Say No to 0870!

No Pink-winged,

Please remember it BEFORE you dial one of these numbers! Certainly worth a try where any company is using one for a sales line. However, not so sure it will work with others like Customer Services or claims, because they won't be "scared of losing your business" by then; they will have already got you trapped in the queue!

mate its 7th july tomorrow

It seems to me that the 0870 problem which I believe has been engineered by BT aided by ineffectual regulation by Oftel/Ofcom can be reduced to four main headings.

1. The price structure is not transparent and many consumers are either ignorant or confused. Call costs on 0870 vary with the time of day and with the telco used. They now have nothing to do with 'national' rates and are more expensive than most customers would expect.

2. These calls are excluded fom 'all-in' tarriffs.

3. Most consumers either object to or are ignorant of the fact that the service provider gets an income from an 0870 call. It is particularly annoying if the call is to complain , correct an error or to report on a fraudulent transaction or spoof email.

4. Queuing times are now an advantage to both the service provider and the telcos and are a financial penalty for consumers. This encourages the lengthening of queing times .

A precall announcemt is easy technically and Ofcom are considering this as a requirement for all 0870 calls. The 'call waiting' technique is available and it is possible for no charge to be made until a human answers.

To even the playing field a pre call announcemnt could go like this.

The call you are making will cost X pence per minute even if your tarriff is otherwise free. The service provider will receive Y pence per minute for this call. You will not be charged until your call is answered by a service provider operative.

At least this would force the whole matter into the open and consumers would then have a choice to put the phone down or not.

I am sure Loopytush will object but his objections will be nothing compared to the objections of the telcos and service providers.

I have refrained from suggesting that the announcement should contain the underlying geographical number.!!

Clock 24

How right you are! They will delay because it is in the interests of the industry to do so.

Having read the latest consultation document and the decision Ofcom I am more convinced than ever that Ofcom are not the consumer champion that they are supposed to be. I found it almost unintelligible because I am not part of the Telco industry. When this kind of thing is written for consumers and it is advertised to the public they might find that they get more than 20 replies
from individual consumers. They took those few replies as confirmation that their was little consumer opposition to 0870 numbers.

Having just stumbled across this article I decided to check up to see how much my Telco (Tesco Home) charges. While I get free evening and weekend calls, this does not include NG numbers I found their tariff sheet on the website and what an eye opener!! 0870 numbers are 7.5p a minute in the day (compared to 2.5p a minute for normal calls) and in the evening they are 3.9p per minute and 1.75p per minute at the weekend (when normal calls are free). Even Lo-call 0845 numbers are 3.6p per minute in the daytime (more expensive that a normal national call) It is obvious that OfCom have lost the plot with the 08 numbers and there is a major scam at work. Companies should be made to stop hiding behind these numbers and publish their normal number. It is obviously the consumer who is paying for the convenience companies enjoy having an 08xx number. The exception being 0800 and 0808 which with many telcos are still free (but not Vodafone ).