Unfortunately for Mr Strutt of BT Pricing and his surely entirely disingenuous claims that BT is concerned to hear that the public may be being misled by BT's continued use of the terms Lo-Call and National Call for 0845 and 0870 I have now received the following reply from a member of BT's Indian business sales team in response to my complaint about their previous misinformation about using 0845 with Friends & Family.

You will see that this shows that BT staff are still quite blatantly and deliberately misleading businesses about the so called advantages of them setting up an 0845 or 0870 number:-

-----Original Message-----
From: BT.Com Webmaster [mailto:webmaster@bt.com]
Sent: 27 August 2005 01:10
To: NonGeographicalMan
Subject: Re: Misleading BT Website Information about so called "Lo-Call"
and "National Rate" calls (KMM11801822I15378L0KM)

Thank you for your e-mail dated 25/8/05 regarding call charges.

In response to your e-mail,  please accept my apologies for the difficulties you have experienced , I would like to inform you that Lo-call 0845 enables customers to be called from anywhere in the UK at the local call charge.  BT retains the local call charge revenue and the customer also makes a payment BT.Moreover
Freefone and Lo-call calls may also be accessed from some other countries.  In this instance the charge to the caller is determined by the overseas administration.  

These also use the Business Starter option:

Free Connection.  
excl VAT £30.00 (incl VAT £35.25) per quarter, in addition to line rental.  
Call charges: excl VAT 3.48p (incl VAT 4.09p) per minute.  Per second billing.  
Each call is subject to a 20 second call charge.  
Caller pays for a local rate call.  

Moreover, a single Nationalcall 0870 number means that callers from anywhere in the UK pays the entire cost of the basic call.  The business receiving the call pays nothing.  However, businesses need to be aware there is less of an invitation to call than if the call were free (0800) or charged at local rate (0845) to the caller.  The basic product concept is that of a service whereby the caller pays national long distance rate, regardless of where the call is made within the UK.

These services use the Business Starter option:

Free Connection.  
Excl VAT £30.00 (incl VAT £35.25) per quarter, in addition to line rental.  
Call charges:
excl VAT 6.8p (incl VAT 8.0p) per minute rounded up during daytime.  excl VAT 3.4p (incl VAT 4.0p) per minute rounded up evenings and weekends.  

Customer receives revenue from calls:

excl VAT 1.50p (incl VAT 1.763p) per minute during daytime.  
excl VAT 0.24p (incl VAT 0.282p) per minute evenings and weekends.  
Revenue is calculated every month and if equates to £100.00 then payment is made, otherwise amount rolls over until the following month.  
Caller pays national rate.  

I trust that this now resolves the matter satisfactorily, but should you have any further queries please do not hesitate to contact us again via e-mail or call us at 0800 800 150Monday to saturaday from 08.00 to 20.00.

Thank you for contacting BT.

Yours sincerely,

Saurabh Ganguly
BT Customer Contact Centre
Ref; 4769263

Original Message Follows:
------------------------
Dear Amit/BT Customer Contact Centre,

Further to my previous email I have now added an 0845 dialup ISP number for Plusnet to my friends & family list.  This proves that 0845 numbers are in fact capable of being accepted for Friends & Family, contrary to what you claimed to be the case in your previous email.

I would also like to complain that when I ask to View Recent Calls at www.bt.com I am shown a heading for a category called Lo-Call.  Only 0845 numbers are listed under this heading and 0844 numbers are described as Other Calls.

Can you please tell me how BT can still be using the
misleading and outdated marketing brand "Lo-Call" for 0845 calls when these numbers are excluded from inclusive calling allowances under BT Option 3 and cost 60p per hour off peak rather than 5.5p per hour under the BT Option 1 plan. Similarly how can the heading "National Rate" be used to describe 0870 numbers charged way above the National Rate under BT Options 1, 2 and 3.

It beats me how Ofcom can continue to allow this continuing grotesque abuse of its customers by BT.  I can only assume that the policy section of Ofcom is perhaps asleep?

... or perhaps as some have suspected for some while, some sort of deeply vested interest in the continuance of this situation?

One has to be somewhat careful as to the way in which this reality is expressed hereon!