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BT announces free calls to 0870 and 0845 numbers

by Parm Mann on 8 January 2009, 13:45

Tags: British Telecom (LON:BT.A)

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BT has today announced that it will offer its 14 million customers free calls to the controversial 0870 and 0845 numbers.

The numbers, often used by various businesses, are charged at national rate for 0870 and local rate for 0845. Having thus far remained exempt from any calling packages, BT has today moved to include calls to such numbers as part of its "Evening and Weekend" or "Anytime" packages.

BT Evening and Weekend, the standard plan applicable to all BT customers, now includes free calls to 0870 and 0845 numbers after 6pm on weekdays and throughout the weekend. Customers utilising BT's Anytime package - at a cost of £4.85 per month - will get free calls to these numbers at all times.

In recent weeks, the Government has announced plans to review doctor's surgeries using such numbers following high levels of consumer complaints.

BT currently remains the only provider to offer calls to 0870 and 0845 numbers as part of its calling plans, but we'd venture to guess - or hope - that rival providers such as Virgin Media will soon follow suit.

John Petter, managing director of BT’s Consumer business, said:

We know that the public is frustrated by having to pay higher charges for these numbers, even though BT’s rates were cheaper than our rivals, so we worked out a way to go further and include calls to 0870 and 0845 numbers in our call packages.

These numbers are widely used by banks, utilities and even NHS Direct, and our customers spend 30 minutes a month on average calling these numbers. We hope we have taken a sting out of the price of these calls, but also removed one of those irritations that customers believed was an unfair anomaly.

Further details are available at BT.com



HEXUS Forums :: 10 Comments

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thats great news!
See below
www.saynoto0870.com

www.18185.com

Step 1:
Register with 18185 (BT customers only, I believe)

Step 2:
Type the number 0870 or 0845 number you're looking for into www.saynoto0870.com

Step 3:
Dial 18185, then the geographical equivalent of the 0870 number you wish to dial.

This will result in a connection charge of 4p, and 0p per minute per call for all applicable 0870 and 0845 number, anytime of the day.

Step 4:
Enjoy the savings on your phone bill. This works for landlines only, 18185 can save you money on all calls you make from a landline

Legal bit:
I'm not affiliated with either BT, saynoto0870 or 18185.

Thank you for listening.
This is also complete laugh. If you know how much money BT made from running 0870 and 0845 numbers and reselling them to people you would laugh.

I would dare say the services I run (which are free to subscribers) but gives us a kick back to us for running the lines as part of our commercial agreement with our customers would probably make BT more than 16Million a year.

We're one company. This BT announcement really doesn't highlight anything important but a cunning attempt to make a change based on big headlines and little true detail.

TiG
Did anyone notice that its only free after 6pm weekdays and all day on weekends?. How often are businesses open after 5/5:30? Not many, weekend gives you a few hours gap to call so not really free.

Its a step in the right direction though…