Thousands of British Telecommunications Plc customers are paying unnecessarily high bills due to confusion over the pricing of its internet dial-up services. Many are paying double what they could pay for internet access with BT.
Last month, BT said that it was dropping the penny a minute charge from its Click+ service, which would then be known as ClickFree. Subscribers to BT Click, a service with a deceptively similar name, are still being charged a penny a minute, even though many assume they are using ClickFree. Assuming a 1p per minute weekend local call charge, this effectively doubles the price a user pays for internet access.
A BT spokesperson told ComputerWire that Click was a free service, where the customer pays only for dial-up calls. Another spokesperson then told us Click charged the extra penny per minute. Seconds later, we were able to download the Click start-up software from BTÆs web site, after reading there that a 1p per minute extra charge would be made on dial-up calls.
Although confusion over the myriad Click brands could be partially to blame, BTÆs schizophrenic attitude to internet service providing may also be a factor. The incumbent telco complained to regulator Oftel earlier this year about the pricing structure which allowed the notorious æfreeÆ ISP to exist, before promptly launching its own – ClickFree.
When the free service was launched, Click+ users were able to switch to ClickFree when they next visited the ClickPlus home page. But the Click service does not have a home page. Instead, many users of Click are directed to the home page of the third party distributor that provided the start-up CD, such as the Guardian newspaper. ClickFree has dedicated content provided by Excite Inc, so Click users are, in effect, paying more for less. BT was unable to comment at time of going to press.
