Bulldog ban Premium Rate Calls.Unless you pay £50.

pricefighter

Even if you wont to make Premium rate calls.Bulldog have barred them unless you pay deposit.

"Premium rate numbers (090x)
If you're a new Bulldog customer, you will not be able call any premium rate numbers from your Bulldog phone service. This is to protect you against unwittingly incurring high phone bills when calling these numbers. If you'd like to call premium rate services, you need to make a £50 prepayment which will used by Bulldog as a credit limit against calls you make*. You can make this payment by calling Customer Services on 0800 404 8151, selecting option 1, then 2. Please allow 24 hours before we reset your service to allow you to call premium rate numbers.

* When your charges to these services exceed this limit, your access to them may be restricted until a further prepayment is received. "

onthegin

I just received this email from Bulldog and I'm miffed! I have never phoned a number beginning 09 and nor have my teenagers but I might want to and Nanny Bulldog wants £50 of my money on which I will not get interest from my savings account on the off chance I might want to. I'm not chuffed that they are doing this to protect me from my kids and I will be kicking them into touch in a few weeks when my 6 month contract with them expires. How dare they!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :mad:

Alfie_E

It does say “If you're a new Bulldog customer…”, so presumably it doesn’t apply to you. Changes like that do normally only apply to new customers, with good reason. If they say they’re applying it to you, you don’t have to wait your few weeks, and can ask for an immediate termination of the contract. Section 5.4 of Bulldog’s Terms and Conditions states that you can terminate at any time during the first thirty days after Bulldog tell you about a “materially detrimental change”.

onthegin

My email doesn't mention new customers:
"As of Wednesday 26th April 2006, you will not be able to call premium rate numbers from your Bulldog phone. If you do want to make premium rate calls you will need to make a pre-payment of £50.00 which will be used against your bill."
I wonder if there are two versions of it and if Bulldog are applying this new policy to everyone?

seanhodges

Not sure why you're complaining - if I could get 09 calls blocked on my phone for no charge I'd do it like a shot.
Bulldog are protecting you (and themselves) against misuse of the account.

Heinz

seanhodges wrote:

Not sure why you're complaining - if I could get 09 calls blocked on my phone for no charge I'd do it like a shot.

You can if you have a BT residential line.

Alfie_E

onthegin wrote:

I wonder if … Bulldog are applying this new policy to everyone?

It seems you’re quite right. Bulldog have updated their website between my last post to this thread and this one. The new page reads as your email. The page I saw last night, which matches the quote from pricefighter, is still in Google’s cache, as of 15:30 25 April 2006.

As this change doesn’t impact on your current usage of your phone, I’d consider carefully whether this alone should make you want to leave Bulldog. If you’ve been a fortunate customer who’s not had any customer service problems, Bulldog seems to offer reasonable value for money. If I were you, I’d make any decision to change based on my personal experience of their customer service and comparison of their charges with alternative providers.

seanhodges wrote:

Not sure why you're complaining - if I could get 09 calls blocked on my phone for no charge I'd do it like a shot.

I think the complaint was over what is effectively a £50 charge to remove the barring. Say, one day, I had an irrational impulse to vote on Big Brother, or even one of the slightly more sane Channel 4 polls, such as the Political Awards, I’d be less than happy at the thought of having to stump up an initial £50 to do so. (I know you can vote on these things by text message, but, unless you have inclusive texts, it works out more expensive.)

The £50 goes towards the total cost of your bill, so you’ve effectively gone from having your non-inclusive calls provided on credit to pre-paying. There’s also no indication that you’d immediately get your £50, if you return to having 09x numbers barred. Presumably, you’d have to slowly use up the £50 on non-inclusive calls.

pricefighter

Bulldog dont really seem to have given this much thought.

Their are a number of Legitimate users of 090 numbers that it stops you using unless you pay deposit other then Quiz Shows,Competitions etc. Eg Embassies(Visa Enquiries) ,Dial Through Intl Call Numbers,Technical Help Desks,and it also bars the 10p a minute 090 numbers used by the likes of Megabus.These 10p numbers are likely to become more used in the future.

melodytoon

I'm a Bulldog customer & I got an e-mail from them on 24 April telling me about the policy change. This is the whole e-mail:

Bulldog is changing its policy regarding premium rate service calls - that's numbers starting 09.

As of Wednesday 26th April 2006, you will not be able to call premium rate numbers from your Bulldog phone. If you do want to make premium rate calls you will need to make a pre-payment of £50.00 which will be used against your bill.

By simply dialling 150 from your Bulldog phone and selecting option 1, you will be able to make your £50.00 payment by debit or credit card. We recommend you allow up to 24 hours for your service to be reset. If the value of premium rate calls from your account continues to reach a high level, we may contact you again to ask for a further pre-payment.

More information about premium rate numbers

Premium rate numbers - those starting 09 - attract higher call charges ranging from 10p to over £1.50 per minute. They are typically used for delivering information (horoscopes, weather, tips etc.) or competition lines, TV voting lines and support lines. Numbers starting 08 are not classified as premium rate numbers and are therefore not affected.

Kind regards,

Bulldog Customer Operations

As you can see, there's no mention of it applying only to new customers, so it must apply to everyone.

I was a bit irritated by the £50 deposit, even though I can't recall dialling an 09** number recently. I know of people who've had workmen/guests in their home who've used the 'phone to dial these numbers without permission. This also cuts down the chance of people saying they didn't realise how much the calls were, & makes those "you've got lucky number X - dial Y to see what you've won" scams less likely to work in future. So for those affected by this, it's a good idea. However, I've been an adult for too many years to admit to, & I don't appreciate any telecoms provider putting a barring facility on my service which means that I then have to pay a deposit to be able to use my 'phone as I wish. If they want this, they should offer the barring service & ask people to opt into the barring or pay a deposit to keep it, rather than have to pay to stop it being barred.

I'm lucky in that we have two telephone lines at home, so should I want to use an 09** number, I'll just use the other line. I've e-mailed Bulldog to protest that they're treating me like a child while expecting me to pay my bills like an adult. I won't be leaving them any time soon because they allow unlimited downloads, but it's the only thing keeping me with them.

bunking_off

Damned if they do, damned if they don't. I recall a couple of years ago BT getting a lot of hassle for not barring 09 as default, with explicit requirement to unbar if required. Now Bulldog are chastised for doing it the other way around. The £50 deposit is a bit excessive, but then again bad debt on 09 is horrendous so I can only assume they've had a few significant fraud attempts.

Heinz

I've NEVER tried to call an 09xx number, so I don't care.

Am I missing something?