What drew my attention to this question was a charge of 13p for a 30 second local call that was made after 7pm* - I would have paid less making the call with my Pay As You Go mobile phone. Surely, I thought, this shouldn't be more than 1p as BT's charge for a weekday evening call is 1.5p a minute - and shouldn't local calls be cheaper anyway? Further investigation showed that a similar call made in the daytime cost 18p.
I decided to check BT's charges on their website and after much searching I found a PDF document (Tariff Guide for Residential Customers) which after a lot of study provided the answers.
The key to understanding BT's pricing is their 'Call Set Up Fees':
BT Basic and BT Standard Rate Customers - 2.553 pence (ex VAT), 3.00 pence (Inc VAT). All other Residential Customers - 9.276 pence (exc VAT), 10.90 pence (inc VAT).
I thought that I was a Standard Rate Customer, but no - it seems that Standard Rate Customers were migrated to BT Calling Plans some time ago. With their cheapest calling plan, most people now pay a 10.9p set up fee on every call they make, the time is rounded up to the next full minute, the price is rounded up to the next 1p, local calls are charged at the national rate, but weekend calls are free.
Now that I think I understand their pricing, I will continue to make weekend calls using BT, but during the week I'll be making my calls via another service. I am considering three different services:
- 1899.com Dial 1899 before the number you are calling - 5p connection fee and 0p per minute for UK geographic calls. You need a BT line to use the 1899 prefix but they do provide but they do provide an 0808 number for non-BT landlines and an 020 number for mobiles. The only problem with the 1899.com service is that Caller ID shows these calls as 'Out of Area' (or something similar) which means that many people won't answer these calls.
- An Internet phone service like Skype. My preference is Sipgate.co.uk or Sipgate.de for price, reliability and features.
- Mobile phone. Use the inclusive calls on your mobile phone contract during the week.
In either case I will still need to make two chargeable or inclusive calls a month via BT otherwise they will charge me for the 'free' Privacy at Home (Caller ID) and BT 1571 (voicemail) features! If you are billed quarterly, you will need to make six chargeable/inclusive calls a quarter. If you have a BT line but your phone service is from another provider, you can try using the prefix 1280 to make these calls and route them through BT - but please be aware that this does not work for all providers.
As BT's pricing is complex, I would ask you to check these figures for yourselves before making any decisions based on them. The pricing for non-geographic numbers is even more complex but it is covered in their Specialised Numbers Tariff Guide. Please feel free to comment on this article if there are any errors or if you have any more information on BT pricing and the alternatives.
*BT's evening rates now apply from 7pm-7am. It used to be 6pm-6am.
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