118500 call for 3 seconds charged £4.18 Big Ripoff

truthman007

Another ripoff by BT or whoever owner of this number. Somehow accidentally this number was called and got charged £4.10 for three seconds.

mije1983

A rip off yes, a scam no.

All directory enquiries numbers have gone this way unfortunately. Not exclusive to BT at all. You can thank Oftel for that one!

Sometimes more competition isn't a good thing for a consumer. Live football another example of more competition = more cost to us.

Interesting how you dialled a 6 digit number accidentally though. Maybe worth checking someone hasn't saved it to a speed dial on your phone.


P.S. You are lucky it was only £4.10/4.18 as their site says

£2.75 per call plus £2.75 per minute (a minimum 60 second charge applies) inc VAT, plus your telephone service provider’s Access Charge

So should have been at least £5.50 by my calculation. Every cloud and all that!

DoaM

Why was I not surprised to see who had started this thread?

peter_the_piper

Good job you only went to BT and not 118118, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/118_118_(UK) £8.98 number and £4.49/minute.

tykesi

DoaM wrote: »

Why was I not surprised to see who had started this thread?

Stupid is as stupid does.

JJG

Remember when directory enquiries only cost 40p. But because BT had a monopoly they opened it up to everyone to generate competition. Thank god they destroyed that monopoly.

IAmWales

How does someone "accidentally" dial 118500? 999 or 111 I could understand, but it's not likely you'd lean on your phone (or fall to sleep with it in your hand!) and randomly dial that number.

teddysmum

IAmWales wrote: »

How does someone "accidentally" dial 118500? 999 or 111 I could understand, but it's not likely you'd lean on your phone (or fall to sleep with it in your hand!) and randomly dial that number.

Some dogs are very good at it. I had a friend whose cocker spaniel knocked the phone to the floor, stood on it and ended up calling a very surprised stranger.

DCFC79

IAmWales wrote: »

How does someone "accidentally" dial 118500? 999 or 111 I could understand, but it's not likely you'd lean on your phone (or fall to sleep with it in your hand!) and randomly dial that number.

This is the OP we are talking about here.

How anyone can call that number by accident is beyond me.

OP have you considered locking the phone, this is of course if the number was accident dialled on a mobile phone.

colcheslad

0800 118 3733 - free directory enquiries - just need to listen to an advert. Although I can't remember the last time I needed it, I just Google everything now! :money:

Pound

A weird thing happened to me before, I called a number for a company which was supposedly reputable but instead of reaching them got a recorded message telling me the number I'd called was unavailable I needed to call another number. That number started 118, then the recording explained if I called that, they could give me another number.

Then there was a period of silence followed by a different voice, hard to understand, spoke quickly but I did catch that the charge for calling that number was £10 a minute and it took quite a while before the call charge was explained.

That was a 118 scam if there ever was one.