http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/consumer/savingideas/article.html?in_article_id=423249&in_page_id=512

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Premium rate 0870 numbers and bogus 'half price' wine deals are overwhelmingly the most hated rip-offs for Britons, according to exclusive research conducted by This is Money

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A wide variety of organisations including Government departments, banks, airlines and energy companies have been accused of raking inms of pounds every year from 0870 numbers. Calls to 08 numbers can cost up to 9p a minute while a standard landline call costs 3p. Telecoms watchdog Ofcom says many customers don't realise the full cost of the calls they make.

The problem is exacerbated by the fact that many customers have all-inclusive phone packages for a fixed monthly fee but these exclude calls to 0844, 0845, 0870 and 0871 helplines. In addition, some companies keep customers on hold for several minutes. The companies collectively earnms of pounds each year from these lines.

Customers can often bypass the 0870 numbers by using +44 numbers supplied for overseas callers. The website saynoto0870.com lists alternatives for dozens of major companies.

Thankfully companies will soon have to inform callers of exactly how much their premium rate number will cost and new 03 codes will be available for companies to use that cost the same price to call as normal landline numbers. But the regulator Ofgem (?????) has said they don't have to use these until 2008.

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Top 5 Most Hated Rip Offs

1. 0870 phone numbers - 17%
2. 'Half-price' wine offers - 15%
3. Being sold unwanted travel insurance or other products – otherwise known as the scrubbing brush trick - 10%
4. Hospital TV & phone charges - 6%
=5. Ryanair charge to not take a bag - 5%
=5. % world selling used goods as new - 5%
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Sounds about right to me! I wonder if anybody from the aforementioned companies will be reading that article and taking it in - my suspicions would be not likely because they don't want to see their nice little revenue stream disappearing in a cloud of dust...

Oh, and Ofgem (http://www.ofgem.gov.uk/Pages/OfgemHome.aspx) is the regulator for gas and electricity in the UK (it seems) - I suspect it is a misprint :).

idb wrote on Aug 10^th, 2007 at 12:05pm:

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/consumer/savingideas/article.html?in_article_id=423249&in_page_id=512 A wide variety of organisations including Government departments, banks, airlines and energy companies have been accused of raking inms of pounds every year from 0870 numbers. Calls to 08 numbers can cost up to 9p a minute while a standard landline call costs 3p. Telecoms watchdog Ofcom says many customers don't realise the full cost of the calls they make.

So WHY don't they do something about it instead of allowing and condoning it?

Ofcom do something to help the consumer?! Oh my no, they are there to regulate the consumer, not the industry :).

So why does this site allow Google to advertise 0870 numbers for sale here! This is sick.

ratspanker wrote on Aug 15^th, 2007 at 2:00pm:

So why does this site allow Google to advertise 0870 numbers for sale here! This is sick.

How many people who visit this site because they are sympathetic to the cause implied in the "saynoto0870" name do you think will then click through the adverts, take up the product, and thereby generate revenue for the advertiser?

If a site owner funds their site through advertising of this type they don't get to choose the advertisers - the latter are allocated automatically by the system when it searches for words and phrases and matches them to the advertisers. The phrase "0870" seems to feature quite a lot on this site so those are the ads that appear. A site about boring old farts will have adverts for geological sampling services and products for the relief of flatulence.

The advertisers aren't benefitting from this site, they're funding it. That's not sick, that's brilliant!

I'm not entirely sure that it is true no one clicks through to the 0870 site links as if this was true then no click thru revenue would be earned and Daniel, the site owner, would probably be inclined to use a different links engine on the site.

However I believe Click thrus often earn small amounts of money just for clicking through without actually buying so that it may be lots of people on this site do click through to these sites without actually buying just to see what they are and who the opposition is.  If that is true then the 0870 number vending merchants could indeed be funding this site.

So far as the links go I am entirely comfortable with EnergyLinx as this is a good energy supplier switching website likely to help SayNoTo0870ers save money.  I still have a major issue with GrabAGrand  (WinTheCash) site banners as that is pure gambling and likely to cost most of our site members money if they take it up.  I believe a gambling television channel of the same name on Sky was even taken off air.  Now I don't know if the two products are related?..........