BT is urging companies to follow its lead after scraping charges for customers calling their customer service and helpdesk numbers. Highlighting the rates charged by other companies, BT estimates that the rest of the industry is making around £70 million every year from 0870 and 0845 numbers.

Before the complete call charge scrapping BT claimed that 92% of calls to the company were already free, however, more than 7 million chargeable calls were being made every year.

Gavin Patterson, BT managing director consumer said: “We’ve always had some of the lowest prices for such calls and now we’ve decided to make them free. We call on the rest of the industry to follow our lead. There really is no excuse for companies whose prices are either sky-high or verging on the ridiculous. We believe that customers are out of pocket to the tune of £70 million a year.”

To compare call charges between the companies, and highlight their new, free rates, BT also released the following table:

Source: BT

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