With the cost of phone calls due to rise yet again, it pays to shop around for a cheaper deal.

IF you have a BT landline, the cost of a natter is set to soar.

Having already hiked prices this year, it’s doing it again in October. And where BT leads others follow. Yet, if you’re prepared to make changes now, you can beat it before it happens.

How it all adds up – in combination, these price rises are substantial:

April’s cleverness – BT played a genius move by shifting what counts as peak daytime hours from the old 6am to 6pm, to the new 7am to 7pm. That means, while it can argue it hasn’t increased peak hours, it’s effectively made calls cheaper during a quiet morning hour and chopped an hour off busy cheap evening call times – plus it hiked the cost of calling during peak hours at the same time.

This isn’t just about BT. Many of the other big providers such as Talk-Talk and Sky soon followed suit with their own changes, meaning prices will soar in homes across the land.

This is partly because some promise to be cheaper, so when BT puts up its prices they can do the same.

Price hikes due in October – It’s not only line rental going up, call connection costs will rise by 1p, so every single chargeable call that’s connected through BT will cost a penny more. Plus, its daytime call costs rise yet again, to 6.4p a minute.

Slash line rental to £9 a month – Don’t sit back on your laurels and accept the hikes. It’s easy to beat them.

To offset the price hikes, BT has launched a new Line Rental Saver deal where you pay £114 up front for a year’s line rental, including “free”

weekend calls to landlines. This is equivalent to £9.49 a month and a saving of £30 over its cheapest monthly line rental deal.

If you’re already locked into a BT contract, don’t worry. It will allow you to break that contract if you are signing up for this one, but to be sure you get it, you must sign up before the new pricing structure starts.

Or you could ditch BT and save even more. Sign up for the Primus Home Phone Saver tariff specifically via the homephonechoices.co.uk website, and for £8.99 a month you get line rental including free weekend and evening calls to landlines.

That’s more calls included and for a longer period and at a cheaper price than BT’s new deal. With BT, free means the first 60 minutes are free, with Primus it’s 90 minutes.

If you’re worried about the idea of someone physically disconnecting and reconnecting your line, don’t be.

It works on a carrier pre-select system on your existing BT line. It’s only your calls and billing that are routed through Primus. Pretty much every phone company apart from Virgin, which has its own lines, works this way.

If you also want broadband, don’t automatically jump for a “bundled” package where it’s all wrapped into one. The cheapest way is simply to get one of the line rental deals mentioned and then cheap broadband, which starts at £6 a month.

■ See moneysavingexpert.com/broadband for full best-buys.

Use override providers to slash the cost – whether you’re on BT or Primus, to make much bigger savings on top you can then use no-frills override providers.

To access these, all you do is dial a number from your home phone and, bingo, you’ve over-ridden its call costs and are now on the super-cheap providers’ rates instead.

The overall winner is a company called 18185.co.uk. To use it, sign up on its website, then dial its free prefix access number (unsurprisingly, 18185) before you make any call. It bills you by direct debit for them.

Now get ready for this – while BT daytime costs 6.4p per minute from October plus a connection fee, here you pay 5p per call no matter how long you speak. In addition, the cost of calling mobiles midweek can be roughly half the cost of using BT.

If you’re trying to work out how this interacts with your line rental deal, it’s quite simple. Use your line rental deal when calls are free and 18185 for everything else except weekend calls to 0870 numbers if you’re on BT.

Yet, while this works on BT and Primus, some line rental providers bar the prefix dial type override providers.

■ For details of alternatives, see moneysavingexpert.com/homephones

Cheapest international calls – The cheapest way to call internationally is via your computer to someone else who is also connected to the internet.

With Voice Over Internet Protocol, calls such as Skype you can do it absolutely free.

Yet don’t believe the Skype hype if you’re calling someone abroad on their normal phone. Override providers tend to undercut even Skype for making actual calls.

You’ll usually pay half a penny a minute to commonly called countries, though the cheapest depends on the country you’re calling and the day.

■ To find the cheapest, go to moneysavingexpert.com/intcallchecker

Though, again, beware that non-BT customers may be charged differently to what the companies list.

Top tip

DUMP Nationwide’s debit card for overseas spending. From Nov 1, Nationwide’s Flexaccount will add a two per cent load charge on all spending overseas, plus a £1 cash withdrawal fee.

New cheapest is Halifax’s Clarity credit card, which is load-free worldwide, with a low ATM fee, though always pay in full each month or it’s 12.9 per cent APR.

■ For a full guide to the best holiday cash deals, go to travelmoneymax.com

■ Get Martin’s free tips and moneyoff vouchers emailed straight to you each week by signing up to moneysavingexpert.com/tips

■ TV money guru Martin Lewis runs the consumer revenge website MoneySavingExpert.com. Ensure you get his weekly email so you’re constantly saving money.

The store that made its mark

THE Marks & Spencer store in Bishop Auckland will celebrate its 100th anniversary on Wednesday.

When the shop opens at 9am, a Buck’s Fizz reception for the first customers will launch the centenary celebrations. Activities will continue throughout the day, including face painting from 10am to 3pm, wine tasting and M&S food sampling.

M&S Bishop Auckland staff will be getting into the spirit by modelling store uniforms from throughout the ages and there will be an allday prize draw.

The first M&S store opened in 1910 at 23 Newgate Street, and was a classic example of the Marks & Spencer Ltd Penny Bazaars of the early 20th Century. It sold items such as sewing equipment, biscuits, toys, and sheet music in the best tradition of Michael Marks and his Leeds market stall.

M&S first began selling clothes and food in the late Twenties and to make way for its expanding business in Bishop Auckland, moved to 15-17 Newgate Street, the former premises of Aubin’s Bazaar.

The new “superstore “ opened in 1930. Between the Fifties and the present, the street was renumbered; so the store is now at number 23 once again.