Madasafish.com Say No To Geographical Number Access.

Foxy1075

Hi Chris

Thanks for your email and I'm glad to hear that you're considering moving over to Madasafish. I'm sure you won't regret it.

There are several reasons we use an 0844 number for our support lines. Firstly, as you wrote, we do earn a small slice of call revenue from calls to the support lines, although this amounts to a very small proportion of the costs of running our support centre. Having a non-geographic number means that call costs are fair to everyone. Some phone packages allow customers to make local calls for free and publishing an 020 number could then be argued to be unfair to anyone living outside the London area. At 4p per minute at any time of the day we feel that the rates are fair to everyone who needs to contact us.

However, the main reason for using a non-geographic number is to do with the call routing. Our 0844 number is configured so that in the event of a telco fault, the calls are directed to an alternative telco for delivery to our support centre. This gives us redundancy in the network and provides the high availability of our advisers that you’d expect. It also means that we can change telcos if we’re not happy with the service we’re getting without our customers having to be informed and all our print materials being changed (this has actually happened quite recently). If the 020 termination numbers were made publicly available then these benefits wouldn’t exist. In the event of our changing the termination number, customers would no longer be able to call us. Clearly that’s something we want to avoid and we therefore don’t publicise the 020 termination number.

I hope that this doesn’t change your decision on joining us and I can welcome you to Madasafish Broadband very soon.

Best regards

Matt

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Matthew Henton
Head of Marketing
Madasafish

9-10 Grafton Street

London W1S 4EN

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Hi Matthew, (Head of Marketing - madasafish)

Following much deliberation I have decided to move to Zen Internet and not madasafish, despite the higher price that Zen charge.

I just wanted you to know that the main reason behind this is because you weren't as a company prepared to offer access to your 020 termination number.

Although you may think that this is a petty reason I am not alone in feeling this way as I am a member of an on-line community website called saynoto0870.com, the subscription to which is huge after having been mentioned in the Daily Mail, the Guardian and BBC News and National Radio etc etc.

I understand your main argument about phone number portability in the event of needing to change providers, or in the event of an emergency, and I am not suggesting for one second that you cancel your 0844 main contact number completely, but simply that you give access to your geographical number as well, and if in the unlikely event it changes due to unforeseen circumstances so what!? Surely you would just let the relevant people know your new geographical number either via your website or putting it on the saynoto0870 website yourself, if the worst comes to the worst people who wanted to could still ring you on your 0844 number.

I also disagree with your statement that some phone packagers allow customers to only make local calls for free as in my experience of shopping around all phone packagers that have all inclusive deals base it solely on geographical phone numbers nationwide, and not just in a limited local area.

What you should realise being in the Customer Service industry is that "one cap really does not fit all"

In addition to this my other argument was that if I'm using my madasafish service wirelessly in another country and I have problems I can't access the technical helpdesk on an 0844 number simply because the international dialling service doesn't provide connection, something I have experienced first hand and having access to your technical services department by email would one, be long winded, and two, only work if I didn't have a technical problem in the first place (which would be my reason for calling!)

My contract to Zen is fortunately only 30 days, so if you decide in the light of my argument to provide me (and the other forum members of saynoto0870.com) access to the geographical number then I will seriously reconsider my decision to move across, and I'm sure I will not be the only person to do so.

You are one of the only internet providers that don't offer their geographical number to their customers so they can make a choice, and in my opinion due to the reasons you have quoted for not doing so you have made this decision purely on a commercial basis, which is fine but commercially you have just lost one potential customer due to your decisions, and I am sure I am not the first.

Thank you for taking the time to read this email, and respond to me in the first place.


Chris.

Quentin

Very interesting, Foxy.

MAAF use the adslguide message board for their "official" forum, with MAAF posts usually being put there by the same member of their customer care team who usually posts on MSE using the name "Madasafish Customer Care", Samara.

This topic (the 0844 number) came up there last week, but the answer given was totally different to the one now being given by Mr Henton.

In answer to the question about what was the normal phone number, this was Samara's reply:

Our Customer Care and Technical Support Centre are based in South Africa, thus I'm afraid that there is no UK number behind the 0844 one

At the very least you'd think they would read the hymn sheets before feeding the lines (or should it be lies) out to the punters.

http://bbs.adslguide.org.uk/showthreaded.php?Cat=&Board=freenetname&Number=2719546&page=&view=&sb=&o=

JohalaReewi

0844 can be anything from 1p a minute to 10p a minute (BT prices).
In Madasafish's case, their 0844 number is 4p a minute (and not eligible for friends and family discount).

Using 18185, South Africa is 2p a minute plus 4p.

It is cheaper to dial South Africa direct !!

deanos

Yes but they wouldnt be making any money from it that way;)

FelixTCat

Foxy1075,

You will only ever incur the cost of a support line if you have to use it!

I have never yet had to call MAAF technical support, mainly because MAAF is one of the (few?) ISPs that monitor the forums at http://bbs.adslguide.org.uk/ and not only reply publicly but respond to Private Messaging. You will even get a reply at weekends.

If Zen provide a better service than MAAF, then by all means stay with them; indeed, if they are that good I might be tempted to migrate! But don't make the decision on the basis of the cost of a support line that you may never use.

By the way, how would you use your MAAF service wirelessly in another country? ("In addition to this my other argument was that if I'm using my madasafish service wirelessly in another country and I have problems I can't access the technical helpdesk on an 0844 number simply because the international dialling service doesn't provide connection") I'd love to be able to do this!

Regards,

Felix

Quentin

FelixTCat wrote:

MAAF is one of the (few?) ISPs that monitor the forums at http://bbs.adslguide.org.uk/ and not only reply publicly but respond to Private Messaging.

But we have now seen in this thread that they give different answers on that forum to the ones given when e-mailing replies to questions!

Some technical problems just cannot be answered by posts on a forum.

FelixTCat

"But we have now seen in this thread that they give different answers on that forum to the ones given when e-mailing replies to questions!"

The answers may have been different, but they didn't contradict one another. Nobody ever said that Madasafish had an 020- number; it was used as an example. 4p per minute is not expensive compared to many other support lines and the argument for using an 0844 number is valid. The fact that MAAF "might" make 2p per minute on a call routed to South Africa will hardly pay for the support, even at South African wage rates.

"Some technical problems just cannot be answered by posts on a forum."

Nope. They use the Private Message system for that.

Regards,

Felix

bbb_uk

Remember they say that having an 0844 is fair to everyone compared to having a geographical but this isn't true as local and national geographical calls cost the same on BT's standard linerental plan or other teleco's plans.

0844 costs 4p/min all the time which means that during the evening & weekend they're more expensive than they were when they had their old non-geographical number.

0844 isn't charged the same across all providers as calls from mobiles can cost upto 40p/min. Calls from payphones can cost a fortune but not sure of exact figure.

The international access may be a problem as the account holder abroad but his/her family are in the UK using MAAF but there is a problem for which MAAF (for obviously security reasons) wont discuss account details with anyone except account holder.

The real reason and most important reason is that they gain money in return.

If it was just so they could redirect the number to different places or use other network features then they could have chosen a 0845 at the minimum which would have meant being able to friends & family discount or even override providers.

What happens when the new 03x non-geographical number is available from around February next year? This new non-geographical range will have the exact same benefits as existing 084x/087x numbers except they can only be charged at the same price as normal geographical calls and will be included in any price plans we may have!

If MAAF say they are using these numbers mostly for the network features then they can use the new 03x range but something tells me they have no intentions of doing that at all and there main reason is the money they get in return.

0870 will lose the revenue behind it. 0871 will be under ICSTIS control (albeit it seems ever so slightly). 0845 may also lose its revenue in 2 years or so. Except for 0844 which is the only one guaranteed to keep its revenue behind it, all the numbers are uncertain or are losing their underlying revenue behind it and coincidentally, MAAF decided on an 0844 simply because it is the only number range that wont be controlled by ICSTIS and is guaranteed to keep it revenue for the forseeable future.

bbb_uk

FelixTCat wrote:

The answers may have been different, but they didn't contradict one another. Nobody ever said that Madasafish had an 020- number; it was used as an example

They definitely imply that they have an 020 number (and tell lies about using 020 numbers):-

phone packages allow customers to make local calls for free and publishing an 020 number could then be argued to be unfair to anyone living outside the London area.

Even if they don't, they could publish the africa number (or similar) and that would still be cheaper than ringing an 0844 thanks to the many, many cheaper dial-through providers.

Foxy1075

Basically they seem to me to be a bunch of liars that obviously don't care about their customers and can't see that "One cap really does not fit all."

What follows is the final email reply from Matthew Henton he sent me earlier today, after I sent the emails previously listed.

Hi Chris,

Thanks for letting me know your plans. I’m obviously sorry that you’ve decided not to join us but I’m sure that you’ll get a good service at Zen. They may be quite a bit more expensive but I’ve only ever heard good things about their service. You know where we are if not though.

Best regards

Matt.

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In other words, thanks for your feedback, I'm not going to say anything else because you've blown my main argument for not releasing the 020 termination number out the water, do what you want, oh, and PS we're still not giving you the b****y number!

Quentin

FelixTCat wrote:

"But we have now seen in this thread that they give different answers on that forum to the ones given when e-mailing replies to questions!"

The answers may have been different, but they didn't contradict one another. Nobody ever said that Madasafish had an 020- number.................

The Head of Marketing did.

On the other adslguide MAAF forum Samara (from MAAF) - who posts on MSE as Madasafish Customer Care - though hasn't contributed to this thread - but has visited it and read it - said there was no UK number behind the 0844 one.

In fact the MAAF Head of Marketing explained why they don't want to give the 020 number out, and added:

we therefore don’t publicise the 020 termination number

The two answers on this question are contradictory - one person claims there is no uk number, the other explains why they keep the uk number to themselves.

You do seem very defensive of them over this.:rolleyes: