Pay as you go landline monthly charges?

[HHGTTG]

Why not ditch BT altogether and their Fibre BB and get your broadband from the many mobile phone providers such as Three Mobile who offer 4G/5G devices at ca £20/mth, when I last looked? Of course that assumes they have got good coverage for your area.

[Grassmarket1]

@iniltous 

Agree we shouldn’t pay the same, but the undeniable fact is that you still pay exactly the same as you did before. So BT haven’t rewarded you for not using all the available services. Instead they’ve imposed a line rental surcharge on PAYG call customers. That’s ultimately bad news for ALL customers - you included - see below. If they can devise a way to surcharge PAYG call customers, they might do the same to you in future. 

Line rental is (& always was) the cost of renting the line. It used to provide a phone service only - now it provides broadband too. It’s the same line, same capability; so BT’s argument is that we should all pay it - irrespective of which services we choose to use.  You don’t use the phone service - so think you should pay less. But what about those who don’t use broadband - surely they have an even better case for paying less? But they don’t pay any less; they pay exactly the same as you. And if they are PAYG call customers too - this PAYG surcharge could see them paying even MORE line rental than you! 

If BT now decide, for their own commercial reasons, to distinguish between those who use all the available services & those who don’t - then they should give you a line rental DISCOUNT. Instead, they’ve decided to continue charging you the same - & to charge me more. In effect - they’ve sneakily created a way to increase the line rental without actually admitting to it. 

And - now that you see PAYG users are paying a bit more - BT have also cleverly conned you into thinking that you’re being ‘rewarded’ for not having a phone. But you’re not - you’re paying the same as you always did! And more importantly for you: your ‘reward’ isn’t even guaranteed. From what others here have said - the PAYG surcharge can vary. Some even pay nothing - depending on the deal they got at the time. So if more PAYG users manage to get that deal - you’ll end up paying the same as them. Happy with that? 

The only customers who might think they’ve benefitted from this PAYG surcharge are those on inclusive call plans. As you say, they’re paying no more than before. So compared to PAYG customers - they now pay less. This makes call plans a more attractive option - which is exactly what BT want! People have been ditching landline call plans wholesale, in favour of inclusive mobile minutes. So by making it more expensive to have a landline without a call plan - BT hope to lure us back. We all tend to think our mobile calls cost us nothing; BT want us to think the same about landline calls. So I’d predict the PAYG line rental surcharge to increase, until those of us on the PAYG phone service are ‘persuaded’ into choosing some level of inclusive minutes - just like we do with mobiles. But as a non-phone-service customer - you’ll never get to pay any less!

Thinking ahead: what if a new service ever became available through our phone lines, as an add-on to broadband? You might not want that either - but you’d still get nothing off your line rental. In fact BT might start charging YOU extra for not taking the new service - just as they’ve done with PAYG calls. They certainly wouldn’t want to put off potential customers of the new service by slapping a line rental surcharge on them! Nor would they have any incentive to charge you less. Instead they could devise a ‘broadband-only’ fee - just like the current PAYG surcharge - for those choosing to use the basic broadband service without the new add-on.
So - be careful what you wish for! 

[iniltous]

Your  is fatally flawed, I don’t pay the same as before , I save £5 because I don’t have telephony , you pay more than me because you have telephony and I don’t .

People who don’t have BT broadband but do have BT telephone pay less than BT broadband customers,  I don’t know where you get the idea that telephony only is the same price as broadband (or broadband and telephone combined ) , that’s just wrong.

Typical pricing , telephone on its own £14- £21 , broadband on its own £27 , broadband with telephone on a PAYG basis £32 .

If your argument is whatever I pay, it  is still more than when I had telephone and broadband, well obviously , but that’s the same for every product and service I buy  , prices are universally higher than previously, ‘we’ also pay more for gas , electricity, water ,food fuel for the car , etc etc, it’s not just broadband that’s more expensive.

In the situation that exists, where you have a  telephony service but I don’t , you agree we shouldn’t pay the same , I should pay less ( so no issue there ) but you contend that if I’m paying the same as I did , therefore I’m effectively paying more because I no longer have something once included for ‘ free’  ,but that’s not true , I save £5.

If I should be getting telephony as I pay the same as when telephony was included, ( impossible comparison because of inflation)  but the obvious reply to that , is why should I pay for telephony I don’t want ?  I now can save £5 that previously I had to pay .

BT have two prices for the same broadband product, one slightly more expensive because that includes telephony , ( only for those that want it , it not compulsory) and a cheaper price for those that don’t want telephony , what’s wrong with that ?.

The fact that telephony was called a ‘landline’ and self evidently broadband needs the rental of a line , ergo ‘line rental’ is paid by non telephony customers ( I guess that’s the point you are are making)  but that means those who don’t want telephony have to take it because it’s part of the rental , that was the complaint that offering standalone broadband addresses, having to pay for telephony when it was not needed or wanted .

Although personally I think to continue to be using ‘line rental’ to describe the modest charge for having telephony is a mistake, especially if the ‘broadband only’ price is advertised as having ‘line rental included’ ( I don’t know if that’s how it’s done ) , but the principle is obvious  ( and that’s why I struggle to see your argument ) broadband and phone together are slightly more expensive that broadband on its own , you agree that there should be a difference in price ,  for the primary reason , many don’t want telephony and object to having it bundled and then not using it  , plus if the option to take broadband on its own is available it has to be cheaper because of the lack of telephony, it really is that simple.

I think your real objection is that you pay £5 for telephony, but if you don’t receive a single incoming call , and make all your outgoing calls on a mobile , and have not needed  to make an emergency 999 call while your mobile was unavailable, then you paid £5  ‘for nothing’ , but if I don’t watch anything on Netflix for a month , that’s not their fault , the service was available, so much like you paying  £5 for telephony ( not line rental)  it’s your choice if you use it , if you never use it , get it taken off and benefit from the cost saving, I don’t watch anything on Netflix from one month to the next and don’t cancel , that’s my problem not theirs .

I honestly can’t see why you pay £5 for telephony, you obviously resent paying it , presumably you feel you get ‘nothing’ for your £5 , so why do you continue to have it , it’s not compulsory,  you agree you should pay more  than someone who doesn’t have telephony but you have the option to remove telephony, will save some ££ , but that’s unacceptable to you for some unfathomable reason 

[Grassmarket1]

@iniltous Update: BT have now cancelled my PAYG surcharge & refunded what they’d charged to date. So now I just pay the line rental - which is all that PAYG users always used to pay & same as those now without telephony. Sounds like the charge was a scam to me! 

[iniltous]

So , presumably after a monumental amount of complaining you have had an extra £2 a month discount added to your account , well done 👏, hopefully this hasn’t been interpreted by BT as you not requiring a telephone service with your broadband ( the ability to make and receive calls )  and telephony will not be removed at some point in the future, if it is , (and you are  not paying for it ) , on what basis would your complaint have any merit , the conversation with BT being something like  , ‘the thing I don’t pay for has been removed, I want it back but don’t want to be charged for it ‘ 

[licquorice]

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@Grassmarket1 wrote:

@iniltous Update: BT have now cancelled my PAYG surcharge & refunded what they’d charged to date. So now I just pay the line rental - which is all that PAYG users always used to pay & same as those now without telephony. Sounds like the charge was a scam to me! 

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Please explain why you think BT charging for supplying the equipment necessary to make and receive phone calls as opposed to those that now do not use the equipment is a scam.

[chrisjp]

This does seem to be an awful lot of correspondence about a £2 to £5 per month charge!
You can easily spend that on one coffee shop coffee without agonising over it.

[HHGTTG]

£3 typically, if you're lucky.

[iniltous]

£2 in my case 

[Grassmarket1]

@iniltous on the contrary - one phone call (via 150 on my landline!) was all it took. The ease of getting them to remove the charge confirms my opinion that it’s a scam.
Line rental is the rental of a working line - with all its potential uses (currently broadband & telephony) . If you choose not to use the latter & BT are prepared to compensate you for that - you should get a DISCOUNT on your line rental - as I said before. But instead you seem to think that knowing that others now pay a surcharge for the possibility of telephony is somehow beneficial to you. It isn’t. You’re paying the same as you always did!