Calculating (did)benefit of Evenings & Weekends cf. Anytime+

[#1]

I am on the £15 Anytime+ and would like to know if I would be better off on the £9.99 deal and paying for more calls.  It seems that PN do not calculate this for me to enable me to select the most appropriate package.  In fact they levy a £14.99 charge for changing !
Also, it seems hard for me to calculate myself.  I would need to download all calls to a spreadsheet, but there seems no way to write the call log to a .CSV file.  It it even hard to print as there are so few calls on each screen so a lot of copy/pasting is required.  Have I missed something ?

[#2]

No I dont think so, I have been doing that, copy and paste the 10 lines into excel, that leaev a trouble though, this first line is shifted over one, and the unconformed calls are a different format because of the !,
other people with items like that and also PN with squirrel mail allow you to control how many lines to a page, about  time they did it for phone calls

[#3]

Hi there,
One of the things on our list of improvements for Home Phone is an easily downloadable/printable view.
There was another discussion on this very recently here.
There's a PUGIT item here you can vote on to give this more priority (you will need to register to vote).

[#4]

Thank you for the link Mand. I tried it and found that I had already voted last time it was discussed.
I agree with eugeneg - at the moment it is very difficult to ascertain whether one is on the most suitable package. Also, thanks for the information about the charge to downgrade (had not read the small print).

[#5]

Quote from: poppy

Also, thanks for the information about the charge to downgrade (had not read the small print).

Yes, £14.99 to change to the £9.99 package.  I'm not sure how much manual intervention is required to make such a change, but assuming and hourly rate of £10 that must take PN about 1.5 hours ! 
I have been able to calculate how much my calls would have cost me had I been on the £9.99 package.  Here's how I did it:
Assuming the charging rules are:
# Calls are charged for a minimum one minute duration
# Call durations are then rounded up to the next minute
# A setup charge of 4.5p is added to the charge1
# The final total is rounded up to the next whole pence.
Copy each of the 10 lines and paste them into a Word document.  Form the Table menu, Convert to table with 6 columns and a space character a the separator.  Now copy that table and paste it into Excel.  The key figure is the number of minutes in each call: let's assume that is in cell E1, E2, E3...  In a free cell on the same row enter the following equasion to convert the time to an integral minutes:
=MAX((HOUR(E2)*60)+MINUTE(E2),1)
And in the next column to that enter the following:
=ROUNDUP(0.045+(H2*0.03),2)
Now just total that with =SUM(I:I) This will give you the notional cost of the call assuming a charge of 3p per minute.  International calls would need a lookup table to convert the countries to values.

[#6]

Am impressed by the calculation - don't know if I can manage this but have copied and pasted the information and will give it a go.

[#7]

Quote from: PJ

I thought the charge to move between packages had been removed at the same time as the cancellation charge?

Maybe, but it is still mentioned on PN's website.  £14.99 to downgrade.  Surprisingly, only £5.01 to upgrade.  A cynic may wonder how here is three times the amount of work required when downgrading.  Ref.  https://portal.plus.net/support/home_phone/info/change_product.shtml
Remember to strip out weekend and evening calls from the equation.  Could be done in Excel but just as easy to manually remove. 

[#8]

Hi guys,
The £14.99 downgrade fee is left over from when all downgrades cost £14.99. We will be removing this soon.
In the meantime, if anyone here wants to change product I'd be happy to refund this fee for you.

[#9]

Quote from: eugeneg

I have been able to calculate how much my calls would have cost me had I been on the £9.99 package.  Here's how I did it:

Just for fun I modified the equations to take account of the included evening and weekend calls that you would get on either package.
Assuming columns starting in B
Date of call Number called Time of call Duration Included mins Cost Minutes Cost of call
The last two columns (H & I) contain
=IF(OR(HOUR(D2)>17,HOUR(D2)<8,WEEKDAY(B2,2)>5),0,MAX((HOUR(E2)*60)+MINUTE(E2),1))
=IF(H2>0,ROUNDUP(0.045+(H2*0.03),2),0)
Don't forget to take account of the 300 minutes of International calls if appropriate.