From The Scotsman:

...THOUSANDS of Scotland fans attempting to buy tickets for Saturday's match with Italy were allegedly ripped off by a faulty premium rate phone system.

Around 600,000 callers to the ticket hotline were cut off before they could speak to a salesperson but they were still charged for the call.

Calls cost 15p from a land line and 40p for mobiles, and between Saturday and the tickets selling out on Monday almost 1.1 million calls were made.

Around 500,000 heard the engaged tone but were not charged. A further 600,000 went through to the SECC system but were charged despite not receiving an answer. The potential cost for fans is estimated to be about £100,000.

The profits would have gone to Virgin and the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre, who were hired by the SFA to sell the 8,000 tickets.

Last night, a spokesman for the SECC said: "There have been a number of inquiries regarding telephone charges from those who, due to the volume of demand, could not connect to an agent to buy tickets for the Scotland v Italy game.

"The arrangement with our telecoms supplier, Virgin Media, was that calls that did not connect to our contact centre were disconnected after a few seconds although callers were charged a connection fee by their own telephone service.

"Whilst the rebate to the SECC may be small, as a gesture of goodwill we shall donate this rebate to a nominated charity once we know the amount."

SFA marketing manager Colin Banks added: "We have had complaints. Anyone that feels they have unreasonable charges should contact the SECC."


Source: http://news.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=1789032007

~ Edited by Dave: Link to source added

More in today's Metro (no link), but they, like Scotland on Sunday, failed to mention that it was an 0870 number.

Thankfully the Sunday Mail does:
http://www.sundaymail.co.uk/news/scottish-news/2007/11/11/tartan-army-ripped-off-by-ticket-hotline-78057-20091560/

Martin.