£380 bill for calling "123"!!!!!!!!!!! Read on u won't believe it!

[#1]

I received an e mail from us net to advise my phone bill for the month was £380.00! Thought it strange as rarely use landline. Find out I've been charged for a 21 hour call to "123" the speaking clock. My 8yr old had called and hadn't replaced the receiver!! My bills are supposed to be capped at £75 !! Plusnet were unhelpful and refused to offer any kind of discount and even charged me for going over the limit!! WTF!! What a joke!  Needless to say I'll be moving ASAP

[#2]

Plusnet only gets to know what calls have been made when the data is uploaded from BT. I think that this is meant to happen daily but has on occasions been not for a few days. As you say it does make a nonsense of the cap as it cannot be applied until the data is received. I assume that other landline telephone service providers (if they had any kind of cap at all) would have the same problem but if you find out different I would be interested to hear. However, other phone service providers do offer Call Barring (at a price) which so far PN has not been persuaded to offer its customers.
I have read reports of similar problems with mobile phones on contracts. Parents thinking that they are safe by applying a cap but large usage being run up before a periodic check against the cap. In the case of a mobile there is the option of a prepay phone to limit ones liability but that option is not available for a landline.

[#3]

Some offer call barring for free such as the Post Office.
Regards Mike

[#4]

If Plusnet are as good an ISP as I believe they are, they will waive this ridiculous charge, and put pressure on their parent company to immediately modify the 123 service to time out after a reasonable period.
I can hardly believe that it doesn't already. Or maybe it does, and this was a fluke occurrence?

[#5]

This will put plusnet to test let's see how they do I can't believe. This sort of thing can happen in this day and age

[#6]

Hmm.
This is the second one of these I have seen in the last fortnight.  Leave it with me and I'll see what I can do.

[#7]

BT's charge for Timeline (123) is 31p per use, as shown on page 20 - http://www.productsandservices.bt.com/consumer/consumerProducts/pdf/UKInternationalprices.pdf
So how come Plusnet charge 30p per minute? Specialised Number Call Tariff - Standard pence per minute calls - http://www.plus.net/residential/tariffs/homephone.html

[#8]

I'm aware and currently having this fixed.
Leave it with me, for me, does mean that I will come back to those involved as promised ;).

[#9]

@Teresam
I'm really sorry about this.  I have removed the call in question from your account and have also placed an order to remove call barring from your line. This should complete today.
I have also contacted the other customer that I am aware that has been affected by this to let him know the same thing.
We expect the overall 'problem' to be resolved in the next 24 to 48 hours.

[#10]

Hi, James passed me the details of this problem and I've got the new tariffs all figured out, I'm just waiting for our QA team to test the changes before I can roll them to our live platform. I've also requested changes to the website tariff list but these may take a little longer to be updated. I'll keep you updated as to progress!

[#11]

Thanks both - my faith in PN is restored maintained.

[#12]

Glad to hear that 4C
Our QA team are looking at tomorrow morning for the testing on the tariff changes so we should be OK from there!

[#13]

Plusnet have now resolved the issue and have waived any charges. Thank you to James Bailey who dealt with the matter today in a professional manner, despite my grumblings yesterday. I will now most definitely not be switching companies.

[#14]

The testing was delayed yesterday but is in progress so this should be rolled out asap.

[#15]

These changes have now rolled to the live platform so any calls that are processed as of now will be on the new, lowered price