topic Re: Charges for calls of more than one hour in Home Phone

Charges for calls of more than one hour

Plusnetthepits — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 21:01:14 GMT

Only just realised that I get charged for calls lasting more than one hour! Another way of milking even more money out of me - I pay for the 'Anytime' calls package. The more I think about it, the less attractive Plusnet is. Unless I'm mistaken, there is no equivalent of a 'calling circle' that I had with TalkTalk, and so if I do go over the hour on a call, I get the full charge, whereas with TalkTalk such calls would more than likely be to a number stored in my calling circle, so at least the cost of the call after the one hour would be less. Still, not much more than 10months to go on my Plusnet contract before I can jump ship!

Re: Charges for calls of more than one hour

PeterLoftus — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 21:02:57 GMT

What's the problem after 59 minutes ring off and call again

Re: Charges for calls of more than one hour

Anonymous — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 21:23:47 GMT

You're not a happy bunny are you !
You do seem to be having a lot of problems !!

60 minutes + charge has been a standard with many providers for many years now, you must have been aware of this !
And most home phones these days show call duration.
If you make a lot of 60+ minute calls, use a timer set to less than 60 minutes, and call again .......

Re: Charges for calls of more than one hour

Oldjim — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 21:46:21 GMT

From the TalkTalk website - they also have a 60 minute limit - and there is nothing apparent which exempts calling circle calls from that

Re: Charges for calls of more than one hour

198kHz — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 22:23:33 GMT

Quote from: Plusnetthepits
Only just realised that I get charged for calls lasting more than one hour!

Is there any Anytime tariff provider where that doesn't apply?
PN don't exactly hide it -
[quote=Two clicks from PN home page]
Anytime calls: Means calls to UK landlines beginning with 01, 02, 03, 0845 and 0870 at anytime.
Hang up and re-dial before 60 minutes and you won't be charged. Calls to indirect access numbers and dial up internet access are excluded. See the Home Phone FAQs page for more details about call charges.

Re: Charges for calls of more than one hour

Plusnetthepits — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 08:49:24 GMT

Yes, you're right. It seems that this is a common practice. I thought Plusnet might be different, but they clearly are just pretty much the same as the rest of them - money grabbing bastards! Crap Broadband service - my speed is slow and my connection keeps dropping. And mediocre telephone service.

Re: Charges for calls of more than one hour

itsme — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 09:18:51 GMT

PN are just a reseller of BT telephony, so if BT are charging PN after an hour PN will pass this cost on.

Re: Charges for calls of more than one hour

AlaricAdair — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 10:20:30 GMT

Vonage has a 4 hour limit per call. Skype doesn't have a per call limit.

Re: Charges for calls of more than one hour

Pettitto — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 22:16:41 GMT

It's difficult to say that Plusnet are the same as all of the other companies. It would be difficult for Plusnet alone to allow their customers to pay £3.50 per month for the Anytime Phone Package and let customers call whoever they want for as long as they want, that would not be cost effective.

Re: Charges for calls of more than one hour

chandu — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 22:53:28 GMT

Quote from: Plusnetthepits
Only just realised that I get charged for calls lasting more than one hour! Another way of milking even more money out of me - I pay for the 'Anytime' calls package.

Excuse me. From what I understand of anytime call charges, you only get charged for the minutes in excess of 59 minutes and not for the whole lot. So, I do not see why you're so heckedup about these charges. OR is it in your nature that you have find something to gripe about?

Re: Charges for calls of more than one hour

Pettitto — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 00:41:35 GMT

You understand correct
dick:quote

Re: Charges for calls of more than one hour

Ellis — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 09:54:27 GMT

Quote from: AlaricAdair
Vonage has a 4 hour limit per call. Skype doesn't have a per call limit.

Don't compare VOIP service with normal landline service.
Plusnetthepits: If you are not happy with the service I suggest you use a mobile phone and see what you pay then.

Re: Charges for calls of more than one hour

AlaricAdair — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 11:17:12 GMT

Quote from: Ellis
..
Don't compare VOIP service with normal landline service.
...

Why should the public not compare VOIP with landline service? Is there some regulation which says the public must endure poor charge structures from BT and its subsidiary companies? The call quality on Skype and Vonage is just fine. Indeed even BT offers VOIP telephone service to the general public. Many of the large organisations have switched their entire voice telecoms infrastructure to VOIP. Indeed you should be thankful the competition is out there to constrain BT's worst instincts.

Re: Charges for calls of more than one hour

itsme — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 11:31:36 GMT

Quote from: AlaricAdair
Indeed even BT offers VOIP telephone service to the general public.

Have you checked this recently?

Re: Charges for calls of more than one hour

Ellis — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 18:45:30 GMT

Quote from: AlaricAdair

Why should the public not compare VOIP with landline service? Is there some regulation which says the public must endure poor charge structures from BT and its subsidiary companies? The call quality on Skype and Vonage is just fine. Indeed even BT offers VOIP telephone service to the general public. Many of the large organisations have switched their entire voice telecoms infrastructure to VOIP. Indeed you should be thankful the competition is out there to constrain BT's worst instincts.

There is a vast difference between the two. A VOIP call between computers is not tying up a landline between the two users, only their BB service. A landline call is tying up a line between the two users for the whole of that time, that is local/trunk/local line. If however, you call VOIP to landline then you will be charged from the outset. I wonder how much BB usage is taken up with a hour long VOIP call, perhaps a staff member would like to explain.
As to large companies switching their voice telecoms entirely, can you prove that? If they do not have a traceable service then emergency calls will not work. I doubt if a VOIP call can be traced. I worked in telecoms in the 1970/80's for BT (before Broadband)

Re: Charges for calls of more than one hour

itsme — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 18:50:28 GMT

O dear someone that don't understand VoIP.
I only use VoIP to make landline calls during the week as they are free unlike using the landline phone which I have to pay for. Also I use a standard Dect base station with 3 handsets to make VoIP calls.

Re: Charges for calls of more than one hour

AlaricAdair — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 20:41:54 GMT

@Ellis I've moved entire companies to VOIP technology, it is actually relatively simple to achieve. Once the infrastructure is in place it makes capacity upgrades and downgrades an easy and fast task. It also makes Business Recovery and awful lot easier. My colleagues on the telecoms side of things rarely install old style TDM nowadays except on legacy sites. Adding an extra 150 channels and modifying the call plans for a company phone exchange takes less than an hour using one engineer after the PTT standard order times have elapsed. I was at one point responsible for the ICT infrastructure of a company that had 9000 channels/voice lines coming into our building, believe me when I say VOIP makes it a lot easier.
You can have a PABX with supports both ISDN and VOIP. ISDN is often delivered over IP networks nowadays. On the VOIP Service it is easily possible to link branch office PABX offices across the globe into one or more Head Office PABXs using VOIP technology using high capacity data circuits. Within buildings we rarely install phone extension lines to desks it is all done over Cat5/6 UTP network cables using VOIP phones.
Here's your BT VOIP Service. Their 21CN programme is all about switching their voice and data networks to IP.
On the 911 or 999 calls it is perfectly possible to trace the caller. I have that service on Vonage, There is the facility to notify a new address if you move the locatioon of your phone router.

[sorry Mods: drifted off the topic a bit, but needed an answer to reflect current possibilities in business]

Re: Charges for calls of more than one hour

PeterLoftus — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 21:43:25 GMT

AlaricAdair
defiantly off topic
I think in the context of this thread the difference between VOIP and land line is that having paid for the line rental and in my case the PN Anytime option which do you choose for which job. I use landline for my business calls in the UK and Skype for talking to family in Thailand. I expect to be going to Saudi Arabia soon and expect to be using skype to speak to Swmbo while out there
Swmbo thinks PN Anytime is great
None will approach an hour per call

Re: Charges for calls of more than one hour

Ellis — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 08:22:25 GMT

Quote from: AlaricAdair

On the 911 or 999 calls it is perfectly possible to trace the caller. I have that service on Vonage, There is the facility to notify a new address if you move the locatioon of your phone router.

[sorry Mods: drifted off the topic a bit, but needed an answer to reflect current possibilities in business]

It seems that there is a problem of traceability with VoIP, to quote:-

Quote
Emergency 911 calls also become a challenge with VoIP. As stated before, VoIP uses IP-addressed phone numbers, not NANP phone numbers. There's no way to associate a geographic location with an IP address. So if the caller can't tell the 911 operator where he is located, then there's no way to know which call center to route the emergency call to and which EMS should respond. To fix this, perhaps geographical information could somehow be integrated into the packets.

911 calls = 999 calls.