I agree with ADee & am starting to wonder if all the Sages & Gurus are BT in disguise, or just brainwashed by them!
Line rental existed long before broadband & was just for the phone line. If you made no calls you paid no extra charges. When broadband started you paid separately for that - plus the line rental as before. So naturally people will continue to believe their phone line is included in the line rental charge. Why shouldn’t they? Did BT ever tell us that they’d decided to remove telephony from line rental - & reduce our line rental charges accordingly? Did they ever announce that the telephony charge was to be transferred to call packages instead? I think not! If they want to reward those who choose not to have a phone line at all - why don’t they just give them a discount on their line rental instead?
Line rental on a bill may be ‘presented’ as if it’s part of the broadband contract, but its existence predates broadband by many decades & those without broadband still pay it. Hence Line Rental Saver is/was a separate entity with separate contract & end date from broadband.
This current £2+ charge is just a scam - to claw back £ from all those who still have a landline but only use their mobiles to make calls. And as BT’s Digital Voice (internet calls) replaces PSTN (current phone network), the same scam is being used again. BT still charges people extra on Digital Voice - just for having an internet phone at home. Even though it’s all on the same fibre network as broadband, so it costs them nothing.
