Hi again Bruce, we all pay line rental, its paying for the wire/fibre connection to the network.
The other BT charges in your package are for the various service(s)
I donāt have a smart phone , I have a traditional land line - these are deliberate choices
The mobile signal here is appalling and anybody with a phone that is powered by electric , will have spent 34 hours - without being able to use it
BT in my experience stands for BIG TROUBLE
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I tell them , my wife deals with that sort of thing - and tell them Iāll get her.
Quarter of an hour later they usually get the message
The port is blocked by a sticker ādigital voice customers onlyā.
I will try to look at my BT contractvand understand what I do and donāt pay for.
Bruce
Ditto re the scammers, very satisfying to keep them on the line as long as possibleā¦.
Having recently gone FTTP with BT, the cost of having a landline was only Ā£1 pm, so I kept it for incoming calls only. I think the non-package tariff is around 20ppm?
The wi-fi 'phone isnāt as good in sound quality terms as my previous FTTC/lengthy copper to house set-up, with a BT branded domestic moby on the end.
When you agree a new deal with the likes of BT, be careful, as their prices rise in either March/April at CPI+3.9%(?), and CPI is now ālotsā!
Also, to go FTTP, there could be some installation challenges, which Iāve posted on the Forum before e.g. the incoming box needs power, and the fibre cable is stiff so cannot run internally very far (if at all).
Yes thats were you plug your phone into for Digital Voice, but please donāt touch this yet. BT will contact you when the Digital Vice service is available in your area.
I think you will find your phone is in fact copper not fibre. VM has installed some fibre to the home recently, but for most of their footprint itās fibre and copper to the cabinet and then coax to the home for broadband and a copper pair to the home for the phone. You have had VM for some years I think, so likely thatās what you have.
I play a dithering old fool that takes ages to walk upstairs then turn on the computer, and then pretend to type in what they say, but pretend I can hear them properly
Waste time like ā¦ someone delivering a parcel at the door, donāt understand computers/Wi-Fi/ online banking or whatever they are calling about, go along with it as long as possible, spell out various insults slowly using phonetic alphabet when the ask what computer screen is showing etc etcā¦. Anything to delay them calling another (possibly vulnerable) person.
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Ooh, looking forward to that!
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The problem with answering these calls is that the more you do it, the more calls you get, regardless of the conversation you have with them. One of the revenue streams they use is to sell lists of known active numbers to other scammers, who can then call you.
I never answer our landline for that reason. If itās urgent they will leave a message or contact me by other means, or Iāll just dial 1471 in case it was a legitimate caller.
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Thanks David. I thought I wasnāt confused but now I am.
Presumably if they get an answering machine, they know itās an active line, but I do take your point.
When I do get calls, I do also report the number to my ISP
Yes, I donāt know if they make a distinction between calls answered by machines vs humans. Itās now quite easy to report scam phonecalls, text messages etc. and to block unwanted numbers. Itās not always easy to distinguish scammers from less sinister cold callers who are just trying to sell you something like a contract upgrade or get you to respond to a survey.
You can tell if itās fibre telephone. If the phone connection is into the back of your fibre hub, itās likely fibre. If itās into a standard wall box (NTP) like this one, itās copper.
Hi Chris,
Thatās absolutely a good thing to, but I like to consider myself very scam aware (donāt we all), and itās just some small way of fighting back. Id rather they speak with me rather than my elderly neighbours (who were scammed) or someone elseās loved ones. Being retired I also have the time unlike a lot of others. Strangely I donāt seem to get many calls at all anymore so perhaps those ālistsāwork two ways.
Itās definitely copper. Iāve taken a look at Virginās website and it explains about migrating everyone by 2025.
Indeed, we can only guess at how any particular scammer will operate, and it seems they are constantly cooking up new schemes.
My mother-in-law was inundated with nuisance calls and couldnāt resist the habit of answering the phone whenever it rang, although she isnāt so naĆÆve as to fall for the scams. Eventually we persuaded her to get a phone with a screen, and now she only answers if she recognises the number.
As a BT SH2 user, I switched mine over to VOIP in December.
I basically unplugged the phone from the wall and plugged it in to the hub, a foot away (having removed the sticker!)
Everything else carried on as normal. No dramas.
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