calls at 1p per minute plus VAT anytime would suit me - I make very little use of the phone, usually short calls, mostly weekday daytime, so all the "free" inclusive deals at £x per month that people offer are pretty useless for me, the package price of the "free" calls being more than my total existing call costs. At a quick calculation from my last eight months' bills, moving to you would cost me about 60p-70p a month more than staying with my current provider, but that's fine, "rock bottom" is not what I'm looking for - with my level of use, within reason, the actual cost isn't too important, it's more a case of finding a company who I'm happy with using.
I refuse to use BT, even for the phone, any more than "necessary" (i.e., some of my money's still going to BT Wholesale even when using an alternative provider, can't really avoid that without switching to cable people who I detest just as much) because of them inflicting Phorm's spyware on their unsuspecting broadband customers (and on website owners, whose content gets ripped off for commercial use without their knowledge or permission), and I am a little put out by (as I see it) the attempt of my current "ethical" phone provider, The Phone Co-op, to disguise the truth of their own involvement in this. A couple of years ago, at the height of the Phorm furore, they put out a "holier than thou" statement, reassuring customers that none of their suppliers were working with Phorm, instead of being honest by saying
"We use Opal as our broadband provider, and we're not stupid, we know they're a subsidiary of Carphone Warehouse, who *are* working with Phorm. We don't like it one little bit, we've had a good moan at them, but they haven't been as sneaky as BT, they haven't actually run any trials of Phorm yet, they're only looking at the *possibility* of using the scumbags, and they've assured us that they won't use it on our customers if they do, it'll only apply to TalkTalk, not Opal and their resellers. We don't really like dealing with a subsidiary of a morally bankrupt shower who even *think* that using Phorm *might* be acceptable, but short of an impractically expensive and potentially disruptive shift of our entire broadband system, there's not a lot else we can do, so we've decided to live with it for the time being and see how it pans out, OK?"
Ethical? Making lots of anti-Phorm noise while covering up the fact that you're doing business with the spawn of the devil, that's "ethical"? Sorry, not in my book!

So, I have been thinking about moving ever since, but hadn't come across anyone who I was happy with. Like Bures, I had come across Primus and yourcalls.net, but I rejected both.
Primus use an overseas call centre, and I will not deal with any company in any line of business who do that.
Yourcalls.net, who used to be good by all accounts, underwent a change of ownership a while back, and if even half of what I've heard about them since the change of ownership is true (I won't quote the comments here, Mark, the forum owner, might get sued for libel!) then they are not a company I wish to use either.
Your company, on the other hand, have been around for a good while, I know (personally) two people who use you for broadband and don't have any complaints, and I can't think of any reason to put you on my rather long "not with a bargepole whatever the price" barred companies list. You are quite right in saying on that call charges page that "Our industry is filled with gimmicks, catches, small print and commitments", and as you don't exactly seem to be overkeen on the idea of ripping people off by misleading them, only telling them the truth once you've got them well and truly trapped so they can't escape without extortionate penalties, I am encouraged.

As I say, it won't be for about six weeks yet - there are a few other brain-challenging things happening at the moment and I'm lousy at multi-tasking - but I reckon you can look forward to the doubtful pleasure of having yours truly as a customer.
In the meantime, I do realise that as you're "more business orientated", getting a few extra residential customers is probably low on the priority list, but it probably wouldn't do your business any harm if you gave someone a little slap on the wrist and told them to get the information on the website sorted out! The *first* telecoms page that you get to from your main navigational links - http://www.icukhosting.co.uk/telecoms/ - not the one you linked to, is headed "Business Calls and Line Rental". Had it not been for your post here, which made me look at it more carefully, I wouldn't have noticed the "residential" bit under "Line Rental" - and where the call prices are concerned, the link to them is headed "Business Phone Calls", no mention of residential at all. Only if you ignore the fact that it says "Business", so click the more info link anyway, do you then find a bit in the "No minimum call spend" section that mentions that "both residential and business talk customers can benefit from our low cost calls no matter how large or small your phone bill is."

(And adding the "Appearing soon" international rates probably wouldn't hurt either! ;))
 
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Hi Gordon,

Thanks for your detailed response, and I'm glad that we have caught your eye. Prior to a recent update on our website we did have a section dedicated to residential calls and lines, although the sales from residential customers has always been minimal.

More recently we have switched our attention to focusing on the business market, afterall the vast majority of our customers are businesses, especially where our telecoms solutions are concerned. We have simplified our telecoms tariffs and pages as much as possible including providing a single call tariff for all new customers.

The references to "business telecoms" are there to emphasis our focus but also assist with search engine optimisation to back this up.

Regarding the International rates, I am aware that we need to add those in. I've been caught up inducting new staff, but be rest assured it's on my todo list. If you need to see them prior to them appearing on the site please let me know. Similarly if you would like me to provide you with a cost comparison to your existing provide simply fax or email across a copy of your latest phone bill.

Regards,

Paul Barnett
ICUK
 
The residential sales might be lower because it's not well advertised for that market ;) . Offer some broadband bundles, separate home from business phone services a bit more, and use clearer/simpler language for the home option to make the benefits more obvious.. that would really help. Stick it all on a simple page too.

A perfect example is what you said above about its benefits, yet none of that is obvious from the web page. I would take the positive elements and use that as a basis for constructing a simpler advertisement for the service.

This page here is actually quite a good start but I only found it by accident and most might overlook it. Also in talking about phone call charges without clearly linking to specific products (ref: link below) you risk causing confusion.

http://www.icukhosting.co.uk/telecoms/talk_overview.asp

I am sure your phone services would do even better by just adjusting some things like that :) . Like Gordon even I am now quite attracted to the offer but only after reading what you wrote here and not from how its presented on the site. Hope that helps Paul.

Zen internet just launched a phone service today, the details are clearer but they're also making the same mistake of not promoting the product obviously enough and failing to link to it from the broadband package pages. Simple things make a big difference.
 
Our telecom pages have recently been re-written and shortened. Before you had to burrow down several pages before you got to the information you want. I did also spend a considerable amount of time going through all the major telecom providers sites looking for how they advertise their packages. Without naming names... generally they are horrific and I'm not surprised that most people opt for a supposed easy life with BT retail.

The design we came up with looked like this:

Telecoms

1. Calls
1.1. Calls Overview

2. Line Rental
2.1. Line Types
2.1.1 PSTN (residential and business)
2.1.2 ISDN 2
2.1.3 ISDN 30

3. SMS

4. Fax to Email / Email to Fax

The Line rental pages are the most complex but again I tried to keep them as clean and simple as possible using the multiple tabs within those pages.

The calls are now listed on one page instead of residential, business and custom tariffs as they were before.

As for bundles... they are on their way but for that to work we really need to operate with a one-bill solution which is a planned solution in the next upcoming control panel release. At the moment the calls / lines are invoiced independently.

I'm glad I have helped highlight that we do offer calls and lines. They do present very good value for money (even compared to Zen), and it's increasingly becoming a very important part of our business. We're now managing several thousand lines and some of these are for some of the largest multinational companies you can think of.... as well as some of the smallest :) They all get the same expert attention and commitment from us.

Thanks for your comments and suggestions, I'm going to mull over these tonight.

If you want a comparison quote then please email our team.

Regards,

Paul Barnett
ICUK
 
Last edited:
I'm glad I have helped highlight that they do offer calls and lines. They do present excellent value for funds , and it is increasingly becoming a important part of our business. We are now managing several thousand lines and a number of these are for a number of the largest multinational companies you can think of.... and a number of the smallest All of them get the same professional attention and dedication from us.
 
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Now, I will admit that there's not a lot exciting about a phone line - it either works or it doesn't, it's not like broadband with tremendous variation according to where you live, which ISP you choose, etc.

However, as I see from the front page of the site that there's another BT price hike on the horizon, perhaps it's an appropriate time to get around to what I've been too lazy to do previously - tidy up my bit of this thread.

I indicated that I would switch to ICUK.
I did.
One very minor initial line rental billing error which was immediately rectified when pointed out to them - a very quick reply to an out-of-hours e-mail, no flannel, no "we'll add it as a credit next month" (hoping the customer will forget) - instead, a straightforward honest apology.
We are only looking at a trivial amount (from memory, about £1.35) and for that sort of amount I wouldn't actually have minded if they just adjusted things next month but they'd already processed the refund before replying to me, no hanging around.
That's customer service. :)

Things have gone up slightly due to the VAT increase, of course, but even so, my highest bill for line rental and calls added together, including the VAT, has come to £14.72 - that was in April, when I made a fair few calls organising things as a result of switching banks. I haven't accurately calculated an average, but as a rough figure it's about £13 a month.
That's fine by me!

Obviously, as previously discussed, something with prices on a per call basis rather than an inclusive deal with so-called "free" calls wouldn't suit everyone, but for a low user like me, it's perfect - a decent company, decent prices, and a brain at the other end of the line if I need it.

One happy customer. :)

(Not really relevant to this telephone thread but, for the record, faced with a number of acceptable choices for broadband when I ditched Namesco, on the basis that I was happy with the phone side of ICUK, and I'm a bit of a night owl so their "up to 20Mb" £16 2GB peak and 100GB off-peak package suited me, after a bit of dithering I switched the broadband to ICUK too - happy with that too. :))
 
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