Pretty much how the inital post went,

Hi I'm Jason Fields, Managing director of RoboTelecom.

We've decided to stop promoting and connecting new 0870 numbers as we are unsure about changes affecting these numbers in the future.

I then went on to explain a few of the benefits of 0845 numbers and why companies choose them.

If you have any questions regarding 0845 or 0870 numbers, I would be happy to help...

Regards

Jason Fields
RoboTelecom

jasonfields007 wrote on Oct 19^th, 2006 at 11:11am:

1. Customers call at lo-call rate - saving many national callers money on call costs 2. Monthly statistics to track incoming calls for advertising 3. Disaster recovery if their landline go's down we can move the 0845 number to another landline (this is very important for some companies) 4. The number never changes if you move address, it moves with you

The reason you have in fact now stopped promoting 0870 is because the scam on those numbers only has another year to run and you and your scamming clients with then be embracing 0871 numbers instead, especially if ICSTIS control is as watered down as now seems likely.

As to the rest of your comments that 0845 is Lo-Call the reality is that BT have now dropped this highly miselading term and are now showing 0845 rate on the latest phone bills.  0845 costs vast amounts of extra money for millions of uk landline customers who have signed up with BT Option 3 or with WLR or CPS providers for all 01/02 calls plans (often deliberately mismarketed by scheming telecoms companies like your own as being to all uk landline calls) find these calls are excluded from these plans.  The only people who save money on 0845 compared to what they would pay for a national call are those on the Light User Scheme.  And by definition those customers hardly make any phone calls and I'm sure a large number of those lines are in rarely used country cottages in Wales and Scotland.

You know perfectly well 0845 is a complete scam and surely you must know you are wasting your time here by trying to regail us with the pathetic lies with which you con clients like local authorities every day of the week into signing up for these numbers.

Perhaps you can tell me as and when 03 prefixed numbers with all the routing feature advantages of 084/7 but without the added call cost to the consumer are launched next year whether you will be marketing those to any of your clients? ;) ::)

This has been discussed many times before.

For a start you still state that your 0845 calls are local rate in your FAQ's.

In your business, you should be aware that 0845 isn't local rate at all and hasn't been for nearly two years now.  BT charge the same cost for either local or national geographical calls regardless of where called from and destination.  Eg, a call from London to Scotland costs the same amount as calls made next door to your neighbour.

If you've read recent Ofcom announcements you'll be aware that Ofcom, ASA and trading standards all agree that 084x/087x numbers are NOT local/national rate and should not be described as such.

BT charge 3p/min daytime but only 5.5p/min during the evening & weeknd for upto an hour's talk so how can 0845 be local rate when the prices are different?

I agree NGN's do have their needs in businesses but this comes at a cost to us consumers who pay more for these calls because they're not included in most inclusive price plans.

I bet you didn't know that 0845 can cost upto 40p/min from some networks hence why the 0845 is local rate is just something you use to try and sell your product to companies.  This has the potential to you actually misleading your customers as well.

Are you aware that Ofcom are introducing 03x numbers which will be NGN's as well with the same benefits as existing 084x/087x numbers except that us consumers will only pay actual local rate for the call and if we have inclusive minutes then these 03x numbers will be included.

In fact, when 0870 lose their revenue share they will have the same features as they do now except you lose your profit so you can't say that the reason for these numbers is purely for their call routing advantages and statistics when you will stop selling 0870 because you lose out on all that profit despite the fact that the features available now for 084/087 numbers will be available for 0870.

-

I wasn't being hostile.

I agree there are benefits from NGN's but you stopping the selling of 0870 just means that the real reason is your profits from each minute someone calls that number is lost.

If your main concern for these numbers was to offer these benefits then why stop 0870?  They will continue to have the same benefits as they do now along with 0845 except your revenue from every minute someone calls it will be lost.

ThisWebSiteIsAScam had a valid point when he asked if you would be offering the new 03x numbers?

jasonfields007 wrote on Oct 19^th, 2006 at 11:39am:

I'm not BT or Ofcom. I don't choose the prices that 0845 numbers are to call. I'm just offering a good alternative to companies that want them to save money from very high BT charges.

And what high BT charges would those be?  In my experience the high BT charges are all associated with NGNs.  Also in your mindless marketing man PR puff for the 0845 scam you don't mention that callers on mobile phones frequently have them excluded from their inclusive calling plans and have to pay up to 35p a minute or £21 an hour to call 0845 numbers.  People like callers to the JobCentre. :o >:( >:(

As a former local councillor I had to get a resolution passed by our council so they wouldn't be conned into being sold any more 0845 numbers that still terminated on our underlying geographic numbers by companies like yours.

I repeat my question.  Will your company be selling 03 numbers next year with all of the call routing advantages for your clients but none of the additional calling costs for customers.

The only reason you made your post on this site was because being a typical salesman you hoped that it might drum up some more customers for your whole unethical NGN selling business.

I take it as read that anyone who sells 084/7 numbers for a living has already had their ethics/morality chip blocked or removed.  In any event I often find many career salesman have no ethics or morality circuit to start with and will rearrange the truth in any way that is required to make a few more sales that week. In fact I often fear that many salesman would be quite capable of selling their own grandmother as long as there was another big commission involved. :o

What a typical slimey marketing man you must be jason fields.  I see you have now run a mile having finally realised that your scam has been rumbled.

bbb_uk wrote on Oct 19^th, 2006 at 11:49am:

I wasn't being hostile. I agree there are benefits from NGN's but you stopping the selling of 0870 just means that the real reason is your profits from each minute someone calls that number is lost. If your main concern for these numbers was to offer these benefits then why stop 0870?  They will continue to have the same benefits as they do now along with 0845 except your revenue from every minute someone calls it will be lost. ThisWebSiteIsAScam had a valid point when he asked if you would be offering the new 03x numbers?

To be honest the amount we earn from revenue is minimal. We gave most of the revenue to the end user for 0870 anyway. I'm worried that the service providers will start charging excessive service charges for these numbers next year when the revenue is taken out.

We deal with 4 carriers so if we can get 03 numbers next year, then yes we will be offering them as I'm sure many companies will like them once the word spreads. I would assume it would just be a service charged based setup for companies for the advanced routing services. This is something I will be looking into.

I still don't agree that 0845 numbers are a scam. So many companies use them so they're not going away. It's up to Ofcom to sort them out. I wouldn't lose any sleep if we lost all our revenue from 0845 numbers as we charge service charges and annual charges for advanced services, the impact will be on the large carriers who have millions of minutes and smaller companies who give numbers away and now live off the collective revenue of several thousand NGNs.

Who knows what will happen in the future?

No more 0870 number connections.

jasonfields007 wrote on Oct 19^th, 2006 at 11:59am:

No more 0870 number connections.

Because there are no more fat profits in them for your clients from Feb 2008.

Will you be moving into selling 0871 numbers instead by any chance I wonder. ;)

jasonfields007 wrote on Oct 19^th, 2006 at 11:59am:

To be honest the amount we earn from revenue is minimal. We gave most of the revenue to the end user for 0870 anyway. I'm worried that the service providers will start charging excessive service charges for these numbers next year when the revenue is taken out.

Basically, as 0870 from 2008 will be pretty-much the same as the new 03x numbers - you would have to look at other ways of receiving revenue like annual charges or setup fees, etc like you mentioned.

As mentioned in a previous post, the JobCentre that obviously use 0845 for their call routing facilities was annoyed and basically said so in their response to Ofcom as the JobCentre were under the impression they had chosen a local rate number and didn't realise they can be so expensive

In fact, most OCP's and CP's still refer to NGN numbers as local and national rate purely because it sells more numbers for them despite they are misleading their customers.

bbb_uk wrote on Oct 19^th, 2006 at 12:07pm:

As mentioned in a previous post, the JobCentre that obviously use 0845 for their call routing facilities was annoyed and basically said so in their response to Ofcom as the JobCentre were under the impression they had chosen a local rate number and didn't realise they can be so expensive

I see that like the classic salesman he is he has now taken off like a cat with a scalded tail having finally realised that we have totally rumbled the whole NGN selling game.  He has even deleted the Thread name and replaced it with Please Delete.

It is of course a sign of a classic NGN saleman to have the nerve to imagine that posting in this forum was a good idea in the first place.

Perhaps you could lock the thread and change the name back to the one jason originally posted bb and ideally resurrect the posts he removed.  This would serve as a warning to forum members as to why they should never get their own 084/7 numbers.  This is definitely a case where if you can't beat the NGN scammers then you shouldn't join them either.

ThisWebsiteIsAScam wrote on Oct 19^th, 2006 at 12:13pm:

Perhaps you could lock the thread and change the name back to the one jason originally posted bb and ideally resurrect the posts he removed.

I can change the thread title but the posts have gone as I don't have a record of what he posted. - not entirely anyhow - just what you quoted.

ThisWebsiteIsAScam wrote on Oct 19^th, 2006 at 11:58am:

What a typical slimey marketing man you must be jason fields.  I see you have now run a mile having finally realised that your scam has been rumbled.

1st of all i'm not concidering offering 0871 numbers. I don't agree with companies earning revenue from their customers calling them directly. For that they should use a premium rate number with clear call costs listed.

I'm happy to talk to you. I just don't need the agro to be honest! My reasoning for coming on here today was not to drum up business.

I was just interested to see what people had to say about 0870 numbers.

Shall we start over?

Let me explain a bit about me before I get gunned any more!

1st of all i'm not a salesman. I'm a web developer. I'm 19 years old and run several IT and telecoms companies. I started promoting 0845 numbers after getting one for my own web design company 4 years ago. My 1st 0845 number service was called UK0845.com which became RoboTelecom when our services increased to Outbound and mobile services. I've always thought of the 0845 service as a happy service. Saving companies from paying for inbound calls and saving customers call costs when ringing from a national location. As you are aware over the last few years landline call costs have been seriously reduced, and the 0845 service has not caught up yet. The call cost does need to be reduced to come into line with normal call costs. This doesn't make 0845 numbers evil. It just is an issue that needs to be sorted out. Just remember how much it used to call to dial a national location!

I can understand your reasons for setting up this site, and for having issues with NGNs. NGN providers exist for a reason and that reason is that there is a demand for these numbers.

jasonfields007 wrote on Oct 19^th, 2006 at 12:17pm:

I can understand your reasons for setting up this site, and for having issues with NGNs. NGN providers exist for a reason and that reason is that there is a demand for these numbers.

For which most of us understand.  What annoys us is that most end businesses use these numbers not just for the call routing but because of the revenue they get in return.

Therefore these are stealth premium rate numbers.  I use the word stealth because most consumers are still being mislead over the actual costs of these numbers and the fact that the end company they are calling is more than likely earning money.

.

I agree for 0870 numbers but not 0845 numbers as there is no or very very little revenue .

jasonfields007 wrote on Oct 19^th, 2006 at 12:24pm:

I agree for 0870 numbers but not 0845 numbers as there is no or very very little revenue .

That's not entirely true.

If you look at this newspaper article, the title of which says it all: "The government has been criticised for receiving £268,000 from telephone benefit hotlines with the prefix 0845"

Here take this example.  Say you have two companies in direct competition with each other and both offer same services at same prices, etc with the exception of the contact number.  One uses a 09x number costing 7p/min and the other using a 0870 also costing 7p/min.

Now despite both companies having a contact number costing 7p/min which one is likely to attract more business?  Simple, the company having the 0870 because many consumers aren't aware that they are ringing a premium rate number when they ring an NTS number.

jasonfields007 wrote on Oct 19^th, 2006 at 12:17pm:

1st of all i'm not a salesman. I'm a web developer. I'm 19 years old and run several IT and telecoms companies. I started promoting 0845 numbers after getting one for my own web design company 4 years ago. My 1st 0845 number service was called UK0845.com which became RoboTelecom when our services increased to Outbound and mobile services. I've always thought of the 0845 service as a happy service. Saving companies from paying for inbound calls and saving customers call costs when ringing from a national location. As you are aware over the last few years landline call costs have been seriously reduced, and the 0845 service has not caught up yet. The call cost does need to be reduced to come into line with normal call costs. This doesn't make 0845 numbers evil. It just is an issue that needs to be sorted out. Just remember how much it used to call to dial a national location! I can understand your reasons for setting up this site, and for having issues with NGNs. NGN providers exist for a reason and that reason is that there is a demand for these numbers.

Jason,

Thank you for re-entering the debate although given that you are 19 years old and have alteady set up a website dedicated to selling these numbers I would still classify you as a salesman/entrepeneur in addition to being a web developer.  Clearly you set up the site as a business to make money and every time someone buys an 0845 number you make money in some way either through a cut of the calls or fees for the number or due to click thru banner ads on your website.

You mention Ofcom but they had every chance to impose a simple solution by returning both 0845 and 0870 calls to national rate in the short term and also setting up 03 non revenue share NGNs and announcing that in the fullness of time in a couple of years all 084/7 numbers would cease (allowing time for literature to be changed etc) and that people must either move to 03 with all the routing features and no revenue share or to 09 where the caller realises it is premium rate and queuing is banned and there are no call price announcements.

Ofcom in some of their own technical papers have described 084/7 as Uncontrolled Premium Rate and that is what they in fact are.  The whole reason 0845 calls can't be included in geographic packages and haven't fallen in price like 01/02 numbers is precisely because of the revenue share.  Ofcom used the pathetic excuse that it would be damaging to the business of 0845 dialup providers to make them move to 0844 or a low cost 09 number but by the time we get to Jan 2008 there will hardly be any dialup internet use left and most remaining 0845 dial up ISPs are changing to 0844 anyway.

Unfortunately Ofcom have been penetrated by far too many cronies from the telcos and so are failing in their duties under the Communications Act 2003 to protect the best interests of Citizen Consumers.

Most of the people who have 0845 numbers are charities and local authorities and government helplines which leaves it all the more shocking that they will  be left excluded from 01/02 call packages but 0870 numbers will not be excluded.  And ever since voip numbers have come in you could have been selling voip NGNs on normal local codes like the ones available at www.sipgate.co.uk with all of the call routing features of 0845 at no extra cost to the caller or the business using them.



~Amended post title - bbb_uk

jasonfields007 wrote on Oct 19^th, 2006 at 12:24pm:

I agree for 0870 numbers but not 0845 numbers as there is no or very very little revenue .

How do you think 0844 and 0845 ISPs who don't charge a monthly subscription fee make a living then? ;) ::)

X Millions minutes at 1 or 2p per minute revenue share in the weekday daytime = a lot of dough.

My current ISP only has an 0845 Voip number with no GN equivalent and every time I need to call them about some aspect of deficiency in their service it costs me 60p or whatever instead of the 3p it would have cost me with www.1899.com if they had a GN I could call.

Over a a typical year most UK households with fixed price 01/02 plans are now paying at least another £10 per month for their 084/7 calls if not much more in the case of people who work from home or are retired.

0845 and 0870 both floursihed on the con that they are local rate/national rate when in fact they never ever were via the cheapest calling methods compared to GNs even way back in 1997 and I also see no evidence that a company like yours stopped calling them lo-call (as you still did back at the top of this thread) after BT started started widely marketing 01/02 all calls packages like BT Options 2 and 3 that excluded 0845 calls from them. :'(

The whole industry is built on conning people they are normal priced calls when they are not.  If certain call centres all moved to 09 premium rate numbers we would still object to that in principal but at least it wouldn't be a con and at least people calling would realise those call centres are charging them a non standard rate excluded from inclusive calling allowances.

jasonfields007 wrote on Oct 19^th, 2006 at 11:39am:

I'm not BT or Ofcom. I don't choose the prices that 0845 numbers are to call. ...

I have copied this quote from another post. The original post has been edited out, but I believe that the above sums the reason 084/087 numbers are so wrong.

Not because we don't like the fact that they are non-geographical and we can't see where the call's going. But because the statement is completely devoid of logic.

You say that you "don't choose the prices that 0845 numbers are to call." But if prices were to come down you would have less revenue, hence the reason for stopping connecting 0870 numbers. Or perhaps you know of a way of having your cake and eating it.

Therefore, I deduce that if you could choose, you would leave the charges as they are. Is this a fair evaluation of your views?


Quote:

... I'm just offering a good alternative to companies that want them to save money from very high BT charges.

This statement makes it clear that your relationship is with the service provider and that the charges to their customer are of no interest. Indeed, your "lo-call" marketing spiel says it all. You cling to the pipedream that 0845 is charged at local rate.

My understanding of 0845 is as follows (for 0870 substitute "national rate" for "local rate"):

It was previously 0345 (BT) and 0645 (Mercury, now C&W). Charges were the same as a local rate call on a BT package. Other providers like yours were allowed into the market by forcing BT to pass most of call charges on to them. BT retained enough to cover its costs of connecting the call.

Algebraically, this can be represented as follows:

c = b + x

where:
c is the cost of the call
b is the amount BT retain for connecting the call across its network
x is the amount that is paid to providers such as yourself

As prices for geographical calls have fallen, c, the price for 0845/0870 calls has not. To claim that 0845 is local rate is completely misleading as the framework for the numbers does not allow c to equal the cost of a local call because the NGN provider requires x.

If the originating telco were to lower the price they charge, then they would be making a loss. So the issue here is that these numbers are anti-competitive! They are therefore premium numbers because of the revenue or micro-payment, x, on top of the cost of transferring the call across the telephone network, which is represented by b.

If a company wants advanced routing, call statistics and all the other things that NTS provides, then they should pay for them. That allows for competition to drive prices down, rather than forcing Joe Public to pay, on a per minute basis, a pretty much fixed price for these services.

This is my understanding having read Ofcom's consultation documents. Is this a fair explanation of how things work?

jasonfields007, do you wish to reply to any of the posts made since you last commented?

As someone who sells these numbers, I am particularly interested in your views on the points I have made above.

Interestingly, jasonfields007 was online on 24 October ar 10:51, but has not responded. It reminds me of the proprietor of Phoenix Travel, who would not publish the geographical number for her company and who visited the forums for upto a month after she last posted.