Here is an email I received from the MD (John Mobley) of my current ADSL broadband ISP www.newnet.co.uk responding to an email from me complaining about a couple of problems including their use of 0845 numbers for Technical Support, Sales and Customer Service Calls (although strangely not for Accounts and General Enquiries which use a Geographic number that cannot transfer you to these other 0845 departments).


Quote:

-----Original Message----- From: John Mobley Sent: 20 December 2006 17:26 Subject: Re: Service Status Page Not Updated & 0845 Issue We have recently reduced our inbound call charges for helpdesk from 0870 national rate to 0845 local rate as a direct result of customer feedback, and have also introduced new processes for minimising call wait times, again as direct feedback from customers. yours sincerely John Mobley.

And this was my reply:-


Quote:

-----Original Message----- Sent: 22 December 2006 11:50 To: John Mobley Subject: Why Claiming 0845 is Local Rate Is Misleading & Inaccurate As a longstanding supporter of the www.saynot0870.com campaign unfortunately I cannot accept your assertions that 0845 and 0870 are lo-call/local rate and national rate and I find it disappointing that a managing director of a company would be using such terms when there have been clear guidances from Ofcom, the Advertising Standards Authority, Ofcom and Trading Standards officers that to claim an 0845 number is lo-call or local rate is misleading customers over the true call costs.  Also since NewNet constantly tries to push a very expensive phone deal to get customers to sign up to its own expensive CPS phone calls plan (with prices little better than BT) on the basis they will save money off their broadband connection I imagine that your telecoms supplier knows full well that 0845 is not "local rate" but enjoys earning 2p or more per minute or £1.20 per hour revenue share on every call to your technical support line based on misleading people that it is "local rate" when it is not.  There is no such thing as "local rate" any more as that rate was abolished on 1st July 2004 even for BT customers when BT made Option 1 their minimum line rental deal (when they abolished BT Standard Line Rental as an available option) and along with BT Options 2 and 3 all 01/02 prefixed calls began to be charged on the same basis regardless of distance. 0845 and 0870 calls are examples of what BT has at various times called Special Rate Services.  That is they are in fact lower cost premium rate revenue share services (but not regulated currently in their marketing by ICSTIS although 0871 numbers soon will be) where the recipient of the call or their telecoms supplier receives a revenue stream on each call.  A 1 hour daytime call to a number starting 01 or 02 costs me 4p in total using www.18185.co.uk but a 1 hour call to an 0845 number costs me £1.98 using my WLR phone provider the Post Office on a BT Wholesale phone line (the Post Office charge 3.3p per minute to an 0845 number compared to BT who charge 3p per minute).  I think you can see that is a rather dramatic difference for a number you somewhat glibly and inaccurately depict as being "local rate". I do hope therefore that both you and your customer service and technical support staff will not continue to labour under the misapprehension that 0845 is lo-call/Local Call and must point out the recent actions of one of your competitors Ace Internet who issued a press release publishing a geographic 0161 alternative to their 0845 number because of the number of complaints from customers about their 0845 phone number.  Also can I point out that a near competitor of yours with a similar market positioning - www.idnet.co.uk - uses 0800 phone numbers for all their customer calls.  Perhaps you can tell me if you will be getting an 0345 equivalent to your 0845 number as and when these are made available by Ofcom shortly as these 0345 numbers will only be charged to callers on the same basis as an 01/02 call and will be included in fixed price calling plans like BT Option 3.  By the way I find it bizarrely inconsistent that NewNet uses an offputting 0845 number for Sales and a welcoming 01 geographic prefixed number for its accounts and general enquiries number. Also with respect to your claim that 0845 is "local rate" can I point you to the following:- The view of a county council trading standards department Para 1.3 Page 1 of www.ofcom.org.uk/consult/condocs/oftel_0845/responses/leicester_cc.pdf and the view of the CEO of BT Retail, Ian Livingston http://business.scotsman.com/banking.cfm?id=764772005 and two guidances from the Advertising Standards Authority www.asa.org.uk/cap/news_events/news/2005/Hanging+on+the+telephone+on+and+on+and+on.htm www.asa.org.uk/cap/news_events/news/2005/Stop+the+call+confusion.htm and the Parliamentary Early Day motion deploring the use of 0870 telephone numbers by government departments (which by implication also makes the same point to a lesser extent for 0845 numbers such as local Job Centres of which there has been widespread recent Parliamentary criticism) http://edmi.parliament.uk/EDMi/EDMDetails.aspx?EDMID=28872%09%09%09%09%09%09%09&SESSION=875 and Another guidance from the Committee of Advertising Practice of the Advertising Standards Authority www.cap.org.uk/cap/news_events/news/2005/CAP+rings+the+changes+for+telecoms+providers.htm I look forward to your further comments on this matter. Regards,

And this was my further follow up email once I had learned from the biography provided on NewNet's website that Mr Mobley has "extensive and wide ranging experience of the telecoms industry" with "Sprint and Global-One" so was very unlikely to actually believe that 0845 was a "local rate" call as he rather unwisely had the temerity to claim in his original response to my complaint about their use by NewNet.

What's that old saying to the effect that "you can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time but you can't fool all of the people all of the time" ;) ::) >:(


Quote:

-----Original Message----- Sent: 22 December 2006 12:17 To: John Mobley Subject: telecoms industry expert unaware that 0845 is not Local Rate??!!!! Dear John, Further to my previous email in view of your "extensive and wide ranging experience of the telecoms industry" with "Sprint and Global-One" (see http://uk.newnet.co.uk/press/corporate_overview.pdf) I find it even more unlikely that you would actually be likely to be unaware that 0845 numbers are in fact a form of covert premium rate non geographic number revenue share call and are not "local rate" at all. I do hope that the use of the deliberately misleading terms "local rate" or "lo-call" by NewNet staff (which I have encountered on several occasions with customer service and tech support staff at Newnet when querying the use of 0845 numbers by the company) will therefore cease completely and that you will be issuing a corporate information bulletin or email to all your technical support and customer service staff to ensure there is no possibility of them again actively misleading customers with the impression that your 0845 numbers are "lo-call" or "local rate". Also I would point out that people only usually have to call at all if things like Customer support tickets are not responded to in an appropriate manner.  At present there has still been no productive action on my ticket complaining that what should be the "Customer Login" button on your website under Login is described inaccurately as "Order Login".  Although of course a customer does at present have to create an account with NewNet and to Login through this button to sign up for a new broadband account (an overly complex process that I could not recommend in marketing terms) the majority of people logging in using the button will be existing retail broadband customers wanting to check their bandwidth use or other details on their Newnet account. If someone could change the simple text string "Order Login" to "Customer Login" then I would not have to make further 0845 phone calls to follow up on the issue............... Yours sincerely,