Name and Shame Companies that mislead callers about the cost of 0845/0870 calls.

pricefighter

I dont know about you i am fed up with Companies/ Organisations that dont follow the Guidelines and clearly mislead the public whether it be in there advertising,literature,website etc about the cost of calls to there 0845/0870 numbers.I thought it might be an idea to name and shame them in the hope they might get there act together.

Here is a couple i came across recently.

Tiscali Hometalk Customer Service and Technical Enquiries.
https://www.tiscali.co.uk/aboutus/contact/contact_smarttalk.html
claim that calls to 0870 744 9966 are charged at national call rate.



RAC. https://www.rac.co.uk/contactus here on there website they state that calls to there 08705 customer service no are charged at national rate.

Perhaps other users might care to give some examples.

bbb_uk

Who do we/can we report it to when this happens and its not in an advert? I know the ASA deal with adverts but the likes of the RAC contact us section wouldn't come under the ASA's remit. Is it trading standards or something?

andy88_2

As it is widely described as National Call Rate, I don't know that you'd have much of a case for false advertising. It is one thing to complain about the price, but to allege misinformation would be more difficult.

BT's tariff changes of a year ago still don't seem to have registered with many people, including hiking the monthly rental by about £3 (from £9.50 to £10.50 and delete the free call allowance).

bbb_uk

The ASA has already published guidance on how they should be priced and they're not allowed to mention 'local' or 'national' as they're misleading. In fact, the ASA has mentioned they cant be 'quiet' on the cost of the calls (ie not mention the fact that they cost nearly 8ppm daytime to 0870 numbers).

If you read this thread, and specifically, the 2 links mentioned you'll see that one company was recently found guilty of misleading prices as they publish an 0870 as 'national' rate number.

OfCOM have also mentioned that 'local' and 'national' descriptions for 0845/0870 are misleading. It's only taken them about a year to finally decide that those descriptions are misleading!

pricefighter

As bbb_uk points out the ASA ruled against a company for doing this very thing.The company in question have now appeared to have drop there use of 0870 because of the backlash.Ignorance is not a defence in these cases.If its a financial companies ad you could probaly report them to the FSA.

I believe that you can report them to TS under part 3 of CPA act 1987 if they are making a false or misleading statement.

The COI have also backed the fact that the price of calls should be quoted.The NHS have been told not to use 0870.The battle against NGN is making progress.

Before reporting them however name and shame,and write to them pointing out the error of the ways,to give them a chance to do something about it.

andy88_2

OK, apologies. I'd got so you used to nothing happening for nearly a year I didn't realise something had.

MarkyMarkD

I think that e-mailing the webmaster or someone else mentioned on the "contact us" of each site is the best thing to do, in the first instance. I'd also provide reference to the ASA guidance on the matter.

If that failed, then I'd consider taking it further.

DonnyDave

I reported Micro Direct to Manchester TS, who didn't do anything. See here.

I also complained to PayPal who also don't seem to care and just use the excuse of the benefits with regards call routing. They didn't even acknowledge what I said about calls to their US call centre being cheaper!! See here.

More responses on Say no to 0870!.

bbb_uk

andy88 wrote:

OK, apologies. I'd got so you used to nothing happening for nearly a year I didn't realise something had.

I was the same. I didn't expect ofcom/asa, etc to do anything especially as government depts use 0870 numbers. That was until I had read pricefighters' post couple of days ago. Now ofcom/asa have now (kind of) given in (obviously only because of complaints from the public) otherwise I believe nothing would have changed despite the fact it is misleading and has been since about July last year (I think).

MarkyMarkD

It's been misleading a lot longer than that - from the point where any BT competitor offered different rates for 0870 than for genuine national numbers.