Take Care When Dialling 18866 Manually

Thanks for that warning.

A Internet Archive (snapshot taken 1 June 2003) search revealed that DQ118866 charged 25p connection charge and a further 20ppm thereafter.

A google search revealed that Amstrad signed a deal with 118866 to have their e-M@ailer phone use 118866 as the default DQ service back in January 2004 at a cost of 49p connection charge and 9ppm thereafter.

Therefore, it would appear that they increased their prices when they were taken over to benefit from the mistakes of people mis-dialling Call18866 indirect access code especially if they charge £1.50 connection charge and 30ppm thereafter. This must make them the most expensive DQ service in Britain?

MDUK wrote:

what is an orchid dialler?

It is a LCR (Least Cost Routing) Dialler box made by a company called Orchid Electronics.

It basically is a user programmable box that can be programmed to route calls depending on type (geographical, mobile, international, premium rate, 084x/087x, etc) and time of day (daytime, evening & weekend).

With a BT line and the Orchid dialler box you can automatically route calls to the cheapest provider no matter what type of call it is and what time of day.

Therefore ensuring you always (or nearly always) pay the cheapest price for a call no matter what type it is and no matter what time of day it is and once setup its done automatically and all you do is just dial a number as usual and it will route the call according to your preferences.

There are other LCR dialler's as well but MSE Martin recommends the Orchid Dialler especially as they are doing a 20% discount to orders online.

For more info on MSE Martin's article/discussion about the dialler, see here.

MDUK wrote:

Do orchid supply a list of 'competitive' suppliers then or do you shop around and programme in the ones you want to go with?

I take it the more suppliers you use, the more bills you get. Unless there is one company who acts as an agregator.

It's up to you to find and use as many/few different suppliers as you want. The orchid dialler just routes the calls as necessary depending on the type of number being dialled (and even time of day if you want)

It's also up to you to sign up to all of the different providers (if applicable) and pay all the seperate bills (though the savings are generally worth any minor hassle)

As you say though, it is fairly foolproof - you just need to make sure your chosen providers stay competitive (a fairly easy task if using this forum!)

MDUK wrote:

I was just going to try this 11866 people have mentioned

It's 18866 - Not 11866 and definitely not 118866 as mentioned above

JC

Just rung OfCOM over this and mentioned just how much they've increased their prices which makes them very uncompetitive and how I think they've done it on purpose because people are misdialling Call18866.

His reply is that we have to be more careful dialling but nothing can be done because its just as if we misdialled a geographical number. I then mentioned that there was a major difference of misdialling a geographical that would cost 5p max to one that costs £1.50 minimum!

He said there was no difference except just be cautious when dialling Call18866!

Therefore, do be extra cautious if manually dialling Call18866 and I agree it is best to use a dialler box.