BT: charging me for services I don’t use

Our monthly BT bill has been much reduced since we swapped out our BT broadband for Orange, which is a third of the price. We don’t use our landline phone very much either; we tend to use it at weekends, when our BT plan gives us free calls.

I was surprised to open our monthly BT bill this morning and find the following charges listed:

I know it’s not much, but it annoys me. It is also the first time that we have had these charges. I guess they want to claw a little more money from us any which way they can – even if it’s charging us for not using their call facilities.

Before you suggest that we should transfer to BT’s Light User Scheme (the plan for those who make few calls): we can’t. To get onto that scheme, you have to produce three consecutive monthly bills of £12.39 or less. We can’t do that, because BT’s charges for our light call volume ensure that we’re over that threshold.

I just went to the BT website, and noticed that the company is about to introduce some significant changes to its call costs:

On 1st April 2010 we will be making some changes to a few of our home phone calling prices:

• the call set-up fee will be 9.9p
• the UK Landline daytime pence per minute rate will be 5.9p
• the evening call period will be 7pm-7am

If you are being thrifty and saving money by eschewing itemised billing, this may not mean much to you – but if you are with BT, you will likely find your bill creeping up from next month onwards. The call setup fee – the minimum amount you have to pay, for every call made – is going up by 2p per call. But take a look: the cheaper evening rate, which has started at 6pm for as long as I can remember, is being pushed back to 7pm. Cheeky!

I don’t remember being sent anything about this; I just happened upon it by chance. I love the way that, at a time when telecoms companies are falling over themselves to snag custom with an ever-expanding range of attractive deals and initiatives, BT manages to find a seemingly infinite variety of ways to disappoint their customers.

Am I the only one fed up to the back teeth with BT right now?