118866 rip off

bunking_off

April2 wrote:

Undoubtedly, the 'fat fingers' aspect causes some of these misdials but, as mentioned in THIS THREAD, noise on the line being interpreted as an additional digit '1' at the start of the call may well result in just as many.

A dialler would not prevent that.

Hmm.... I'll check with our techies about this on Monday.

There are two systems for dialling numbers in the UK, loop disconnect (aka "pulse dialling") and DTMF (aka "tone dialling").

The latter is what the vast majority of handsets use nowadays - different tone frequency for each number (actually, I believe it's two frequencies mixed together). However, BT maintain loop disconnect (e.g. 2 clicks for a "2" dialled etc) for compatibility reasons.

I'd always assumed that once the exchange had detected you dialling e.g. "1" in DTMF, it locked into that mode, because it wouldn't expect your handset to suddenly become an old style one, and vice versa. If it doesn't, that strikes me as a fundamental design fault. That would mean that it wouldn't be possible to have a DTMF 1, then a click on the line generate another one, then have a DFMF 8 to allow 18... be interpreted 118...

I may be wrong - hence my checking with people who will know.

If I am right, what's far more likely to be happening is that the tone on the initial "1" is too long and is being interpreted as two 1s.

Incidentally, from the other thread, the increase in calls to 999 by the parallel 112 number is less to do with the effect of clicking lines, and more related to erroneous calls from mobiles, particularly since 112 over-rides the key guard/lock.

researcher

I use different providers for certain types of calls and have all the access codes programmed into the phone memory. I just press a particular button and dial the telephone number. Over the years I haven't had any problems at all, never anything with 18866, who I use frequently for international calls to mobiles. Have I just been lucky?

April2

bunking_off wrote:

The latter is what the vast majority of handsets use nowadays - different tone frequency for each number (actually, I believe it's two frequencies mixed together).

Yes, DTMF = "Dual Tone Multi Frequency".

bunking_off

April2 wrote:

Yes, DTMF = "Dual Tone Multi Frequency".

(yes, I did know, it's just that I've been chastised in the past for getting too technical on these boards....)

bbb_uk

researcher wrote:

...Have I just been lucky?

If you're referring to the possibility of an extra "1" being sent along the line because of noise, etc on the line then no. I've never heard of problems with noise, etc being mis-interpreted as another number but I'm guesssing its possible.

If you're referring to the possibility of dialling an extra "1" when dialling the indirect access code of (1)18866 then I'd still say no but only due to the fact that you have 18866 programmed into your phone which you press before dialling your required number.

Obviously, it is more likely to happen if manually dialling 18866 before your required number and it still is possible (but less likely) if you have 18866 programmed into your phone like you do.

In my opinion, as the fault is human-error (ie. mis-dialling) then neither company can be blamed but I do still think the DQ service operated on 118866, because of the excessive price of the call, is suspicious and they could well be trying to cash-in on peoples misfortunes otherwise why, for a normal DQ service, would you charge a £1.50 connection charge which obviously isn't at all competitive compared to the average cost of 50p? Especially if you remember that since it was taken over after January 2004 by RingTrue Solutions (I think thats who owns it now) it then increased the connection charge by £1.

bunking_off

I'm guessing that if there is a genuine issue with e.g. an Orchid dialler, the only way that line noise could be a factor is if the "1" tone sent by the dialler is relatively long, and line noise causes a "click" in the middle of it, causing it to be interpreted as two 1s. As such, it's a subtle difference, but the click itself wouldn't be interpreted as a 1, but it'd break the 1 send by the dialler, causing it to be interpreted as two 1s.

However, I'd say that there's minimal chance of that really happening. If such an occurence were to happen, then it has an equal probability of happening within any digit, so e.g. for an 11 digit UK call (plus the 18866), there's only a 16-1 chance of it breaking the 1st "1". Given the poster raising the issue didn't mention getting other incorrectly routed calls (which would have happened 15 times as often), I honestly can't believe that this is the case, unless there's some freak line condition that causes a click at a precise time after the phone goes off-hook.

Still, never say never. 56 million people in the country, a million to one chance occurence happened to 56 people this week....

andy88_2

My computer has dialled 18866 about 1000 times, and although the connection fails about 2% of the time (which isn't necessarily their fault - I think only about 2 were), I've never seen 118866 on the phone bill.

derrick

bunking_off wrote:

Incidentally, from the other thread, the increase in calls to 999 by the parallel 112 number is less to do with the effect of clicking lines, and more related to erroneous calls from mobiles, particularly since 112 over-rides the key guard/lock.

So does 999

johnthomas_2

I know i posted this earlier in a different thread, but just in case anyone missed it. I have set my dialler to carrier code 14118866, now the even if the dialler or the exchange add an extra 1 the number dialled will be 114118866 and the call wont connect, no charge from those good people at 118866 (cashing in on the 18866 mis-dials), and cheap calls everytime i use 18866. No more fat fingers costing me money!!!

the_devil_made_me_do_it

The good people at Orchid, set up my dialler for me today, as windows XP dosen't work well with their CW client. I said to them, I was abit worried about this 118866 thing, and they suggested that they programme my dialler with 141 18866 instead, this way, if there was any prroblems, the call wouldn't get routed instead of risking connection to 118866. I'll see how it goes, before I deceide whether to risk it without programming it as 141 18866.
Anyone else doing it this way??