London Bombings - Profit oppertunity from the misery of others

IvanOpinion

CrazyChemist wrote:

At least bbb_uk has the guts to do something like this and stand above the crowd.

bbb_uk has put forward some interesting discussion (which is what these boards are about) and infact says

bbb_uk wrote:

It would appear that due to the governments current thinking of always using 0870 numbers (for obvious reasons) then companies have actually made a huge profit from all this.

This was something I was hinting at in earlier postings ... maybe it was purely government policy that meant an 0870 number HAD to be used. A decision taken prior to such attrocities which with 20:20 hindsight was a BAD decision. The Civil Service is there to enact government policy not unilaterally change it (even if it is wrong).

CrazyChemist wrote:

Is there something wrong with asking a multi-billion pound company to donate money (a few pence in their terms) to charity??

Depends on the context. In this case no, I have already said that I believe any additional profits should be donated to a victims fund. However in the more general context of the question then NOBODY should be forced to donate to charity if they do not wish to.



My other concern was that people were publishing private email addresses for senior police officers and officials with the request that they be 'flooded' with complaints. Hopefully the police have good spam and junk mail filters that throw anything with the phrase '0870' straight in the bin ... because I would prefer their time to be sent dealing with the atrocity NOT with dealing with complaints. I don't care about people bombarding Telecomms companies with emails ... but don't waste police time.

CrazyChemist wrote:

You seem to be one of the many empty-headed average people who is obviously easily swayed by idiots like IvanOpinion who are uninformed about the true facts here.

If I may quote my 3-year old niece who has the correct mental age to deal with this sort of statement 'sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me' - actually DW has just stuck her head round the door to find out what/who I am laughing at.

The only 'fact' I am interested in is the fact that innocent men, women and children lost their lives to pure evil ... everything else fades into irrelevance. Please tell me if this 'fact' is empty-headed or 'uninformed'.

Ivan

Former_MSE_Abuse_Controller

Let me be clear on this.

There is a fascinating and thought provoking thread here and some very intelligent points being made. There is also a lot of personal remarks and one upmanship. As far as i am concerned, people respect opinions a lot more if posters use proven/hard facts to counter an arguement; rarely are they (or I) impressed when a counter arguement is simply an abusive personal remark. Therefore, I must ask that we remove the petty undercurrent of this thread and allow this fascinating topic to return to intellectual conversation and arguement.

bbb_uk

burbs wrote:

...And you are not doing exactly this with your useless and completly pointless fight against the phone companies who (shock horror) set up a phone number that you actually have to pay for....

In my opinion, it wasn't the fact that it was a chargable call the government (not the telephone companies as you mention) have chosen. The fact being the government could have chose a lot less cost number (not necessary a freephone helpline) but a normal geographical or even a 0844/0845. They in fact chose the second highest priced numbers (not including premium rate) and these rates as mentioned elsewhere were charged at upto 4/5 times as much (around 40ppm) as a normal geographical call and therefore companies actually profited from this shameful use of such a number and profited a huge amount as well as the government gained revenue from the use of this number.

My view point is that at time of such tragedy no-one (or company) should profit from the misfortunes of others.

Anyway, so as not to repeat myself again my concern was that companies/government profited from this tragic bombing by the governments use of such a number (which has become popular use since Labour came to power) that is why I have emailed the networks and asked if they would consider donating the profits they made (some profits were 4/5 times as much) and in-keeping with this, I have had a reply back from o2 as below:-
I've just got a reply from Richard Poston from o2 concerning possible donation of profit made:-

Thank you for your email to Peter Erskine which has been passed to me.

We at O2 obviously recognise the enormity of the events of last Thursday in London and much effort was put into ensuring that all our employees were accounted for and that they were kept updated during the day as the tragedy unfolded in order that they could ascertain whether friends/family were safe, at the same time providing them with information on alternative means of transport and accommodation should they have been unable to return home that evening.

In addition to immediately accounting for our employees the following actions were undertaken:

>> Working extremely closely with the Emergency Services, we ensured that the O2 network was upheld and to this end we doubled the capacity of the network in the relevant areas. We also responded to the request to restrict access, in certain areas, to high priority emergency service personnel only.

>> O2 Airwave rapidly deployed services into the underground to enable the British Transport Police and Metropolitan Police to communicate in the tube tunnels. (For your information see The Guardian 14 July 2005)

Immediately following the events of Thursday 7 July, on behalf of The O2, a £100k donation was made on Friday morning to the London Bombings Relief Fund set up by the Evening Standard and Ken Livingstone. (For your information see the Evening Standard 13 July 2005).

At the request of the police, in the early hours of Saturday morning O2 donated and delivered 50 phones and unlimited free call time (and international access) to the Bereavement Centre set up by the London Resilience Team and Westminster Council.

We also enhanced the coverage and capacity of the network to meet the increased demand in the area near the bereavement centre to ensure good mobile coverage, all at a cost to the Company of some £20,000.

A specific customer care support line was also set up to assist.

As you can see from the brief overview above, we take our responsibility towards our employees, customers and those communities we serve extremely seriously

Calls to the 0870 helpline number, which was set up by the police, were charged at a customer’s normal voice call charge (charges will, of course, vary according to what plan and bundle each individual is on). Our customers are not charged on a premium rate basis by O2 therefore the consequences of us donating the profits made from people ringing the London Bombing Helpline would be insignificant in comparison to the donations already made by O2 and the facilities put in place mentioned above.

We are very mindful of our obligations to the communities which we serve, not least when a disaster of this magnitude occurs.

I believe that we responded appropriately with speed and genuine conviction and that we have done far more than what would have been achieved by donating the small revenue generated from the helpline calls in the way you suggest.

I do hope that this explains the viewpoint of O2 and if I can be of any further assistance please do not hesitate to come back to me.

Regards

Richard Poston
Director, Corporate Affairs

To date, I still haven't had a reply from vodafone or Orange and I shall post here if and when I do.

bbb_uk

IvanOpinion wrote:

.... maybe it was purely government policy that meant an 0870 number HAD to be used. A decision taken prior to such attrocities which with 20:20 hindsight was a BAD decision. The Civil Service is there to enact government policy not unilaterally change it (even if it is wrong).

Thank you, this is what I'm trying to get through and more importingly at time of such a tragedy no one (or company) should profit from the misfortunes of others which is what has happened from the use of this number. This isnt the first time they used a revenue generating number as the train crash also had one (if I remember correctly) and most government departments now use 0870 and on top of that a while ago nearly 300 GP surgeries switched to 0870 but the health secretary (due to public demand) banned the use of such high cost 0870 numbers because anyone ill shouldn't have to ring such high cost numbers which I believe is very ironic as the health minister says something like that when the home office, etc all use 0870 revenue-generating numbers. To make matters worse the government comes along and uses (not for the first or last time) an 0870 number at such tragic times.

I also agree Ivan in that it probably is standard policy now to use 0870 so therefore any other number just didn't come into consideration at all.

burbs_2

Can i just say that from the email that was received from O2, i did not actually realise how much they gave and what they actually did. I think they deserve a bit of praise for all that they did.

bbb_uk

burbs wrote:

Can i just say that from the email that was received from O2, i did not actually realise how much they gave and what they actually did. I think they deserve a bit of praise for all that they did.

I agree with that.

I have also just received a reply from Orange and they also state they have donated £100k as well. I'm not going to quote their reply as it would be too long for this forum and didn't contain anything different or new (just that they were shocked and ensured that their staff were safe, etc).

I've yet to receive a reply from Vodafone though the email I sent to Arun Sarin has been received and read.

Gingham_Ribbon

I got this email through recently and I thought it was a very good idea:

This seems like a sensible idea, and if everyone uses the same format, I guess it saves time in an emergency. Whatever that emergency is.

"Following the disaster in London . . .

East Anglian Ambulance Service have launched a national "In case of Emergency ( ICE ) " campaign with the support of Falklands war hero Simon Weston.

The idea is that you store the word " I C E " in your mobile phone address book, and against it enter the number of the person you would want to be contacted "In Case of Emergency".

In an emergency situation ambulance and hospital staff will then be able to quickly find out who your next of kin are and be able to contact them. It's so simple that everyone can do it. Please do.

Please will you also email this to everybody in your address book, it won't take too many 'forwards' before everybody will know about this. It really could save your life, or put a loved one's mind at rest.

For more than one contact name ICE1, ICE2, ICE3 etc."

I know it's not directly linked to the immediate discussion but it does seem appropriate.

IvanOpinion

Gingham
There is a thread in DT discussing ICE at the minute - some additional informaiton in there that may be of use.

Ivan

Gingham_Ribbon

Thanks Ivan! I'll try to work out what DT is and check it out! Still finding my way around!

aliasojo

Lol...it's Discussion Time.

See here: http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=70883