118866 rip off

the_devil_made_me_do_it

Kinda makes sense yes, but I can't check, cause i can't access my routing table.

Edinburghlass_2

terryrichards wrote:

I think that we should all complain about this one, and/or get Martin involved to have a bit of a Rant about this one. Anything I can do?

Not quite sure what you want us to complain about, misdialing a number?

I did it once and the resultant bill was enough to make sure it wasn't done again.

andy88_2

terryrichards wrote:

I think that we should all complain about this one, and/or get Martin involved to have a bit of a Rant about this one. Anything I can do?

Sorry, but I can't join in as I have no complaint about something that has not happened to me in about 1000 uses of 18866. Maybe the computer is better at dialling than the finger.

As someone has already said, the directory service in question seems to have had this number for longer, and invested in marketing it, and is not intending to abuse or deceive other companies customers, so it is difficult to understand the grounds or form of any complaint.

bbb_uk

andy88 wrote:

..As someone has already said, the directory service in question seems to have had this number for longer, and invested in marketing it, and is not intending to abuse or deceive other companies customers, so it is difficult to understand the grounds or form of any complaint.

I personally don't think either company are to be blamed and you are right the DQ did have that number before Call18866. It would appear though that since it was taken over sometime after January 2004 by RingTrue Solutions, they then appear to have increased the charges from I think it was 50p connection charge to a now whopping connection fee of £1.50 with 30ppm thereafter. Now just how long would a DQ service (eg the familar 118 118) stay in business if they charged that amount if most other DQ services charge the average of about 50ppm connection charge, and x pence per minute thereafter.

The DQ service could be innocent in all this but it just seems, at least to me, that how a legitimate DQ service could survive at all charging £1.50 connection charge unless it offered other services that most other DQ service providers don't offer and hence the very high cost connection charge for these 'additional' so-called services.

CrazyChemist_2

bbb_uk wrote:

Oh does the 121 over ride, only work on the particular telephone call you are making at that time??

Yes.

What's this 121 override for?

the_devil_made_me_do_it

Oh it's incase I don't want to route calls via 18866 or 1899. Mine dialler ect has gone abit bums up, till I can contact Orchid on Monday.

bunking_off

bbb_uk wrote:

The DQ service could be innocent in all this but it just seems, at least to me, that how a legitimate DQ service could survive at all charging £1.50 connection charge unless it offered other services that most other DQ service providers don't offer and hence the very high cost connection charge for these 'additional' so-called services.

You're probably right bbb_uk (and I wish I'd thought of this first!), but can you prove anything? Fact is, the company are providing a DQ service, and within the permissible tariff structure : as such there is nothing that ICSTIS or Ofcom can do about it.

Returning to the Orchid dialler situation, I can't honestly see that prefixing 141 is going to make any difference either way (*). If noise on the line is causing an additional 1 to be inserted, then it's just as likely to turn 14118866 into 141118866 as it is 18866 into 118866. As someone said, there's only been one isolated situation been reported here where an Orchid dialler has behaved like this - as opposed to human error - chances are that was down to a dodgy unit.

(*) There are only 2 circumstances that I can see it would help.
a) if there's a click on the line consistently say 1 second after off hook, so it always puts a 1 in after the second digit - unlikely, or
b) if the 141 prefix doesn't work before 118 DQ services - I honestly don't know if that's the case or not, but I think it should.

bbb_uk

Bunking_off,

No, I can't prove it and never said I could just that it seems a bit suspect to me. I wouldn't be surprised if the DQ service in question is just routed to a generic DQ service so it doesn't cost 118866 anything to keep running but they are gaining from misdials. Either way, like you said, there is nothing that can be done unless it could be proved that DQ118866 is only operating to gain revenue from misdials which would be all but impossible as DQ118866 can charge what they like within the guidelines of ICSTIS/OfCOM.

As for the extra '1' being dialled I still think its a fault for BT to investigate or a re-wire of the internal telephone extensions within the house, or even an intermittent dialler problem.

As it is dialling an extra '1', is it not possible that it would dial 1 141 18866 instead of 141 1 18866 and thus the call would fail?

andy88_2

Let's guess there are 50,000 18866 customers, and 10% of them have misdialled 118866 twice - that's about £10,000, which is rather a low amount in probable turnover by a company that has any employees at all.

I wouldn't invest in a company on the basis of assumed misdialling being the centre of the business plan, and I'd be surprised if anybody else did.

bbb_uk

andy88 wrote:

I wouldn't invest in a company on the basis of assumed misdialling being the centre of the business plan, and I'd be surprised if anybody else did.

April2 provided me with a link that listed DQ operators and RingTrue solutions (who own 118866) showed up more than once. It is possible that the call centre used by 118866 is just transferred to their other DQ service (or something similar). Therefore except for possibly paying license fees (assuming they have to) for operating a DQ service the 118866 in theory wouldnt cost that much to run but the return benefits could be lucrative to say the least.

It falls back to if they are a legit company and have/had no intentions on cashing-in on our mistakes then how can they make money charging £1.50 connection charge when they are a load more other DQ services charging a lot less?

It makes sense that the consumer given a choice between dialling a 50p connection charge DQ operator (which they advertise) or ringing a £1.50 DQ service which as far as i'm aware don't advertise or anything.

As mentioned before, I've no proof of this nor claim that its true but I simply state it is possible they may be cashing-in on our mistakes and some of the things would seem to indicate this.