A couple of days ago I provided the geographic phone numbers for BBC Information and BBC Reception Advice in Belfast.  These are 0870 numbers called by thousands of customers a day and listed in a large box advertisement in every uk BT phone book.  They have personally cost me a lot of money over the years to call.

But now I find that although they remain in the Unverified list someone on the forum moderator side has amended the names of these entries from BBC Information and BBC Reception Advice to just BBC and BBC.  This even though the numbers still allegedly remain unverified??!

Why has this been done.  There are many different parts of the BBC and many different telephone numbers to call but it is no use to anyone trying to find the right number if they just all say BBC!  They need to say BBC Radio London, BBC Enterprises,  BBC Information,  BBC Reception Advice so that we can find the one we are after.

So who exactly is it on the forum moderator side who thinks they are being helpful by cutting all these entry names back to just BBC and yet still leaving them in the Unverified list.

Some answers please.  What the forum moderators have done here is not at all helpful to anyone trying to use the list of verified or unverified numbers.

After a long discussion with a veteran switchboard operator, I was told there isn't a BBC Reception Advice dept. & was passed instead to the BBC Information who give BBC Reception Advice  ::)

Try searching for BBC Information and BBC Reception Advice, or even BBC Radio 2 Travel Hotline Direct.  :o
The 1st Database field is limited to fewer characters, so it's often better to put the extra info in the Other Info field.  

The truth is out there (cue extract of Xfools music)  ;D

wrote on Mar 17^th, 2005 at 4:04pm:

After a long discussion with a veteran switchboard operator, I was told there isn't a BBC Reception Advice dept. & was passed instead to the BBC Information who give BBC Reception Advice  ::) Try searching for BBC Information and BBC Reception Advice, or even BBC Radio 2 Travel Hotline Direct.  :o The 1st field is limited to fewer characters, so it's often better to put the extra info in the Other Info field.   D

Dave,

There is a separate BBC Reception Advice section.  They are learned engineering technical boffins who sit in London and only speak to customers between 9am and 5pm when most potential customers are inconveniently out at work.

But to stand any chance of getting them the BBC require you to call the dedicated BBC Reception Advice 0870 number shown in every edition of BT's UK Phone Book.  But I also know to my cost that this 0870 number takes you to the same switchboard team at Capita in Belfast as the BBC Information 0870 number.  Of course it does register an extra number 1 though on the call counter in the BBC management statistics for BBC Reception Advice rather than for BBC Information.

Anyhow one then has to do battle with the abrasive traffic warden material customer service staff at Capita to persuade them that your Reception Advice call is not a standard one that they would know the answer to (not so difficult as Capita customer service staff seem to know the answer to almost nothing) and that they need to get an engineer to call you back.

Coming back to my original point though saynoto0870.com now have endless plain BBC's in your verified listings and this is not at all helpful to people needing to do a lookup.

Your search field allows for a lot more than 3 letters and if people just put in BBC they will get everything starting BBC but if they put in BBC Reception Advice they will get just BBC Reception Advice.  Unless of course the two Dave's have shortened all forms of BBC apparatus to BBC in which case a search for BBC Reception Advice will yield nothing for the poor searcher.

But you still didn't answer my question as to why the Unverified list does in fact contain entries amended by the moderators and why you feel it helpful to reduce everything to just BBC.  I personally don't find this at all helpful.  It would be like you just showing Comet as the entry for every Comet store branch!!! >:(

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There is a separate BBC Reception Advice section.  They are learned engineering technical boffins who sit in London  . . .

I agree that there's another dept run by techies - I guessed as much. But when you're talking to the switchboard operator & they don't know, your up a creek without a paddle. When I talked to the Info people they informed me as much but were able to help me with my enquiry (neither could/would put me thru).


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Your search field allows for a lot more than 3 letters and if people just put in BBC they will get everything starting BBC but if they put in BBC Reception Advice they will get just BBC Reception Advice.

You answered your own question there and I gave you the correct way to search for the BBC Reception Advice entry.
It does exactly what it says (on the tin)  ;D


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But you still didn't answer my question as to why the Unverified list does in fact contain entries amended . . .

I go through them before final checking to standardise the entries & remove additional data to the Other Info field, as I already explained above  ::)


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It would be like you just showing Comet as the entry for every Comet store branch!!!

and what do you suggest I put . . . ???  Kesa Electricals plc !!

wrote on Mar 17^th, 2005 at 6:59pm:

and what do you suggest I put . . . ???  Kesa Electricals plc !!

I suggest that you enter in the list Comet Slough, Comet Crawley, Comet Teddington etc.  Its less of an issue though for Comet because the Comet setup is standardised and they just have electrical stores at various different locations plus a warranty division.

The BBC is more complicated though because it has many different operating divisions that are unconnected and if you just put some loose description in the footnotes then people may miss the entry altogether.  For instance in my opinion BBC World Service is not much to do with BBC Television - they operate out of separate buildings and they rarely talk to each other.  Also if you just have BBC or Comet in the first field 30 times then on what possible basis do you decide how to order them in the list?  If you have BBC Radio London,  BBC Radio Nottingham, BBC Information, BBC World Service etc the running order becomes obvious.

BBC Information has thousands of people a day who need to call it and the other numbers you list don't.  Yet if I was looking for BBC Information I might miss it scattered amongst all the chaff of every 2 bit BBC reguional Radio station with only may be 80 people a week wanting to call it.

Of course I do know that its much easier to criticise from the outside than to do the constructive stuff on the inside. :)

wrote on Mar 17^th, 2005 at 7:30pm:

Also if you just have BBC or Comet in the first field 30 times then on what possible basis do you decide how to order them in the list?

Looking at Comet I can't see any logical order at all to your current list after doing a search for "Comet". :o

The entries aren't ordered in the order of the store name and they don't even follow the numerically increasing order of the geographic numbers listed.  Unless they were meant to follow the numeric order of the 0870 numbers which are, in this case, all the same? ???

wrote on Mar 17^th, 2005 at 7:53pm:

Looking at Comet I can't see any logical order at all to your current list after doing a search for "Comet". :o

So you search for "Comet", then use the 'Find' tool in your browser. You could type the STD code or the town.

Same applies for BBC Reception. Search for "BBC" and then search on there for "Reception".

To put all information in the 'Company' field, you would have to search for the exact string as it appears. For example "Tesco Extra Seacroft - Leeds". Should Leeds be the first location, then Seacroft, or should we show Seacroft only? Also, some Tescos may be shown as Extras when they are not, or vice versa.

I have to agree with DaveM on this one.

. . . and if you type in BBC Reception Advice in the Company search, it works - Honest !   ::)