Confusing information on call charges

[nh2012]

Today I decided to find out what calls would cost from my landline. I logged into MyVM and selected "my contract" and that showed (correctly) that I have "Big Bundle" including TiVo, Mixit TV, M126 fibre broadband, line rental and Weekend Chatter. However, on "Overview" it states that I have Mixit TV, M100 fibre broadband and "unknown" phone. There's a link on that page that says "How much do calls cost?" but when I click it I get "no healthy upstream"! This plainly isn't the case - my broadband is working fine and the speed measured as 138Mb/21Mb which is consistent with M126. If I click on the "phone" section of my current bill, I can see that calls to service numbers beginning 084, 087, 118 and 09 have an access charge of 24ppm but that's all. I should add that my phone line is supplied via my broadband modem. Can anyone explain this, please? Surely I ought to be able to view the cost of phone calls (which admittedly I seldom make)?

[goslow · Accepted solution]

Unless you have bought into a particular call plan as part of your phone package, you would be on 'Weekend Chatter' by default on your landline.

Call charges are detailed below

https://www.virginmedia.com/content/dam/virginmedia/dotcom/images/mobile-browse/downloads/010123_Eve...

[Matthew_ML]

Hey nh2012, thank you for reaching out and I am sorry to hear this.

To answer your questions the below is correct, also on the bill any extra call charges will be posted on it if that the was case. Cheers 

[interlinked]

---

I should add that my phone line is supplied via my broadband modem. Can anyone explain this, please?

---

To answer this aspect of your question, that would be due to the fact that the old copper network is being retired and replaced with a new fiber network.

Despite being cabled into your modem, this is still in essence an independent service/network and continues to be billed as such.

That said, I'd not be surprised if in the future landlines simply become a complimentary "add-on" of having a FTTP broadband connection.

[Matthew_ML]

Thank you for posting some advice, I hope this also does help.

If anyone needs anything else answering on this, do let us know. Cheers 

[nh2012]

That was poor phrasing on my part. I understand why my phone line is now provided by the modem - it was because a fault developed at the exchange end, and it was simpler to transfer me across to this new system ahead of time than to get the fault fixed. As you say, the billing and so on is unaffected by the change.

[nh2012]

I have to say it's staggering how much the price of landline phone calls has increased (not just on VM, of course). When I signed up (to NTL as it was then) in 2001 I think it was 3ppm daytime, 2ppm evening and 1ppm weekend. By September 2006 it was 3ppm + 6p connection charge all the time, but that also included 0870 numbers. Now it's 24ppm + 24p connection charge and 0870 numbers cost more. That's an 8-fold increase in price per minute and a 4-fold increase in connection charge since 2006; RPI has not quite doubled in that same period. Even RPI + 3.9%pa (which is what now applies to the line rental etc) is only a factor of 3.8. No wonder we all use our mobiles most of the time! (I know that for £10/month one could get all 01/02/03 and mobile calls for free, but they're usually free anyway on most mobile contracts.)