BT are now saying No to 0870 RSS

BT are now saying No to 0870Today, broadband market leaders BT have announced some good news for some 14 million phone customers by becoming the first UK telecoms company to make calls to 0870 and 0845 numbers free on their Unlimited Evening & Weekend and Unlimited Anytime call plans.

A frequent complaint of all customers is that phone packages boasting free calls to UK numbers at weekends, evenings or any time of day, any day of the week would only include calls to residential numbers beginning 01, 02 and 03 – 08 numbers, which are used by GP’s, banks and insurance companies would not be included in the free minutes, and

This frustration led to the formation of the website Saynoto0870.com, which allowed customers to search for the local and national numbers of banks and insurers by typing in the 08 number and name of the company, bank or practice into the search engine and getting an 01, 02 or 03 equivalent in the search results.

Now BT have cut charges to 0870 and 0845 calls on their two most popular phone plans, with Evening & Weekend customers being able to make free calls to these numbers during after 6pm and at the weekends, and Anytime customers being able to enjoy free 08 calls whenever.

John Petter, managing director of BT’s Consumer arm said: “We know that the public is frustrated by having to pay higher charges for these numbers, even though BT’s rates were cheaper than our rivals, so we worked out a way to go further and include calls to 0870 and 0845 numbers in our call packages.

These numbers are widely used by banks, utilities and even NHS Direct, and our customers spend 30 minutes a month on average calling these numbers. We hope we have taken a sting out of the price of these calls, but also removed one of those irritations that customers believed was an unfair anomaly.”

This is surely some good new year cheer for customers who are feeling the pinch after Christmas and are looking for ways to cut the costs of household bills. With any luck, BT’s broadband competitors will also eventually follow suit.

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2 Comments »Posted by Tom on January 8th 2009 in BT Broadband, Broadband



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2 Responses to “BT are now saying No to 0870”

  1. Numbers Guy said on 17 Jan 2009 at 3:36 pm #

    With the impending changes to Ofcom regulations on 0870 many businesses will be moving across to numbers that aren’t affected in the very near future anyway, so BT really isn’t taking much risk here. They know that 0870 is on its way out, so offering these numbers for free is really just a great PR move.

  2. cjw said on 12 Aug 2009 at 4:19 pm #

    Its about time;

    BUT of note Virgin have not done this on their cable telephony service.

    BOOO Hiss


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