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NickInTheNorth
26-May-08, 11:59
Well sort of :D

My current contract with BT finishes at the end of May, so I had a look around, and decided, to my utter amazement to switch to TalkTalk. That was going to cost me £39.99 per month for free calls to landlines, 100 minutes per month to mobiles, free calls to 51 countries, and my broadband connection.

So I called BT for my MAC, and as a result of that call I'm getting a package much more to my requirements from BT for £31.44 per month, saving me nearly £30 per month compared to my current BT bill (and for the first 3 months it's only £25.49!). It doesn't include overseas calls - which I don't make anyway, and doesn't include mobiles, but I make very few calls to mobiles (averages less than £5 per month). The broadband part of the deal has reduced from £24.99 to £14.99!!

So if you're with BT and out of your contract period give it a go!

Second thing was during the negotiation of the new deal we were discussing friends and family options including the best friend number, which gets a 20% discount. So I took a trawl through my past few bills, and discovered that BT were billing me for a calling a number on an almost daily basis that I haven't called for nearly a year! (An old PAYG mobile of mine, which just happened to be my current best friend number as I haven't changed it for a long time!)

So I called them to discuss that, and as a result of that they are refunding the cost of those calls too.

Remember it pays to check the details of your bills.

So all in all a very productive morning. :)

joxville
26-May-08, 12:54
Well sort of :D

My current contract with BT finishes at the end of May, so I had a look around, and decided, to my utter amazement to switch to TalkTalk. That was going to cost me £39.99 per month for free calls to landlines, 100 minutes per month to mobiles, free calls to 51 countries, and my broadband connection.

So I called BT for my MAC, and as a result of that call I'm getting a package much more to my requirements from BT for £31.44 per month, saving me nearly £30 per month compared to my current BT bill (and for the first 3 months it's only £25.49!). It doesn't include overseas calls - which I don't make anyway, and doesn't include mobiles, but I make very few calls to mobiles (averages less than £5 per month). The broadband part of the deal has reduced from £24.99 to £14.99!!

So if you're with BT and out of your contract period give it a go!

Second thing was during the negotiation of the new deal we were discussing friends and family options including the best friend number, which gets a 20% discount. So I took a trawl through my past few bills, and discovered that BT were billing me for a calling a number on an almost daily basis that I haven't called for nearly a year! (An old PAYG mobile of mine, which just happened to be my current best friend number as I haven't changed it for a long time!)

So I called them to discuss that, and as a result of that they are refunding the cost of those calls too.

Remember it pays to check the details of your bills.

So all in all a very productive morning. :)

Well done Nick on getting a good deal, however what annoy's me is why companies always seem to give you a good deal when you say you want to leave. It would be a better practice if they kept an eye on your account then about 1 month before it ends they call saying how good a customer you are and giving you cheaper deal to stay with them. It would make you feel valued as a customer and less likely to trawl the internet looking for new deals.

When I cancelled O2 they called offering a new contract, and although I said I would probably stay with them,(I had been with them 8 years), I still wanted to check the net anyway. I wrote them 2 weeks later saying I was definitely leaving O2 and they billed me for £564 for a new 18 month contract I hadn't agreed to. Their call centre operator had gone ahead and signed me to a new contract without me giving a definite yes. Needless to say I gave them a blast and didn't have to pay the bill. I switched to Orange and got a 32" LCD TV in the deal.

poppett
26-May-08, 13:45
BT have called me today to say they are to refund line rental charges they took in error in November last year. It has taken until now to get them to do this and it`s only £10.50, but it was MY £10.50.

ashaw1
26-May-08, 13:58
When i took over my shop the previous tenants were not with BT ( BT would not tell me who the current supplier was) but i decided just to go with BT anyway. I checked with BT before this was done that it wouldn't be a full installation charge, even checked with offcom the day before and they agreed. So no surprise then when the bill came in with a £130 installation charge which i immediately queried. The charge was finally deducted from the bill but how many people would just have paid it!

Kevin Milkins
26-May-08, 14:54
I have had several battles with BT over the years and they seem to go through periods when they are rubbish and then followed by a good period
I was being shafted by AOL for a number of years and it wasnt untill I joined the Org I came to realise how badly.
I was paying them over £30-00 a month for a rubbish service and the speeds were just getting slower and slower.
After a few debates on the Org BT total vision seemed to be the package for me as I dont have sky or freeveiw.
For less than I was paying AOL I am now getting the total broadband package including freveiw and the out and about Blackberry type phone with 50 mins calls a month free and 50 text free.
More importantly for me is that it all works and even wifie understands the tv bit.:D

MadPict
26-May-08, 20:37
You may be getting another surprise - seems like BT has agreed to sell on customers browsing habits to a company called "Phorm".

Virgin and TalkTalk are also in talks with this company.
There are questions being asked about the legality of this 'interception' of customers activities.

It was raised this evening on The Gadget Show -
http://gadgetshow.five.tv/jsp/5gsmain.jsp?lnk=401&featureid=777&show=s8e9&section=Features

http://www.badphorm.co.uk/page.php?2

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/29/phorm_roundup/

http://www.openrightsgroup.org/2008/03/12/the-phorm-storm/

NickInTheNorth
26-May-08, 20:49
What makes the technology behind OIX and Webwise truly groundbreaking is that it takes consumer privacy protection to a new level. Our technology doesn't store any personally identifiable information or IP addresses, and we don't retain information on user browsing behaviour. So we never know - and can't record - who's browsing, or where they've browsed.

Don't sound too bad to me.

Metalattakk
26-May-08, 22:03
Read up on it, Nick. It IS bad. Not only is it bad, it's illegal.

Phorm is a the new name for 121Media, a company which had its products labelled as 'spyware', including rootkits and various malware.

This company has no morals, and while they 'say' that no-one can track who's being profiled, various sources have said otherwise, most notably a report done by advisers to The Home Office.

Seriously, this is NOT a good product. Questions have been raised in Parliament, and the trial done by BT in 2006 has been labelled illegal.

Please, read up about Phorm - The Register's collection of pages (linked by MadPict above) is a good place to start.

MadPict
26-May-08, 23:12
Don't sound too bad to me.

Could go down with "Injuns? What Injuns?" as famous last words.

Maybe you think having Ubuntu will protect you...[lol]

NickInTheNorth
27-May-08, 07:06
ever wish you had remembered to put ;) at the end of what you posted?

;)

Metalattakk
27-May-08, 12:11
Of course, Nick. ;)

But it's that very attitude - one of ignorance and naivety - that this sham of a company have based their business model around. That's why we (the people who can see through the bull-dust) need to raise these issues while the government and the ISPs concerned are still swithering and trying to decide what to do.

Phorm want us to sit back and blindly accept them. Even right now, they are only waiting for the hullabaloo to die down, before continuing with their illegal nonsense.

It's up to us to keep this issue in the headlines. Write to your MP and ask what he thinks of Phorm. How would he like his private surfing details - every web page visited, every web-email to be scanned for key-words, every online shopping site, or online banking site he visits - to be sold to advertisers?

Because that's what we're dealing with here folks.

MadPict
26-Jun-08, 10:22
Looks like the ICO has been conned into letting this go ahead.
I for one would not stay with an ISP, nor would I sign up as a customer to one, which is involved with this...

BT is to begin its 10,000 user trial with Phorm's advertising system "imminently" reports The Independent.

Both companies have claimed in the past that a large-scale test will take place, and the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has given it the go-ahead as long as it remains on an opt-in basis.

"BT plans to initiate a further trial in the near future involving some 10,000 broadband users," said a recent statement from the ICO. "This will involve the full deployment of Phorm's technology. We are assured that they will be completely open with customers and that only those who indicate that they are happy to receive ads based on analysis
of the websites they visit will be included."


SOURCE (http://www.macuser.co.uk/?news/news_story.php?id=208191)

Metalattakk
26-Jun-08, 13:06
BT have been saying that deployment of their trial (at least this one is legal and known about, unlike the last two) is 'imminent' for a few months now.

I get the feeling that even BT are only beginning to realise the magnitude of the issue.

router
26-Jun-08, 14:25
i got one of these calls from bt when i went back to them.my average cost was originally 33-38 a month.they promised some off my broadband..and cheaper calls.it was all supposed to save money.my first bill following this, my bill jumped to 64 in the first month!.turned out because i had chose certain money saving option that incurred the extra costs!
prior to this the only thing i got from bt was line rental and broadband,my calls were through sky at a fiver a month.you can be sure when the current contract is up i will be reverting to what originally had.i can only say if you go back and get a bargain,great but be carefull of what the cost really is.

Gizmo
26-Jun-08, 20:11
Well done Nick on getting a good deal, however what annoy's me is why companies always seem to give you a good deal when you say you want to leave.

Yep, telling a company you are going to leave and close your account is always a good way of getting a good deal, so far it has got me 3 months half price Sky viewing, 2 replacement Sky dishes and a Sky+ installation fee waived, if you need a new dish from Sky when they tell you it will cost around £60 just say that's too expensive and you are just going to move to Freeview, you will get a free dish :)

NickInTheNorth
26-Jun-08, 20:32
well I've read all the hype, and I still have no worries about it!

MadPict
26-Jun-08, 21:12
Well, as long as you know what is going on.

I think that many customers of BT et al might not have been aware of what was happening - that is wrong. There is too much selling of customer information going on.

If it forces Phorm and it's 'partners' to be totally open about what they are doing then it is a good thing.

MadPict
14-May-09, 17:13
I know this is an old thread but I have just written to Pipex customer services asking what is the situation regarding its stance on Phorm - Pipex were bought by Tiscali last year and now Tiscali has been taken over by TalkTalk so all of a sudden TalkTalk/Phorm now have 25% of the residential market share and a total of 4.25 million customers.

I didn't know that TalkTalk have also taken over the UK side of AOL - "Carphone Warehouse beat off rival BSkyB in agreeing to buy AOL UK for £370 million (US$688m), getting 1.5m broadband customers and 600,000 on dial-up with it" - this whole scenario is getting worse and worse.

If you're not bothered by the whole Phorm issue, phair enough but some might phear phor their privacy...

Metalattakk
14-May-09, 20:37
MadPict, I wouldn't be too concerned about Phorm as of yet, if I were you.

Viviane Reding seems to have her finger on the pulse, and would surely (hopefully) slap down any actual implementation of such technology.

Add to that the ever-diminishing Phorm share price and the increased public awareness of this insidious, frankly creepy technology, along with how it seems that they have broken their own business model - that of sneaking their spyware in under the radar - and it all makes for a massive dose of PHAIL for them.

As the mainstream media becomes more and more aware of Phorm, the people will be alerted to the ramifications. I have every confidence that when they do, they will not accept it. In any form (sic!).

MadPict
14-May-09, 20:53
I wish I had your confidence - the fact that Phorm are trying to fight back indicates that they seem to be determined to push through this spyware -

"The website that hits back at the "privacy pirates'" smear campaign against Phorm"
http://www.stopphoulplay.com/

Metalattakk
14-May-09, 21:01
Yeah, they are trying to fight back - well they would when there's so much filthy lucre at stake.

That website was a massive PR cock-up though - they had to remove so much of their claims after certain people made them aware of UK libel laws. ;)

I admit I have some concern over this current government's reluctance to deal with this issue RE. the illegal BT trials that happened, but have absolute faith in the universal power of the mass media.

When this hits the front pages of the red-tops and SKY news bulletins, Phorm are phinished. :)