BTB Exchange Line?

[Esk247]

What on earth is a BTB Exchange Line?

BT are billing us £51 a quarter for it and I don't know what it does...we only have 1 phone in the office and it's hardly used as everything we do is through VOIP or email :|

 

[Leo-InstallingIT]

This sounds very much like a feature line which BT seem to call Business Exchange lines sometimes.

£51 per quarter is BT's standard rental if you are on a 2 Year contract - does that sound about right?

If it does, in essence it is your line rental with a few added extra.

 

[Esk247]

We're on a 2 year deal but we signed up under the 6 months free line rental offer.

So on my bill it says the following

Free calls per month: used all of them
Extra call charges: 0.53p
Line Rental: £34.80 per quarter
Refund Line Rental: - £34.80
BTB Exchange Line Pre-Payment for 1st March to 1st May: £51.00
Payment Charge: £9.00
VAT: £12.10

Total Bill: £72.63

We only have one phone line in to the office and we use VOIP etc.

They just don't explain what it actually is. They've already billed us £150 for something that they said was free and now they want another £51 but our total calls have been less than 3 hours in a whole quarter.

Blinkin 'eck

 

[Leo-InstallingIT]

Very strange.

Do you have a phone number you could PM me so I can lookup what products are setup on the line? It might give us a clue as to what it actually is.

 

[Esk247]

Update to this.

The BTB Exchange Line is the line rental at £50 a quarter (or whatever BT decide they haven't told us yet).

However, we've now been billed another £48.60 by direct debit last week and they won't tell me what it's for....cretins.

Tuesday will be spent on the phone being passed from department to department..oh the joys!

 

[Leo-InstallingIT]

Thanks for the update, suspected it would be the line rental charge.

Good luck on Tuesday

 

[Esk247]

Thanks for the update, suspected it would be the line rental charge.

Good luck on Tuesday

It's not easy to work out and they're only giving us 7 days to pay invoices by the time they arrive...great over easter!

They've given us two invoices, the last one that they direct debited out of our account 7 days after issuing was for £48 and it says line rental charges + VAT then there was the other invoice which also said line rental charges for the next quarter..I read that as paying twice to be honest, considering we're supposed to be on 6 months free.

Total cost for the first 6 months with BT has been over £300 so far and we don't even use the phone as we use VOIP

 

[leemason]

It very much looks like you have some sort of inclusive calls package with your analogue line. When you say you use all of the free calls per month allocation exactly what do you use them for it you mostly use VoIP? Is it faxing?

 

[Esk247]

It very much looks like you have some sort of inclusive calls package with your analogue line. When you say you use all of the free calls per month allocation exactly what do you use them for it you mostly use VoIP? Is it faxing?

The free call allocation is used up by local calls, so between here and the warehouse down the road. We've never exceeded the 10 calls a month though that inclusive of our plan.

Both bills are from March and one says Rental Charge £39 and the other says BTB Complete Exchange Line £51

When I phoned them they said the exchange line is line rental charge :| but surely that's the £39...they just kept saying BTB Exchange Line is £51 per quarter.

They've charged VAT twice as well, on the smaller bill at £7.80 and on the other bill they've stuck on a £9 payment charge.

 

[leemason]

So do you have a separate business phone bill for the Warehouse? Could it be that the £51.00 is something to do with a site to site (P2P) voice connection to your Warehouse.

 

This is just a thought, but no-one has mentioned broadband yet .. Do you have BT Broadband on that line? Would that be billed on the same bill as your BT Phone? I'm not a BT customer so I'm not sure how their billing works.. but if "BTB" is BT Broadband then it makes more sense to have line rental and then a broadband charge... It would also mean that you are getting your line rental free as the £34.80 is being refunded and you are paying £25.50 a month for your broadband. Does that sound reasonable?

 

[Esk247]

So do you have a separate business phone bill for the Warehouse? Could it be that the £51.00 is something to do with a site to site (P2P) voice connection to your Warehouse.

No, the warehouse is a separate company with a separate line unconnected to the office. The bill is coming through as two invoices to one address.

 

[Esk247]

This is just a thought, but no-one has mentioned broadband yet .. Do you have BT Broadband on that line? Would that be billed on the same bill as your BT Phone? I'm not a BT customer so I'm not sure how their billing works.. but if "BTB" is BT Broadband then it makes more sense to have line rental and then a broadband charge... It would also mean that you are getting your line rental free as the £34.80 is being refunded and you are paying £25.50 a month for your broadband. Does that sound reasonable?

It could well be this. They're billing Broadband and Telephone line as separate things.

In which case. It's flippin more expensive than I thought, we budgeted up to £90 a quarter for phone and broadband as we signed up to the 6 months free and then £14.99 a month, so rental on top would take us to around the £30 a month mark. However, it's coming in more like £150 a quarter.

I'll have to phone Tuesday and just double check how they're billing it, they didn't explain it very well over the phone.

The bills I've had before have all been one bill through Orange on another office and we just paid per quarter but it was predictable, e.g. £24.99 a month all inclusive, no surprise fees. With BT they seem to be adding things in all the time that aren't clear.