http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2007/dec/01/consumeraffairs.moneysupplementHotline burns a hole in your pocketPhone charges: After losing your records, HM Revenue and Customs is piling on the agony by charging for a costly 0845 number if you call. Richard Colbey and Rupert Jones report
Richard Colby and Rupert Jones
The Guardian Saturday December 1 2007 <<
First, HM Revenue & Customs loses the personal records of 25 million people, including dates of birth and bank account details. Now it is adding insult to injury by inviting them to ring a pricey 0845 number if they want to discuss their worries.
Letters of apology from the taxman have been dropping through millions of letterboxes over the past few days. They carry details of the official advice line that people should ring if they experience any problems: 0845 302 1444.
But what the letter omits to mention is that calls to this number will cost up to 40p a minute from a mobile phone. Furthermore, by only making an 0845 number available, the Revenue appears to be flouting guidelines from another government department which is trying to encourage take-up of cheaper "03" numbers.
The Revenue says it is "not making a penny" from calls to its helpline ... but somebody is.
The taxman is certainly not alone in using a number with an 08 prefix - they are everywhere, with official bodies, charities and companies routinely using them for helplines and order lines. 0845, like those beginning 0844, 0870 and 0871, are "premium rate" to the extent that the caller pays a premium over the usual charge.
0871 and 0870 numbers tend to be the most expensive, and big-name companies and organisations that use these include Barclaycard, the National Trust, electrical retailer Comet and Vodafone.
When you ring one of these numbers, you can often find yourself on hold for a long time, so it is no surprise to discover that in 2003, calls to numbers with an 08 prefix cost UK consumers £850m. And the saynoto0870.com website points out that if you have an "inclusive landline calls" phone package it is very rare that 0844, 0845, 0870 or 0871 numbers are included in your "free minutes" allocation, unlike normal numbers.
Ringing the Revenue & Customs line might not cost too much from a landline - BT charges 2p a minute during the day, plus a 6p per call fee - but it is a different story if you use your mobile. T-Mobile and Vodafone charge their pay-as-you-go customers up to 40p and 30p a minute respectively, though the network 3 "only" charges 12p a minute.
A Revenue & Customs spokesman says: "Our current policy is to operate all our customer-facing helplines using an 0845 prefix, as the department believes this strikes the right balance of cost between the customer and the public purse. HMRC pays to subsidise the cost of calls through this arrangement."
He adds that the department also favours 0845 numbers because they can be routed anywhere in the UK. "This allows us to route calls to the contact centre best able to handle them at the time of each respective call," says the spokesman, who adds that Revenue & Customs does not share revenue from calls with telecoms suppliers "or make any money whatsoever from using 0845 numbers". The taxman may not be making any money, but the telecoms companies are.
Industry regulator Ofcom says it does not have the power to dictate what numbers government departments use. However, it points out that the Central Office of Information, another government department, has issued guidelines to public sector bodies which state that if they are going to offer an 08 number of any type, they should also be offering a standard number (beginning with 01 or 02) as well, and that ideally, they should really be considering one of the new 03 numbers.
Calls to 03 numbers cost the same or less than calls to 01 and 02 numbers, and, needless to say, they are cheaper than calling 0845. They have been introduced by Ofcom as an alternative for official bodies and other organisations that consumers can have confidence in. Ofcom itself now uses 03 numbers, as does the RSPCA and the Ministry of Defence - so maybe it is time for the Revenue to switch over, too.
While the row about the Revenue data bungle rumbles on, Bangladesh has been the object of the world's pity this week as it deals with the cyclone that killed thousands of people.
UK charities are playing their part in helping the millions affected, but some people will be surprised at the decision by Oxfam to use an 0870 number (0870 333 2500) for its donation phone line. The charity acknowledges that it generates "a very small income" from the calls - typically 0.65p a minute, "but only once we have exceeded a threshold". A spokesman says a major benefit of Oxfam using a "non-geographic" number is that calls can be routed anywhere, and he adds: "We are in the process of sourcing a set of 03 numbers which we will be moving to." The Disasters Emergency Committee's Bangladesh cyclone appeal also uses an 0870 number.
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