Reverse Call Charges Rip Off?!?!?!

maninwhitecoat

So i came back from sweden after 6 months, and i didn't have any english money on me. I needed to make a phone call home to let my parents i was going to be on time at the train station to be picked up.

I used teh reverse call charging from the BT payphone.

My parents got the bill today and for a 29 second call, it cost £5.890!!!

There is all this talk about bank charges being not representative of the administrative work, but for a call thats less than a minute but costs more than half of my train fare back from stanstead to manchester, can they charge so much?!?!

BexTech

Did you dial 100 and ask to reverse the charges or use the non-BT service - 0800 Reverse?

kez1234

same here son called home and 2 minute call a little over £10.00!!!

maninwhitecoat

BexTech wrote: »

Did you dial 100 and ask to reverse the charges or use the non-BT service - 0800 Reverse?

No, it was the BT one that was on the phonebox itself.

They didn't have the charge prices on the phone, if they did, I would've just asked to borrow someone's phone and paid them for the cost!

briarfield

My son has been in Austrailia, he made reverse call charges in an emergency situation. My bill has arrived and for 6 Calls totaling 18 minutes call time the charge is £390.00. there is no warning of call charges before accepting the call and although i expected it to be more expensive I did not imagine that it would cost £54.00 just to connect the call. I have complained to BT and to Ofcom but so far no satisfactory response. My mum also received one call lasting 10 minutes and has been billed £280.00 for that one call again no warning of the cost. How can this be allowed and who would be responsible for setting these costs??

GillyFlower

I too have had the shock of reverse call charges. Our son was in an accident and did not know what happened to his mobile phone. He called us and reversed the charges - had not used a phone box for years - dialled 100 and asked for operator.

We accepted the calls and now had the shock -

13.13 mins cost £55.43 (He was 13 miles away from us - would have been cheaper to say we will get in car and drive to talk to you.)

.38 min cost £5.94.

I complained as I asked BT to justify the cost. I was sent around in circles and basically told that was it. I said that operator is surely working at the same cost as a solicitor or more.

Anyway my e-mail got this response -

Thank you for your email dated 17/09/10 regarding the charge on your bill.

I am sorry that you are unhappy with the reverse call charge on your bill. This other operator calls are also called as Reverse call. Let me explain how the operator call works out and you will be able to sort out in future whether the call is chargeable and if so how.

Example: If a person wants to speak to you then rings the operator, then operator rings you to connect the call. Once you have accepted the call, an automated message will tell you that the charge for this call will appear on your bill. These calls are charged in premium rate numbers. In future you can avoid these call charges by not accepting these calls.

I understand that it was your son’s call; however it is an operator call which is very expensive. They do no advice about the charge at first instance. If you wish to enquire about he charge I would request you to contact 0845 077 9000 (09:00 - 17:30, Monday - Friday). However, the charges will be maintained.

I apologise for the inconvenience caused to you and thank you for your co-operation in this matter.

Thank you for contacting BT.

My thoughts are -

1. The e-mail doesn't really make sense and it admits you will not know about cost of call unless you phone first. So I suppose you say 'No! Will not take call and will need to phone another number first and then hope son rings again.
2. Has anyone else been able to find out how these costs are justified?

Keith

GillyFlower wrote: »

Has anyone else been able to find out how these costs are justified?

Business operates to make money.

They offered a service and you took it.

Mark_In_Hampshire

Keith wrote: »

Business operates to make money.

They offered a service and you took it.

I build your website for you. You call me and ask for a few simple changes to be made which take me half an hour. You do not ask for a price in advance, and so I do not supply one.

I send you a bill for 30 minutes work for £15,000 payable within ten days.

Is that reasonable?

Keith

I'd not accept your service until I knew how much the charge would be.

Heinz

The difference is BT's charges are published online (if very difficult to find).

GillyFlower

Certainly one way of making sure I do not do business with them again.

Yes - I had a choice which was to refuse the call. Because of the urgency and not having used the service before I went ahead and accepted the charge to be reasonable. But you may say what is reasonable?

I don't know anymore I must be completely out of touch if a Website Designer could try asking £15k for 30 mins.

Anyway they say you are never too old to learn.

P.S. The english language in the e-mail response annoyed me as well especially as I was paying such a high price from this company.