I've just received my May phone bill from First Telecom, which shows 
that they have been making a 6p minimum call charge (previously 
something under 2p) since 1st May.

I have had no notification of the change in tariff. Can they legally 
charge me at a rate they haven't told me about?

And can anyone recommend a carrier who:

a) offers a low minimum charge per call (nearly all our calls are short 
UK landline calls)

and

b) is well enough behaved to inform customers of price increases before 
they impose them?

John Geddes
Derbyshire

On 9 Jun, 22:13, John Geddes  wrote:
> I've just received my May phone bill from First Telecom, which shows
> that they have been making a 6p minimum call charge (previously
> something under 2p) since 1st May.
>
> I have had no notification of the change in tariff. Can they legally
> charge me at a rate they haven't told me about?
>
> And can anyone recommend a carrier who:
>
> a) offers a low minimum charge per call (nearly all our calls are short
> UK landline calls)
>
> and
>
> b) is well enough behaved to inform customers of price increases before
> they impose them?
>
> John Geddes
> Derbyshire

Hi John

I can put you with a company called Adept and get you calls to uk
01,02,03 at 1.2p per min, standard uk mobiles 8.5p per min.

Each call is rounded up (or down!) to the nearest penny.

Hence, if you make a 20 second call to a uk 01,02,03 number, you will
be charged 0p!

I have a very satisfied customer who makes a lot of these type of
short calls - only 30% of his calls are charged for at all!

If you send me your email address, I'll send you the simple
registration form - the rates above are not their standard rates but
are available to me due to the volume of business I put their way. On
the form, I write in the above rates and terms & hence these then form
part of the Contract.

Adept rates are primarily aimed at business customers making peak rate
calls - if you are a residential customer, however, I can simply
register your particular phone number for 1xxx access only (or for
using with an Orchid programmable dialler box) - otherwise your
offpeak calls could end up costing you more than you need.

Should you wish to discuss further, my email address is my full name
with no dot at my business name dot com.

Regards

Simon Clark
Business Telecoms

Thanks for pointing this out. I didn't check my bills in great detail and so 
missed the 'Important Notice' on the first page of my April bill.

OJ


"John Geddes"  wrote in message 
news:m0j0i5-e56.ln1@chiron.w3z.co.uk...
> I've just received my May phone bill from First Telecom, which shows that 
> they have been making a 6p minimum call charge (previously something under 
> 2p) since 1st May.
>
> I have had no notification of the change in tariff. Can they legally 
> charge me at a rate they haven't told me about?
>
> And can anyone recommend a carrier who:
>
> a) offers a low minimum charge per call (nearly all our calls are short UK 
> landline calls)
>
> and
>
> b) is well enough behaved to inform customers of price increases before 
> they impose them?
>
> John Geddes
> Derbyshire

JohnF wrote:
> Thanks for pointing this out. I didn't check my bills in great detail and so 
> missed the 'Important Notice' on the first page of my April bill.


That will be the "Important Notice" that warranted text that on my 
screen came to a whole 8 pixels high, hidden at the bottom of the page 
underneath an advert four times as high as the "important" notice. 
Prompted by your reply, I've just found it.

How amazing that neither of us spotted it at the time.

I have told FT that I will be asking my bank to refuse the Direct Debit 
unless they promptly recalculate the bill on the original basis.

If they decline to do that, I will pay them make an estimate of what I 
owe them on the old basis, and leave them to argue in court that they 
have been reasonable in their method of advising the price increase.

I'd recommended several people to FT - never again!

John Geddes

On Tue, 10 Jun 2008 14:50:44 +0100, John Geddes  wrote:

> I'd recommended several people to FT - never again!

First Telecom have always been a bit dodgy, though not the worst.

They were also part of a group who set up (is it still going ?) a trade
association to set minimum standards/best practice for card/call through
operators - seemed like a joke at the time ...