Tech talk: Good phone deals mean knowing who to call says David Behrens

THEpromise of free phone calls, as advertised in most newspapers by most internet companies, sounds too good to miss. But as we have learned, there’s no such thing as a free lunch, let alone a phone call. The practice of “bundling” two or more services together – phone, broadband, mobile and digital TV are the most common bedfellows – is attractive to media companies because it helps keep you locked in to their services. But the benefits are not always mutual.

One market-leading provider, for instance, now offers an “essentials” phone and broadband package for £6.50 a month, with “unlimited evening and weekend UK landline calls” thrown in. But they’re not unlimited at all – they cost 7.6p a minute after the first hour, unless you hang up and redial. What’s more, calls which fall outside the free evening and weekend window incur a “connection fee” of 12.5p, on top of the call charge itself. And calls to non-standard numbers, including some directory inquiry services, are much as £2.25 each. That soon adds up.

With others, free evening and weekend calls are offset by very expensive daytime ones. Despite the tempting headline offers, it’s often cheaper not to bundle your services but to shop around for separate deals from phone and broadband companies. An online price comparison service like uswitch.com can help you find the deals best suited to you.

Changing phone companies is straightforward – there’s no loss of service but the downside is likely to be nuisance calls from the outgoing provider begging you to stay. If you don’t want to switch you can use an “override carrier” such as 18185.co.uk. This involves dialling – you guessed it – 18185 before each call. They then bill you directly for those calls each month. You need to create a direct debit account with them, but their charges may be half those of BT, especially for dialling mobiles.

Pay close attention to the small print when you’re choosing: that’s where the true cost of calls is buried. And if you opt for an “all-inclusive” package, make sure it doesn’t exclude so-called non-geographic 0870 and 0845 numbers. Many calls to large firms these days involve these, and you don’t want to pay for being put on hold by a call centre.