BT Basic what is 'In Plan' and 'Out of Plan'?

[Clive44]

I have an elderly neighbour who went onto BT Basic to reduce her monthly telephone bills.  She was attracted by the line rental of £5.16 a month plus the capped monthly charge of £10 for calls.  She is greatly distressed now because her quarterly bill has arrived and she has been charged £90.36 for 'out of plan calls' (£30.12 a month).  We can not find anywhere in the information sent by BT about BT Basic what is 'In Plan' and what is 'Out of Plan' and this is not indicated on the list of calls.  How can she avoid making 'Out of Plan' calls if she doesn't know what they are?  And what about the £10.00 calls price cap?  Can you please help us?

Louise 

[-Richie-]

Have a read of How do I find out more about BT Basic? 

How the call allowance and monthly price cap works

• Monthly price cap - To help you save money on call costs, you have a £10 monthly price cap on UK phone line numbers starting with 01, 02 and 03, UK mobile numbers starting with 07, and 08 numbers.

  This doesn't mean we stop you making calls once you've spent £10 or that you have to make £10 worth of calls. You can make as few as you like. But if you do make over £10 of calls (eligible for the price cap), you'll know that you'll only pay a maximum of £10 a month for your calls. We charge this amount after you've used up your £1.50 call allowance

• Call allowance - As well as the price cap you get a call allowance of £1.50 a month. This is to spend on calls to UK phone line and mobile numbers beginning with 01, 02, 03, 07 or 08, and international numbers. So as long as you stay within your £1.50 call limit your phone bill will always be £5.16 per month.

  If you go over the call allowance we will charge up to £10 for calls eligible for the monthly price cap (01, 02, 03, 07 and 08 numbers). That's even if you've spent more on these types of calls.

  If you go over your allowance with calls that aren't eligible for the price cap you'll pay 11.3p a minute (plus 3.3p for each call) for all normal UK calls. And for all other calls you'll pay our standard BT Basic calling package rates.

  For more information go to bt.com/pricing >

[Clive44]

This is absolute rubbish!  My elderly neighbour has just had her first quarterly bill since being on BT Basic and her call charges are £90.37 for the quarter or £30.12 a month!  What happened to the price cap?  She not heavy user of her phone and has only made an average of 1.3 calls a day over this period.  She only calls UK landlines and UK mobiles.  You say -'calls that aren't eligible for the price cap you'll pay 11.3p a minute' 

What calls could she have made that weren't eligible?  The bill does not say explicitly what is 'In Plan' or what is 'Out of Plan' could you please tell us, as I don't see that she has made any.

Regards,

Louise

[NeilO]

@Clive44 Hi Louise, if she's only making UK landline and mobile calls then these should be included in the price cap and it sounds like something has gone wrong with the billing, sorry.

The moderation team will be happy to help and I'll send you a private message so you can send over your neighbours details.

Thanks

Neil