@ 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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