Telephone and Broadband for business discussion

[David Reading]

Hi, everyone. This is my first post,so please be kind.

I have a business for 1 year and half. Sign a two year contract with BT, landline and broadband.

For the landline the rental is £72.27 per quarter, include £59.97 for line rental and £12.30 for maintenance charge. (All the price I mentioned is exclude VAT).

For the broadband the service is £45.00 per quarter.

Also, my wife had signed a contract with the calls warehouse fro two years from August 2014, they charge £9.99 per month. I don't really know what they are, maybe something like give you cheaper calling rate. -- But we seldom use the landline for calling, but was told the credit card/debit card machine makes a lot of calls to communicate and updates.

A few days ago, a sales from a company call Go4 Communication Provider come into my shop, and suggest they are cheaper than BT, £31.98 per month give unlimited broadband data, Unlimited local/national and 0845/0870 calls, 100 minutes calls to mobile, Line still maintained by BT Openreach, Free New Line install and Free set up.

Question: should I change to this new company?

 

[David Reading]

Currently I am paying £147.24 per quarter for everything, that is 49.08 per month.
If I change to the new company, I should save £17.10 per month, providing there is no catch ( no additional charge)

However, as my wife said, the company pay the sales to come to your doorstep to persuade you sign the contract with them, how come they help you save you money instead of costing you more money?

 

[KM-Tiger]

A few days ago, a sales from a company call Go4 Communication Provider come into my shop

There is your answer.

Do you think a good service worth having would sell in that way?

 

[David Reading]

Hi, Tiger. Thank you for replying.

So should I keep BT as my landline and broadband provider? also, what about the calls warehouse?

 

[cjd]

Tell us how you use your telephony, how many phones/users. Do you travel a lot, work from home? Are you growing, need to add staff?

Telephones are used for stuff - we need to know how you need to use them and how many you need.

 

[David Reading]

Hi, CJD.

We don't really use the landline for calling, only for broadband and the card machine. There was two month that the telephone handset is not working, and we are okay with that. Only my wife and myself work in the business, and we use our mobile, we are a corner shop like anyone you see in the high street, so no travel, no work from home. Also, no growing.

We just need broadband and a card machine need the landline to communicate with its network.

 

[David Reading]

We have put the landline number in the till receipt and yell.com, so maybe customer will call and ask questions.

 

[David Reading]

Did some check on the company, there was review on Trustpilot and Yell.com


Looks like have good reputation, however, two posts on Trustpilot is published on 5th August this year, one review on Yell.com is published on 3rd August.

 

[cjd]

My advice would be to stick with BT, you might save yourselve a few pounds by changing but really, is it worth the risk? As you use mobiles mostly, I suggest you have a look at giffgaff - they're actually O2 with better pricing.

 

[Alan]

BT seems expensive for business landline / broadband in my experience.

I recently moved some one to Plus Net Business (phone & broadband) and it was easy and a significant saving.

At the end of the day the telephony is still 'Open Reach' the same wholesale provider that BT use.

 

[DavidWH]

We use plus net. Can't fault it.

From what I understand plus net is owned by BT, but is run a completely separate business, with own support team etc.

Isn't all the network managed by open reach, and most of these companies are resellers. The exception being Virgin Media who have their own network?

 

[cjd]

^^^ it's a bit more complicated than that, but only BT and Virgin have actual cables to premises (unless you live in Hull). Everyone else uses BT lines and they're maintained by BT and their agents.

Bigger companies have their own equipment in BT exchanges and also rent cables/fibres from there into the main network. Mostly all resellers do is marketing and sales - hence your cold visit. Avoid like the plague.

Plus Net are BT with another name. But they do have their own support which is pretty good. If you really must move, other names to consider are Zen and Andrews and Arnold - both of regularly with awards for their services. But they're not bottom of the pile cheap - none of them worth buying are.

We do all this stuff too, but it's probably overkill for you.

 

[Leo-InstallingIT]

As others have said I wouldn't swap to save money to a cold caller - changes are you will regret it.

Although all the infrastructure is maintained by Openreach, your chosen provider will play a big part when it comes to dealing with faults. Having someone that knows what they are doing and you can get hold of quickly really helps. I'm not saying BT Retail are the best at this - but they are not the worst!

 

[KM-Tiger]

Zen and Andrews and Arnold

Second that.

Those two are the only providers that can be considered professional and thus suitable for a business.

 

[David Reading]

Thank you, everyone.

So the summary is:
1, stay away from cold caller
2, stick with BT if want to have less hassle,
3, or contact plus net, Zen, Andrews and Arnold for quotation to see if can get a cheaper deal

 

[Leo-InstallingIT]

Pretty much! Although some would argue there are others that are professional....

But yes, don't rush to jump ship to save a couple of quid.

 

[David Reading]

Anybody got experience with the calls warehouse?
Because I am not quite understand who they are and what they do.

 

[Leo-InstallingIT]

Basically they are similar to your cold calling company, they are a telephone company they say they offer better rates than BT Retail.

There is a system which is know as CPS (Call Preference Service) which allows you to have your line rental and the calls over that line with two different providers. From your description it sounds like that's what you have.

So you pay BT Retails for the rental of the physical copper line, but then your line is configured to send the calls through Calls Warehouse so they bill you for the calls (or include them in the bundle).

You may find that a provider that does simple per second billing of phone calls works out cheaper than the bundle you're paying if you don't make many calls (even if you do sometimes).

 

[David Reading]

check on the three companies (Zen, plusnet, and Andrews and Arnold Ltd) websites for

1, Zen is the simplest one, very easy to understand

Unlimited broadband
Broadband £13.33 (unlimited usage, up to 17mbps download speed and up to 1mbps upload speed, 12month contract)

£17.50 (Business telephone line rental with cheap calls and no setup fee. Estimated fault fix time 48 hours.)
£6.50(5000 anytime minutes to 01, 02, 03, 0845 & 0870 numbers)

Need to call 01706 902100 for calling rates if without inclusive minute

Total £37.33 per month or £30.83 if without inclusive minute

2, plusnet is understandable, but a bit complicate.

plus net 24 month contract

Unlimited Broadband £13.00
line rental £10.50
UK Anytime £4.00

Call our sales team on 0800 5871744, to check calling rates

Total £27.50 per month without inclusive minute

3, Andrews and Arnold Ltd is very complicate to me, looks like for very big company that need a few landline, a few broadband and have a clear mind on how much they are going to use each month. So cannot pick any deal

Looks like I need to find out how many minutes I use and how many GB data I download each month, so that I find a good deal.

 

[David Reading]

Thank you, Leo-InstallingIT.

When I talked to them regarding transfer to that cold calling company, they said that I can pay £80 to buy out from the contract but must pay them before 2pm Friday, or they will charge me £200 termination fee. Can they do that?

After I decide to stay with BT and themselves, they tell me need to do three important thing to stop the transfer.

1, tell the cold calling company to stop the order firmly,
2, tell BT to slamming the transfer application
3, call them again to tell them what I have done.

Basically they are similar to your cold calling company, they are a telephone company they say they offer better rates than BT Retail.

 

[Leo-InstallingIT]

I agree, once you've got the amount of minute your use etc it will you a much better ideal to be able to compare.

To give you an idea our 01/02 calls are less than 1p per minute (billed per second), I'd be surprised if Zen were a million miles away from that.

 

[Leo-InstallingIT]

It depends on their contract - I'm totally against massive termination charges - but unfortunately the telecoms industry is full of it.

The way PSTN (and now broadband) transfers work is that the new provider puts a transfer request in. This then starts the transfer, which the current provider has 10 days to reject it if it's not genuine. This is the current providers chance to check with you, inform you of any termination charges and reject the order if you don't want to do it - but there are very strict rules on them no doing "retention activity".

However I have seen it many times where loosing providers don't actually check, so it is definitely worth speaking to BT Retail and telling them to reject any transfer orders.

 

[James Ormerod]

You have to be careful David. We see this problem all the time with our customers and what happens is the cold calling company place the transfer order and ignore your request to cancel it. Then the customer wishes to move back to us and it restarts their contract plus any migration or re-connection fee's.

The end result is that you end up paying for unnecessary fee's and charges plus its very difficult to sort it out and get your money back without raising complaints and disputes. Even then, most likely the cold calling company isn't liable for the re-connection fee's back to your old provider.

Have a look at our website too. Unlimited ADSL & Line is £28. Unlimited Fibre and Line is £36 p/month.