Members may be interested to read the update to the investigation by Ofcom into misuse of 087x numbers published on 26 July 2007 -
http://www.ofcom.org.uk/bulletins/comp_bull_index/comp_bull_ccases/closed_all/cw_945/

Despite having to press Ofcom into starting this investigation, following its initial false claim that it had no powers to address this nuisance, I had some hope that something would emerge.

I really must stop being so positive. [smiley=sad.gif]

If Ofcom really believes that every instance of misuse of the telephone network must be reported to it as a complaint, then it must try harder to solicit complaints.

I am in correspondence with Ofcom on this, and will update this thread with any interesting comments.

David

http://www.users.waitrose.com/~silentcalls/

I telephoned and spoke to Ofcom Director of Investigations, Mr David Stewart, about this enquiry some months ago to try to persuade him that he should widen the 0870 investigation to look into the general misdescription of 0870 call costs as being National Rate and also widespread inappropriate uses of these numbers by public sector bodies like the DVLA.

However he seemed to have no interest at all in this and seemed to consider the activities I mentioned to not be a matter of concern for OfCoN.

I have also never managed to interest Mr Stewart in the failure of the Finarea group of calling companies (1899, 18885 etc) to belong to an Alternate Dispute Resolution scheme, such as Otelo, despite the fact that they continue to trade and operate in the UK.  But once again Mr Stewart seems to have shown no interest in initiating any form of action on this matter.

Like so many Ofcom employees Mr Stewart seems to be focusing his main energies on working his way up the Ofcom pay scale and in due course obtaining an even better paid job in the private sector.

There does not seem to be one person at Ofcom that I would call a consumer champion,  not even their Director of Consumer Policy, Claudio Pollack.  In fact Ofcom seems to go out of its way to not engage with citizen consumers while engaging all the time with the business representatives of the telcos. ;) ::) :-?

So far as unsolicited calls are concerned despite my 3 years of TPS registration at the end of last year I was regularly being bothered with cold call sales calls by well known TPS abusers such as BrackenBay Kitchens and Satellite Direct.  In fact I got about 10 such calls in the last four months of last year and in each case I seemed interested in what the seller was selling until I finally got the website of the company so I could make a complaint.  On each occasion I both filed an official complaint form with the Information Commissioner and a complaint on the TPS's website and also emailed James Kelly, the CEO of the Direct Marketing Association (who run the TPS) with details of the abuser.

Miraculously in the whole of this year to date I have not so far received one such unwanted call abusing my TPS registration so I can only conclude that the fines on people like BrackenBay have actually scared them off flagrantly ignoring TPS rules or that Mr Kelly has circulated my phone number to all his members to be put on a special Do Not Call At Any Price blacklist since he knows that I will have his members immediately formally complained about to the ICO if they commit any such actions.

Has anyone else with a TPS registration noticed the abusers practically evaporating lately?  Even the unprofessional small scale abusers like a local mobile carpet cleaning firm that used to call and withhold its number have stopped, so I wonder if somewhere the fact that abuse of TPS rules may be severely penalised has not become more widely known and feared?

It appears that I (now formally retired from my principal campaigning efforts) and the former nongeographic man have trodden many similar paths. I would be delighted to exchange experiences and views on some key players, but would not wish to mention individual public servants in this public forum. I may be contacted (by anyone) to commence an off-line discussion through the email address on my profile.

The character of individuals may influence the tactics used to achieve results, however the points we have to make must stand regardless.

The reference to the former admitted TPS-abuser Bracken Bay Kitchens is interesting. Some may be pleased to know that attention from Ofcom may have played some part in causing this business to be wound-up. This is however not good news for me, as I was hoping that their appeal against the penalty imposed by Ofcom would provide an opportunity to expose Ofcom's failures to deal with the issue of Silent Calls properly.

As these broader matters fall outside the proper scope of this forum and thread, readers will need to look elsewhere to follow the progress of my "Ghost" activities as a "formally-retired" campaigner.

David

David,

I naturally assumed that you were THE David of the one man Silent Calls Campaign.  A campaign which has achieved considerably more success than our efforts in this forum with far more campaigners.

Of course the reason you were probably successful there is that ultimately silent calls result from incompetence and ineptitude and technological ignorance and incompetence and if companies are forced to realise the error of their ways they actually save money by doing so.  So when its a win, win situation Ofcom is more prepared to do something about it.

Coming back to individual Ofcom servants perhaps I should not mention Mr Stewart by name but since he is a Director he has agreed to put himself in the public eye.  However I have no criticism personally of Mr Stewart who is doing his best under the general nonsensical Ofcom operating culture of trusting business to do the right thing and only after abuses have been allowed for several years on a massive scale do they finally start to do anything about them.  The only Ofcom employee who I would  be personally severely critical of is Stephen Carter, who I believe is directly responsible for forming the current operating culture of Ofcom as a trade association in all but name, as he seemed to have no concept at all of what was required to discharge Ofcom's principal duties to the UK citizen consumer.  Fortunately Mr Carter is no longer at Ofcom and I suppose we will never find out whether he was pushed or if he simply got an even more lucrative offer elsewhere he could not refuse.

Ofcom and ICSTIS's continued attempts at obfuscation in serving the citizen consumer in shortly allowing most 0870 users to move wholesale to 0871, with no further significant controls on the use of those numbers, are quite beyond belief as is their failure to reduce 0845 calls to geographic rates at the same time as 0870, thereby ensuring the police, councils, charities etc continue to charge covert premium rates unless they make specific efforts to get an 03 number instead.  But didn't that same Ofcom tell us at a meeting I attended in November 2005 that one of  the main points and benefits of the whole NGN system was that it allowed you to retain the same number for life??? :-? :-/ ::)

Journalists still seem very slow to catch on to this issue and keep on talking in terms of only pennies a minute extra for a call instead of £200 plus extra on the phone bill of most UK households they need not be paying if Ofcom had done its regulatory job properly. >:( [smiley=thumbdown.gif] [smiley=thumbdown.gif] [smiley=thumbdown.gif]

I am grateful for the complement.

The success achieved by the Stop Silent Calls campaign is far from complete. Ofcom's primary role as a regulator of industries that serve the interests of consumers through competition inevitably means that it fails to see some issues properly as its people cannot handle the complexity of the duties they are required to discharge.

I take little comfort from the imposition of meaningless and disproprotionate financial penalties on the wrong organisations, when those responsible for the most concern by making Silent Calls have escaped with their reputations untarnished or even enhanced. The limited changes currently underway in the regulation of "premium rate" numbers should be regarded as a success for the "Say No" campaign in the same way.

As a solitary campaigner, I had the benefit of being accountable only to my own conscience and learning quite early that it was simply down to me to drive the issue. I bombarded many (primarily David, but also many others at Ofcom and elsewhere) with extensive wordy arguments. Success was however achieved by allowing the key issues to be recognised and picked up by the media, the industry and in parliament. I pursued many unfruitful channels, but was able to identify and exploit those which were fruitful. Personal circumstances also allowed me to dedicate a very large amount of focussed effort to this issue. These have now changed - hence my "retirement".

As stated before, I would be delighted to share the benefits of what I have learned with other individuals working to promote recognition of the true public interest, as opposed to narrow consumerism. I will also continue to use my knowledge and understanding of these issues myself, so far as I can.

David

( I hope I offer sufficient evidence of my identity to those who wish to know it, as I seek to be open - an unhappy experience has caused me to be more discrete than I was initially)

David,

You were also camapigning on an issue which it is far simpler for the media to understand as being an evil and to write up as such in their newspapers.  The idea of worried old ladies spending the rest of day wondering who that silent call with number withheld was from makes for more interesting copy.  Also although the changes you wanted involve some short term inconvenience to the call centres concerned in updating their systems in  the long run you saved them money in no longer connecting calls that they cannot do anything productive with.

In short you were pushing at s door with the regulators that was at least partly ajar, if not fully open, and that was also a matter that the Director of Investigations alone could pursue without permission from his Board.

With 084/7 we are not pushing at an open door at all but at a closed and padlocked door, the location of which has frequently been wallpapered over by those who suggest there is no door at all and that as these calls cost only a few pence a time they are not premium rate at all.  Apart from anything else we are pushing at a door that if opened would damage the financial and contractual interests of both the government itself and also of some of its very best friends in the business sector such as the directors of capita and Newscorp.

Thus the relative lack of success of this campaign (with even the headline of the 0870 con ending being really a total sham) is down to the fact that we are up against powerful and ruthless business forces who will stop at nothing to use their contacts at the regulator and their privileged access to the regulator (which in visible form is the NTS Focus Group and in invisible form is all those emails and business lunches with Ofcom personnel we do not even to get hear about) to perpetuate the "its only a few pence per minute" and "these are valuable enhanced services that would otherwise not exist" myths that are allowed to justify the conversion of formerly normally priced calls in to covert premium rate calls.

It is clear that a large number of parliamentary questions have been put down and Early Day Motions tabled on this subject but still Ofcom is shameless in trying to dodge the issue and has even failed to use its backstop powers under the Communications Act 2003 to stop companies calling 084 and 087 numbers local and national rate on material that is deemed not to be advertising but only information by the ASA.

Ofcom seems to go out of its way not to meet with members of this group and this suggests to me (as does the dsigraceful behind the scenes talks between Ofcom and ICSTIS over the new regulatory regime for 0871 numbers) that this is because it does not wish to listen to our arguments as they are not convenient to either it or its political masters.  ;) >:( >:( >:(

NGMsGhost wrote on Jul 29^th, 2007 at 2:54pm:

With 084/7 we are not pushing at an open door at all but at a closed and padlocked door, the location of which has frequently been wallpapered over by those who suggest there is no door at all and that as these calls cost only a few pence a time they are not premium rate at all.

Sometimes I think the door is hidden locked in a safe in fort knox or within MI6 HQ.  ;)

I did not join or post to this forum to crow about my "success"; much of what I sought to achieve has been frustrated by exactly the business-focussed approach to which the previous postings refer. My objective is to attack "consumerism", where this does not serve the true public interest.

I have no shame in acknowledging that I went for an "easy target". I sought to achieve something, not to earn credit for a noble failure. In terms of my underlying objective however, I cannot say that much, if anything, has been achieved.

Of course Ofcom has a cosy relationship with the DMA and with ICSTIS, they are its subcontractors. It also has a cosy relationship with the former DTI, which drafted the Communications Act. This is clear from public actions and from observing the personal relationships between individual representatives in informal settings. This is something we may regret, but are unlikely to be able to change.

Ofcom is accountable to parliament, not to the government through what is now the DBERR. The only hope for serious change must come through parliament. I see EDM's and questions to ministers as rarely being more than a PR exercise for the members involved. They should however provide a mailing list of those who may be pursuaded to take up issues through effective channels.

Can we please cease comparing past achievements and address how we may all achieve more in future.

David

NGM, In answer to your questions re cold calls. Yes I have seen a marked drop in these and also the scams trying to get you to call back using the 0870 and premium rate numbers. In fact the only calls I receive now are overseas boiler house scams of which I guess I get about 1 a month. I try and keep them on the phone for ages (carry on with my work with them on speaker phone and just agree with them every so often to keep them interested) to tie up their time.

Keith wrote on Jul 30^th, 2007 at 9:05am:

NGM, In answer to your questions re cold calls. Yes I have seen a marked drop in these and also the scams trying to get you to call back using the 0870 and premium rate numbers. In fact the only calls I receive now are overseas boiler house scams of which I guess I get about 1 a month. I try and keep them on the phone for ages (carry on with my work with them on speaker phone and just agree with them every so often to keep them interested) to tie up their time.

Ah yes I did have a call from one of these Boilerhouse share price ramping outfits called J S Knight, based somewhere in the Caribbean, back in the Spring now you remind me.  But I think that is the only unsolicited call I have had this year.