In a list of contact numbers in Which? magazine I noticed that Philips is listed as 0906 101 0016.

I checked on their website and sure enough on this page they have a range of 0906 numbers at 15p per minute, including what seems to be their main contact number, amusingly described as "Consumer Care".

Searching on Google for older Philips pages to try and see if this was a recent change, I came across this page which includes the first 0906 number, this time only for Out of Warranty Service and Product Support. Among the other numbers are three geographical ones and one 0870 number.

Can this change represent a move towards premium numbers for contacting Philips? A pity I won't be able to call them as 0900 numbers are blocked on my phone line. But maybe I won't need to as I won't be buying any Philips products if this is the only way I can contact them.

You kill 0870, what do you expect to happen? Callers will now have to pay a higher cost due to meddling in the NGN market.

qtel wrote on Nov 29^th, 2006 at 6:13pm:

You kill 0870, what do you expect to happen? Callers will now have to pay a higher cost due to meddling in the NGN market.

Actually the use of 09x numbers is more than likely cheaper than calling them on an 087x number simply because call queuing is prohibited so we don't spend loads of money holding in a queue which is what happens in most cases I find.

They clearly already had an 09x number anyhow so it was inevitable this would happen.

I personally am not concerned that they're using an 09x number as everybody knows an 09x number is a premium rate number and there are safeguards like the prohibitation of charging for keeping us in a queue.

The point of this website is to highlight to everyone that 084x/087x are in fact premium rate numbers except they are stealth by their very nature simpy because most people are not aware they are ringing premium rate numbers and instead still think they are either local or national rate.

More consumer detriment is done on 084x/087x than on 09x numbers.

qtel wrote on Nov 29^th, 2006 at 6:13pm:

You kill 0870, what do you expect to happen? Callers will now have to pay a higher cost due to meddling in the NGN market.

And how did Philips for years cope perfectly well using a London geographic number then. ::)

The reason this is happening is because useless Ofcom has failed to come out publicly against the forcing up of ordinary phone calls that add no value into premium rate calls and has failed to force voice announcement of the call cost and revenue share to all 084/7 and 09 services.  These calls are a like a disease that have totally subjugated Ofcom's fair trading duties to ensure citizen consumers pay the lowest prices for phone calls.  Scammers like you qtel are just sour that your profitable little business is now being exposed.  In the USA 0800 numbers are generally used for customer service qtel and yet the USA is the land of free enterprise.  The UK is the land of corrupt and incomeptent regulators who fail to control and ban hidden commercial cowboy telecoms scamming.

If business could be shamed out of using these numbers by exposing them we would instead just pay a fair price for the products we buy.

Unfortunately today's yuppy £500k marketing directors don't want to support the products they sell at all.  Instead they turn out low price crap that goes wrong and then try to walk away from customers.  Most of it is poorly made crap that goes wrong after only 18 months, especially Philishave products.

I personally am very concerned about 09 numbers especially in a tv scam quiz show context (eg The Mint) because they cost up to £1.50 per minute and Ofcom has not enabled PIN protection against their use for the subscriber alone unless he chooses to have further PINs for other members of his household which uniquely identifies their 09 use of the line issued.

Surely the easy option is to say that there are 2 members (who cares how many there realky are?) and that you, the bill payer want numbers for everybody.
Obviously you then neglect to let anyone know the number. It is your bill after all.

a very nice man wrote on Nov 30^th, 2006 at 4:17pm:

Surely the easy option is to say that there are 2 members (who cares how many there realky are?) and that you, the bill payer want numbers for everybody. Obviously you then neglect to let anyone know the number. It is your bill after all.

Why not just have one 09 PIN number just for you  the bill payer then? :-? :-/

Surely you only get further PINs if you are going to give them to other household members you trust to make responsible use of 09 numbers.  Even then they are deterred from misuse by knowing their 09 calls will be uniquely identified them on the quarterly bill.

qtel wrote on Nov 29^th, 2006 at 6:13pm:

You kill 0870, what do you expect to happen? Callers will now have to pay a higher cost due to meddling in the NGN market.

Sorry, qtel, I probably wasn't very clear about what I was trying to say.

I won't "have to pay a higher cost" by calling Philips on 0900 numbers because I will choose not to. I could write them a letter, instead, for example.

But I probably won't even have to do that because it's likely that I'll also choose to avoid their products, since they seem to be trying to deter customers from calling them and that's a bit offputting to a potential customer.