smaller phone bills! (Phone Co-Op)

Member Name: kathybland

Product:	Phone Co-Op
Date:	16/11/01 (636 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Free 0845 number for friends to call you on, cheaper calls for you, cheaper connections for land line to mobile calls

Disadvantages: not cheaper for every call

Want to pay less for your phone calls and let other people call you for less too? We did so we've just joined the phone co-op!

The Phone Co-op one of those companies who give you a pin number to enter on your phone before you make a call and then you pay them just for the calls you've made with them (no joining fee, line charges or anything).

Our line is with NTL so it's not always cheaper to make calls via the phone co-op who charge just under NTL's 3p, 2p, 1p (day, evening, weekend) tariff but then add vat on top. However, NTL charge a 5p connection fee for each call you make and the phone coop don't, so short calls will always be cheaper with the Phone Co-op.

We've worked out that all short calls, all local calls and all peak and evening calls (but not weekend calls) made to mobile networks are cheaper with the Phone Co-op than with NTL. International calls are also cheap but we don't make any!

But the real winner with the Phone Co-op is that they give you a FREE (yes free!) 0845 number that you can give to your friends and relations meaning that they can all call you for the price of a local call (no good if they're on NTL who don't do local rate calls but BT and the phone co-op do!) - FAB!

What's the catch? well as far as we can see, there isn't one - the Phone Co-op seems great. It isn't always cheaper, but you can decide which calls to use them for and which calls to use your existing provider.

The Phone Co-op is also a co-op (funnily enough!) - so if you join, you also get a payout of their profits. They also give payouts to charities (the Centre for Alternative Technology is one of their charities) so every phonecall you make with them benefits others too.

Convinced yet? You can't lose!

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