HMRC Self employed covid grany

JJC1956

Can you please give me a breakdown of the £1,000 bill that went to Virgin as you are such a clever Telecom whizz kid, er no I thought not, Virgin and other telecoms companies rent out the 09 and other numbers to companies, do you not realise that the scam is the cost of the calls to the telecoms companies that then pay a large % of the call to the companies that own these numbers, for argument sake Virgin doesn’t keep the £1,000 it charged the couple it pays a large % to the company that pays the rental fees and keeps the rest otherwise how would the scammers make any money, think about it, I’m not having a go at you i am just enlightening you to the facts.
PS In the Eighties when I worked for BT as an installation engineer, a scam took place to beat all scams, the numbers you are talking about were around then, an organised group of conmen rented loads of empty offices on short term leases then installed dozens of phones in these office, they then installed a load of high rate premium lines, betting tips, recorded sex lines etc, they then phoned their own premium lines 24 hours a day using their own phones in the empty offices, BT were so happy with the service that they told the conmen the would pay them monthly instead of quarterly, anyway after 3 months the conmen were paid their % of all these calls total £4.5 million, then BT sat back and waited for their money to roll in, which it obviously didn’t as the con couldn’t last more than 3 months, the only person that got nicked was the girlfriend of one of the conmen that worked for BT. 
Please note that for every telephone scam there has to be a telephone company supplying the lines, think about it.

sparklep0ny

JJC1956 said:

Can you please give me a breakdown of the £1,000 bill that went to Virgin as you are such a clever Telecom whizz kid, er no I thought not, Virgin and other telecoms companies rent out the 09 and other numbers to companies, do you not realise that the scam is the cost of the calls to the telecoms companies that then pay a large % of the call to the companies that own these numbers, for argument sake Virgin doesn’t keep the £1,000 it charged the couple it pays a large % to the company that pays the rental fees and keeps the rest otherwise how would the scammers make any money, think about it, I’m not having a go at you i am just enlightening you to the facts.
PS In the Eighties when I worked for BT as an installation engineer, a scam took place to beat all scams, the numbers you are talking about were around then, an organised group of conmen rented loads of empty offices on short term leases then installed dozens of phones in these office, they then installed a load of high rate premium lines, betting tips, recorded sex lines etc, they then phoned their own premium lines 24 hours a day using their own phones in the empty offices, BT were so happy with the service that they told the conmen the would pay them monthly instead of quarterly, anyway after 3 months the conmen were paid their % of all these calls total £4.5 million, then BT sat back and waited for their money to roll in, which it obviously didn’t as the con couldn’t last more than 3 months, the only person that got nicked was the girlfriend of one of the conmen that worked for BT. 
Please note that for every telephone scam there has to be a telephone company supplying the lines, think about it.

I'm not going to give you a breakdown of the call costs that go to Virgin, obviously.  Stop being silly.

I do know that very little money from 09 calls will go to them, it'll be being siphoned off by everyone further down the chain (including the one running the 09 number itself.)

I also don't particularly care about you being a BT Engineer (if you even were), it has nothing to do with telecoms billing.

And all this is irrelevant, Virgin are not complicit in this scam, end of story.  

Upsidedownandaround

JJC1956 said:

Can you please give me a breakdown of the £1,000 bill that went to Virgin as you are such a clever Telecom whizz kid, er no I thought not, Virgin and other telecoms companies rent out the 09 and other numbers to companies, do you not realise that the scam is the cost of the calls to the telecoms companies that then pay a large % of the call to the companies that own these numbers, for argument sake Virgin doesn’t keep the £1,000 it charged the couple it pays a large % to the company that pays the rental fees and keeps the rest otherwise how would the scammers make any money, think about it, I’m not having a go at you i am just enlightening you to the facts.
PS In the Eighties when I worked for BT as an installation engineer, a scam took place to beat all scams, the numbers you are talking about were around then, an organised group of conmen rented loads of empty offices on short term leases then installed dozens of phones in these office, they then installed a load of high rate premium lines, betting tips, recorded sex lines etc, they then phoned their own premium lines 24 hours a day using their own phones in the empty offices, BT were so happy with the service that they told the conmen the would pay them monthly instead of quarterly, anyway after 3 months the conmen were paid their % of all these calls total £4.5 million, then BT sat back and waited for their money to roll in, which it obviously didn’t as the con couldn’t last more than 3 months, the only person that got nicked was the girlfriend of one of the conmen that worked for BT. 
Please note that for every telephone scam there has to be a telephone company supplying the lines, think about it.

There is a difference between fraud and this. What you have described sounds like fraud. Advertising a premium rate number that will get you through to a company for a fee isn't fraud. It's a scheme to take advantage of the gullible who can't be bothered checking out who they are phoning.

In an ideal world it wouldn't happen but unfortunately it does.

I totally agree that caps should be placed on phone bills and premium numbers should be excluded if requested. In this case though I doubt they would be happy if Virgin had have cut off their number with no restrictions in place given they thought they were phoning HMRC repeatedly even though they were on hold for 25 minutes.

JJC1956

Upsidedownandaround said:

JJC1956 said:

Can you please give me a breakdown of the £1,000 bill that went to Virgin as you are such a clever Telecom whizz kid, er no I thought not, Virgin and other telecoms companies rent out the 09 and other numbers to companies, do you not realise that the scam is the cost of the calls to the telecoms companies that then pay a large % of the call to the companies that own these numbers, for argument sake Virgin doesn’t keep the £1,000 it charged the couple it pays a large % to the company that pays the rental fees and keeps the rest otherwise how would the scammers make any money, think about it, I’m not having a go at you i am just enlightening you to the facts.
PS In the Eighties when I worked for BT as an installation engineer, a scam took place to beat all scams, the numbers you are talking about were around then, an organised group of conmen rented loads of empty offices on short term leases then installed dozens of phones in these office, they then installed a load of high rate premium lines, betting tips, recorded sex lines etc, they then phoned their own premium lines 24 hours a day using their own phones in the empty offices, BT were so happy with the service that they told the conmen the would pay them monthly instead of quarterly, anyway after 3 months the conmen were paid their % of all these calls total £4.5 million, then BT sat back and waited for their money to roll in, which it obviously didn’t as the con couldn’t last more than 3 months, the only person that got nicked was the girlfriend of one of the conmen that worked for BT. 
Please note that for every telephone scam there has to be a telephone company supplying the lines, think about it.

There is a difference between fraud and this. What you have described sounds like fraud. Advertising a premium rate number that will get you through to a company for a fee isn't fraud. It's a scheme to take advantage of the gullible who can't be bothered checking out who they are phoning.

In an ideal world it wouldn't happen but unfortunately it does.

I totally agree that caps should be placed on phone bills and premium numbers should be excluded if requested. In this case though I doubt they would be happy if Virgin had have cut off their number with no restrictions in place given they thought they were phoning HMRC repeatedly even though they were on hold for 25 minutes.

Buying premium rate lines isn’t fraud, advertising a service that you can’t/do not offer is, if a company offers it’s services in a guise such as HMRC (or anything else for that matter) and then connects an unanswerable voice message to that line then it is fraud, as it is not offering the service that it is advertising. Hence the 30 min wait at a cost c£100 help with an issue that nobody is there to deal with your query. 

Upsidedownandaround

JJC1956 said:

Upsidedownandaround said:

JJC1956 said:

Can you please give me a breakdown of the £1,000 bill that went to Virgin as you are such a clever Telecom whizz kid, er no I thought not, Virgin and other telecoms companies rent out the 09 and other numbers to companies, do you not realise that the scam is the cost of the calls to the telecoms companies that then pay a large % of the call to the companies that own these numbers, for argument sake Virgin doesn’t keep the £1,000 it charged the couple it pays a large % to the company that pays the rental fees and keeps the rest otherwise how would the scammers make any money, think about it, I’m not having a go at you i am just enlightening you to the facts.
PS In the Eighties when I worked for BT as an installation engineer, a scam took place to beat all scams, the numbers you are talking about were around then, an organised group of conmen rented loads of empty offices on short term leases then installed dozens of phones in these office, they then installed a load of high rate premium lines, betting tips, recorded sex lines etc, they then phoned their own premium lines 24 hours a day using their own phones in the empty offices, BT were so happy with the service that they told the conmen the would pay them monthly instead of quarterly, anyway after 3 months the conmen were paid their % of all these calls total £4.5 million, then BT sat back and waited for their money to roll in, which it obviously didn’t as the con couldn’t last more than 3 months, the only person that got nicked was the girlfriend of one of the conmen that worked for BT. 
Please note that for every telephone scam there has to be a telephone company supplying the lines, think about it.

There is a difference between fraud and this. What you have described sounds like fraud. Advertising a premium rate number that will get you through to a company for a fee isn't fraud. It's a scheme to take advantage of the gullible who can't be bothered checking out who they are phoning.

In an ideal world it wouldn't happen but unfortunately it does.

I totally agree that caps should be placed on phone bills and premium numbers should be excluded if requested. In this case though I doubt they would be happy if Virgin had have cut off their number with no restrictions in place given they thought they were phoning HMRC repeatedly even though they were on hold for 25 minutes.

Buying premium rate lines isn’t fraud, advertising a service that you can’t/do not offer is, if a company offers it’s services in a guise such as HMRC (or anything else for that matter) and then connects an unanswerable voice message to that line then it is fraud, as it is not offering the service that it is advertising. Hence the 30 min wait at a cost c£100 help with an issue that nobody is there to deal with your query. 

They do offer the service though. They put you through to HMRC via their premium rate number whilst charging a premium rate for the call. Most people will not wait on hold for 30 minutes (or in this case near enough 3 hours) without checking whether they are on the right number. So they would rather connect people and have them dealing with HMRC whilst spending £3 a minute rather than having them on hold for this time with the opportunity to rectify their mistake.

MattMattMattUK

JJC1956 said:

Can you please give me a breakdown of the £1,000 bill that went to Virgin

Virgin's proportion of the revenue on an 09 phone number is 3p per minute.
The OP claims that the rate was £3.60 per minute and so £1,000 divided by £3.60 per minute is 278 minutes, or 4 hours 37 minutes. On that basis Virgin will have received £8.33 from that £1,000 phone bill, from which they will need to deduct their costs. 

JJC1956 said:

Virgin and other telecoms companies rent out the 09 and other numbers to companies

Virgin do not rent out any 09 phone numbers, other network operators etc. do.

JJC1956 said:

do you not realise that the scam is the cost of the calls to the telecoms companies that then pay a large % of the call to the companies that own these numbers, for argument sake Virgin doesn’t keep the £1,000 it charged the couple it pays a large % to the company that pays the rental fees and keeps the rest otherwise how would the scammers make any money, think about it

The revenue share is between the number provider and the operator, the revenue share is around 60% to the operator, and 40% to the provider of the number, subject to variations around minimum thresholds, sliding scales etc. 

JJC1956 said:

PS In the Eighties when I worked for BT as an installation engineer, a scam took place to beat all scams, the numbers you are talking about were around then, an organised group of conmen rented loads of empty offices on short term leases then installed dozens of phones in these office, they then installed a load of high rate premium lines, betting tips, recorded sex lines etc, they then phoned their own premium lines 24 hours a day using their own phones in the empty offices, BT were so happy with the service that they told the conmen the would pay them monthly instead of quarterly, anyway after 3 months the conmen were paid their % of all these calls total £4.5 million, then BT sat back and waited for their money to roll in, which it obviously didn’t as the con couldn’t last more than 3 months, the only person that got nicked was the girlfriend of one of the conmen that worked for BT. 
Please note that for every telephone scam there has to be a telephone company supplying the lines, think about it.

For every scam there are suckers, whether those suckers are another business or a consumer. There are many dishonest, but entirely legal ways to obtain money from people, they almost entirely rely in the person providing the money not paying attention to what they are doing.

JJC1956

MattMattMattUK said:

JJC1956 said:

Can you please give me a breakdown of the £1,000 bill that went to Virgin

Virgin's proportion of the revenue on an 09 phone number is 3p per minute.
The OP claims that the rate was £3.60 per minute and so £1,000 divided by £3.60 per minute is 278 minutes, or 4 hours 37 minutes. On that basis Virgin will have received £8.33 from that £1,000 phone bill, from which they will need to deduct their costs. 

JJC1956 said:

Virgin and other telecoms companies rent out the 09 and other numbers to companies

Virgin do not rent out any 09 phone numbers, other network operators etc. do.

JJC1956 said:

do you not realise that the scam is the cost of the calls to the telecoms companies that then pay a large % of the call to the companies that own these numbers, for argument sake Virgin doesn’t keep the £1,000 it charged the couple it pays a large % to the company that pays the rental fees and keeps the rest otherwise how would the scammers make any money, think about it

The revenue share is between the number provider and the operator, the revenue share is around 60% to the operator, and 40% to the provider of the number, subject to variations around minimum thresholds, sliding scales etc. 

JJC1956 said:

PS In the Eighties when I worked for BT as an installation engineer, a scam took place to beat all scams, the numbers you are talking about were around then, an organised group of conmen rented loads of empty offices on short term leases then installed dozens of phones in these office, they then installed a load of high rate premium lines, betting tips, recorded sex lines etc, they then phoned their own premium lines 24 hours a day using their own phones in the empty offices, BT were so happy with the service that they told the conmen the would pay them monthly instead of quarterly, anyway after 3 months the conmen were paid their % of all these calls total £4.5 million, then BT sat back and waited for their money to roll in, which it obviously didn’t as the con couldn’t last more than 3 months, the only person that got nicked was the girlfriend of one of the conmen that worked for BT. 
Please note that for every telephone scam there has to be a telephone company supplying the lines, think about it.

For every scam there are suckers, whether those suckers are another business or a consumer. There are many dishonest, but entirely legal ways to obtain money from people, they almost entirely rely in the person providing the money not paying attention to what they are doing.

So why is the OP paying back £192 per month to Virgin? 

MattMattMattUK

JJC1956 said:

MattMattMattUK said:

JJC1956 said:

Can you please give me a breakdown of the £1,000 bill that went to Virgin

Virgin's proportion of the revenue on an 09 phone number is 3p per minute.
The OP claims that the rate was £3.60 per minute and so £1,000 divided by £3.60 per minute is 278 minutes, or 4 hours 37 minutes. On that basis Virgin will have received £8.33 from that £1,000 phone bill, from which they will need to deduct their costs. 

JJC1956 said:

Virgin and other telecoms companies rent out the 09 and other numbers to companies

Virgin do not rent out any 09 phone numbers, other network operators etc. do.

JJC1956 said:

do you not realise that the scam is the cost of the calls to the telecoms companies that then pay a large % of the call to the companies that own these numbers, for argument sake Virgin doesn’t keep the £1,000 it charged the couple it pays a large % to the company that pays the rental fees and keeps the rest otherwise how would the scammers make any money, think about it

The revenue share is between the number provider and the operator, the revenue share is around 60% to the operator, and 40% to the provider of the number, subject to variations around minimum thresholds, sliding scales etc. 

JJC1956 said:

PS In the Eighties when I worked for BT as an installation engineer, a scam took place to beat all scams, the numbers you are talking about were around then, an organised group of conmen rented loads of empty offices on short term leases then installed dozens of phones in these office, they then installed a load of high rate premium lines, betting tips, recorded sex lines etc, they then phoned their own premium lines 24 hours a day using their own phones in the empty offices, BT were so happy with the service that they told the conmen the would pay them monthly instead of quarterly, anyway after 3 months the conmen were paid their % of all these calls total £4.5 million, then BT sat back and waited for their money to roll in, which it obviously didn’t as the con couldn’t last more than 3 months, the only person that got nicked was the girlfriend of one of the conmen that worked for BT. 
Please note that for every telephone scam there has to be a telephone company supplying the lines, think about it.

For every scam there are suckers, whether those suckers are another business or a consumer. There are many dishonest, but entirely legal ways to obtain money from people, they almost entirely rely in the person providing the money not paying attention to what they are doing.

So why is the OP paying back £192 per month to Virgin? 

I would imagine the monthly bill, plus a percentage of the outstanding debt, to clear it over time. Virgin will have already passed the money to the number provider, as they are required to under the Ofcom rules and will need to recoup that cost. 

unholyangel

I would say the closest comparison is with companies who offer to apply to renew your licence/VED/passport. 

The law appears to think that kind of behaviour isn't just morally wrong but is criminal and many council/local TS websites classify the above as "scams". 
And this article seems to suggest that it would breach googles rules with the following exerpt: 

Our investigation prompted Google to remove the sponsored ad, with the tech giant saying it breached its rules on selling products or services that are available from the Government at a lower price, unless there was a clear added value.

So firms like we queue for you are probably okay, as they're providing additional service and don't pretend at any point to be HMRC/DVLA/Whoever (in fact, they punt their own "brand" at every opportunity they get). But imo unless they make it clear they are a different entity or make clear that it's premium rate, they're highly likely to fall foul of the law. The consumer protection regulations apply to acts as well as omissions with material information (being information likely to influence the consumers decision) including both price & identity of the trader. 

Upsidedownandaround

There is a  difference with a premium phone number. The website may make it completely clear it is a premium number or not an HMRC website but the person who hits the first number popping up on a search engine or clicks the first number when they go on to the page probably may not be bothering to look at the website.

Renew your licence etc websites a person will be using the website and reading the website so it should be made obvious to them and in most cases it isn't.