David H
23-04-2014, 00:31
A few years ago I managed to find a company Virgin didn't block to make my peak and international calls, while it cost about 10P or so a minute to call locally otherwise before what is now 7pm.
I was asked to call a friend to test his new phone and the answer machine went off and cost me a minute, and the bill showed 23p plus VAT, ie 28p per minute for a standard daytime UK call. As the other company charge (and make a profit) 1p a minute (0.5P from BT as they don't take so much of a cut as Virgin), what's the logic in PR and customer service, not to mention customer loss in charging as much to call a mobile as a landline? I don't imagine this was an error as they charged well over the odds when I changed providers, but a 100% rise in a few years seems to even exceed Virgin's worst excesses. Neither of the two alternatives of people dropping out or being ripped off are good business practice, if there were no piggyback companies allowed I'd simply have reverted back to BT as probably everyone else, so they'd just end up shedding customers by the million.
I was asked to call a friend to test his new phone and the answer machine went off and cost me a minute, and the bill showed 23p plus VAT, ie 28p per minute for a standard daytime UK call. As the other company charge (and make a profit) 1p a minute (0.5P from BT as they don't take so much of a cut as Virgin), what's the logic in PR and customer service, not to mention customer loss in charging as much to call a mobile as a landline? I don't imagine this was an error as they charged well over the odds when I changed providers, but a 100% rise in a few years seems to even exceed Virgin's worst excesses. Neither of the two alternatives of people dropping out or being ripped off are good business practice, if there were no piggyback companies allowed I'd simply have reverted back to BT as probably everyone else, so they'd just end up shedding customers by the million.