GP switched to an 0844 number!

Homework

Many phone offers from mobiles and home phones have free calls or special deals to standard land line numbers meaning these calls are costing people money.

When the surgery has on the day appointment booking you can be calling for more than half an hour pressing 1 or 2 etc to get through to appointments only to find it busy and have to start again.

Ok if you have money but very harsh on people with mobiles and a declining calling credit trying to get through. If you go into the surgery to make an appointment for the next day they won't let you. They tell you that you have to call in the next day at 8.30 am with everyone else so you cannot avoid the cost if you try.

hardpressed

Complain to the practice manager, the local Primary Care Trust, the local paper, local radio, your MP, out of that lot surely someone must take notice at patients being ripped off. Get a petition going, ask patients to sign. It's all wrong, they shouldn't be make a profit out of people trying to contact their doctor.

fudgeukraine

Being realistic here, If the surgery does make any money from this phone number, it'll be very negligable.

An 0844/45/70 call costs roughly 3.5ppm from a BT landline, compared to 5p per call to a geographic number. Now, if, and it's very unlikely, that phone number was dialled constantly for the entire 9-5 work day (unlikely I know) then that number would take £16.80. Now, considering you need a person to answer that phone constantly then taking it as a person on the minimum wage, then it is either £3.30, £4.40, or £5.35. Even if it was the lowest possible wage, then that person would be paid £26.40 for that 8 hour shift. Therefore, the surgery is out of pocket by at least £9.60.

Therefore, how then, do they make money out of this phone number considering it's costing them more for the person answering it than the cost of the call?!!!

changkra

Mine changed to this ages ago. In fact it actually costs less to phone for an appointment now that it did before

zx2011

My own GP has just switched from a local 020 number to an 0844 number.
O2 charge 20p± per minute for pay-monthy and 15p per minute for pay-as-you-go customers. [Yes it is cheaper for pay as you go customers!!!!]
± The 20p/min rate applies on all Pay Monthly plans where customers have connected or upgraded from 27 April 2007 onwards, and calls to these numbers are not included in bundle minutes for these plans. Customers who have connected or upgraded to a Pay Monthly plan before April 27 will be charged as for standard UK landlines (01 & 02 numbers).
http://www.o2.co.uk/mobilestariffs/tariffs/specialnumbers

LondonDiva

I used to work for in telecoms & a lot of the comments here are misguided. If it's a 0844 or 0845, the company does not make a profit, but it allows the company to have a call routing plan in place without having to fork out for a massive swichboard & someone to man it.

so, press 1 for appts, 2, for prescriptions, 3, to speak to the practice manager, 4, for job ads etc etc is sorted online / electronically and they can also keep a track of how long calls take to be answered, which ones are dropped etc.

0844 / 0845 = lo-call number. Which means, if you dial from a landline, you pay the same as though calling a local rate number. So if the co is based in B'ham & the number dialled is in Manchester, the caller pays a B'ham to B'ham charge & the company picks up the B'ham to Manchester part of a call.

There is no profit made from the 0844/0845 number ranges. The only ones to profit are the telecoms company. Rather than complaining to the practice that they are tryingto make their call handling more efficient, why not write to the MP/radio etc etc about the mobile company making an obscene profit??????

0870 = national rate number. Which means that the call can cost up to 10p pm, with the big companies (ie holiday cos and IT dept, making as much as 1-3pm after the telephone co has it's cut). Small companies / businesses like GPs do not have enough traffic to bargain for any profit, do the telecoms co makes the profit and they may or may not provide the service to the practice for free.

0871 = national rate number +++. Which means the call will cost 10pm flat rate

09000=line my pocket.

Dubber_Dan

Well said

odowdchr

LondonDiva wrote: »

0870 = national rate number. Which means that the call can cost up to 10p pm, with the big companies (ie holiday cos and IT dept, making as much as 1-3pm after the telephone co has it's cut). Small companies / businesses like GPs do not have enough traffic to bargain for any profit, do the telecoms co makes the profit and they may or may not provide the service to the practice for free.

The other thing to mention about these is the ability of big companies to stick you in a queue and charge you while you're waiting...ie. football and concert tickets. The transaction may only take seconds but if it takes you 20minutes to get through........

candygirl

Just got a letter from my doc saying theyre changing to an 0844 number in july so we'll get a "better service"Yeah riiigggght!!:mad: :mad:

LondonDiva

candygirl wrote: »

Just got a letter from my doc saying theyre changing to an 0844 number in july so we'll get a "better service"Yeah riiigggght!!:mad: :mad:

Sorry, not sure if my earlier post was confusing, so will respond to your post.

1 - yes, you will at least from a phone systems point of view

2 - if you are dialing from a landline, the call will not cost you any more

3 - they will not make a penny from an 0844 number and could end up making a loss, especially if they are contacted by a hospital from out of the area.