Does anyone have a link to the old consultation and in particular the responses?

I'm curious as reading the current consultation I noticed the following:-

Quote:

3.30  Most respondents welcomed Ofcom’s consumer protection proposals and the creation of a code of practice, although there were mixed views as to who should implement it. One respondent however, felt there may already be sufficient pricing information available to consumers....

and again here:-

Quote:

3.37  One SP respondent felt change was not required and consumers were already familiar with the numbering schemes in use. It was therefore unnecessary to provide further pricing information...

I suspect these respondants are same person/company and I'm very curious who they are because I believe it is very difficult to get prices of calls to NGN's and even Ofcom admit consumer confusion over call charges.

Thanks in advance.

wrote on Oct 17^th, 2005 at 12:48pm:

Does anyone have a link to the old consultation and in particular the responses?

The "Options for the future" consultation and responses from it are here.

Thanks for that Dave.

Well having gone through all of the responses that looked like they weren't from consumers (ie business, etc that were more likely to say these comments), I couldn't really find the respondant as such.

However I did notice that Vodafone's response was probably one of the worst (from consumer point of view) than the other responses I read.  Most responses that I read (from businesses) stated that there is consumer misunderstanding on call costs and clearer pricing information is needed. Vodafone though I noticed had this to say:-


Quote:

...Vodafone does wish to question the need, at this juncture, for the additional consumer protection measures contemplated by Ofcom in conjunction with this Option 2.  In general Vodafone suggests that Ofcom should keep in mind the research conducted under the banner of the Telecommunications Review. This demonstrates that, in the case of mobile, not only are 80% of consumers either satisfied or very satisfied with their services but that “many consumers think that the amount of reliable available information available is about right” (in fact there are more people that say there is too much pricing information rather than too little). More specifically, Vodafone submits that is no evidence that the current arrangements for retail NTS charging cause any significant consumer harm (or that a move to option 2 will do so) or warrant additional measures to ‘protect’ customers. In fact, as Ofcom notes, “there is a very strong tendency for customers to over-estimate the cost of calling 0845 and 0870 numbers”. Ofcom’s evidence is that consumers over-estimate the cost of calling 0845 numbers by over 500% and the cost of calling 0870 numbers by nearly 300%. Customers who continue to make calls in these circumstances can hardly be said to have come to any harm...

Which is an interesting response because Vodafone have a habit of 'hiding' the cost of NGN's because having checked Vodafone's website for any indication of prices for calling NGN's, I found the following:

Vodafone PAYG Tariff here

Vodafone Contract Anytime Tariffs here

Vodafone Contract Off-Peak Tariffs here

I could not find the cost of calling NGN's on Vodafone's tariff pages and Vodafone in fact imply that prices to 0845/0870 are included because they state 'local' and 'national'.