There was an appeal by Adrian Childs on behalf of the Disasters Emergency Committee on BBC Radio 4 at 6.25pm this evening (Thursday 22nd November 2008).  An 0870 donation number was quoted by Mr Childs and then repeated after the appeal by the Radio 4 station announcer and neither stated the cost of the call in pence per minute as 8p per minute, as is now normally established BBC practice (and even though that in itself is incorrect as the actual call price in the UK to an 0870 number is up to 40p per minute).

I sent this email in response to BBC Radio 4 Controller, Mark Damazer and to various BBC Execs, the BBC Trust and Ofcom officials etc.

Quote:

-------- Original Message -------- Subject:      Disasters Emergency Committee Appeal - 0870 Number - No Call Price Announcement on BBC Radio 4 Date:      Thu, 22 Nov 2007 20:15:59 +0000 To:      mark.damazer@bbc.co.uk CC:      jenny.abramsky@bbc.co.uk, tim.davie@bbc.co.uk, mark.thompson@bbc.co.uk, mark.byford@bbc.co.uk, caroline.thomson@bbc.co.uk, marcus.agius@bbc.co.uk, robert.webb@bbc.co.uk, samir.shah@bbc.co.uk, mike.lynch@bbc.co.uk, trust.enquiries@bbc.co.uk, brendan.gormley@dec.org.uk, patricia.sanders@dec.org.uk, pat.willson@dec.org.uk, enquiries@dec.org.uk, ian.hargreaves@ofcom.org.uk, stephanie.liston@ofcom.org.uk, james.purnell@culture.gsi.gov.uk, john.fingleton@oft.gov.uk, sean.williams@oft.gov.uk, jonathan.may@oft.gov.uk, martin.stanley@competition-commission.org.uk, david.roberts@competition-commission.org.uk, bob.tolliday@which.co.uk, jill.ainscough@ofcom.org.uk, steve.roberts@ofcom.org.uk, tim.suter@ofcom.org.uk, peter.culham@ofcom.org.uk, claudio.pollack@ofcom.org.uk, steve.unger@ofcom.org.uk, colette.bowe@ofcomconsumerpanel.org.uk, ChristopherG@asa.org.uk, GuyP@asa.org.uk, RogerW@asa.org.uk, consumer.panel@ofcom.org.uk, consumerpanel@ofcom.org.uk, Dear Mr Damazer, I am writing to you in your position as Controller of BBC Radio 4 to complain that in a charities appeal at around 6.25pm this evening (Thursday 22nd November)  following the 6 O Clock News on Radio 4 and before The Hollow Men there was an appeal announcement by Mr Adrian Childs of the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) at the end of which he read out an 0870 phone number asking for donations.  Then following the end of his announcement your station announcer repeated the 0870 number again without any details of the call cost. In view of adopted BBC practice and several previous guidances by Ofcom and the Advertising Standards Authority it is wholly unacceptable that there continue to be any announcements about 0870 phone numbers on BBC Radio that fail to state a call price per minute.  It is also unacceptable that the call price announcements given by the BBC for its own 0870 numbers continue to state the maximum cost of calling 0870 numbers as 8p per minute when the actual cost is up to 40p per minute on a variety of mainstream uk pay as you go mobile phones.  Unless the BBC add the words "from a BT landline" to the statement up to 8p per minute then it must surely state "up to 40p per minute" to cover all means of telecommunication commonly in use by the UK general public.   I would also point out that several UK landline call providers other than BT charge up to 10p per minute for calling 0870 numbers. Coming back to the DEC's failure to provide an announcement about its 0870 call cost one would unfortunately naturally expect this from the DEC who, along with a number of its charity members, are some of the most hardened and unprincipled abusers of the 084/7 hidden revenue share Special Rate Services number system in the UK.  Time and again (and in the face of numerous complaints from members of the SayNoTo0870 campaign such as myself) The Red Cross and several other leading DEC members have shown that they have no scruples whatsoever over continually misleading the public that 084/7 is a normal rate call instead of providing, as it does, a hidden donation to the costs of running their organisation and their often outsourced donation raising phone numbers. However whilst one would expect the DEC and its members to persist with its previous totally abusive attitude towards 084/7 numbers one would not expect those responsible for the editorial output of BBC Radio 4 to fail to follow your own rules on 0870 call cost announcements, not just once but twice during the entire appeal sequence. I should be most grateful if you could launch an investigation in to this matter to find out how your editorial control procedures totally failed so that there was no call price announcement with the reading out of the DEC 0870 number. I would also be grateful for your assurances that there will be no further such slips in the future where 084 or 087 numbers are given out on BBC Radio 4 (or indeed any other BBC national radio station) without the provision of the appropriate call price announcement.   Just because the BBC are giving air space to an appeal from a charity does not absolve it from its normal duty of care as a broadcaster to ensure its normal editorial standards continue to apply to this output.

Continued Below............./

Quote:

One also wonders what Mr Ed Richards, CEO of Ofcom, is going to ever do to stop these repeated 084/7 call price misdescriptions being given out by the BBC, numerous uk doctors surgeries who now use 0844 numbers, major uk charities, and also numerous other ostensibly responsible non business sector organisations?  Mr Richards and his Ofcom colleagues are very long on fine sounding words in the media that they hope people will not continue to misdescribe the cost of these calls but they are very short indeed on positive action in terms of imposing fines and/or other punitive measures that would prevent repeated recurrences of this deception of the public about the cost of calling 084 and 087 numbers.   Indeed one wonders what is the point of Ofcom having launched 03 pre-fixed NTS numbers in August 2007 (which it then mysteriously totally failed to publicise) that are not charged above the 01/02 geographic rate when it does nothing meaningful to prevent the endless instances in which 084/7 numbers are still knowingly and deliberately misdescribed in price in published and broadcast material that is not deemed to constitute an advertisement and that thus falls outside the reach of the ASA's tougher and far more efficient remedial processes. The situation has hardly been improved by Ofcom's recent announcement of an indefinite delay in its previous plans to make 0870 calls only the cost of a normal  01/02 call. Although as it now turns out, but which Ofcom's spin based PR apparatus is still desperately trying to hide from the press and the public, this would in any case only have been true for BT landline customers and not for customers on any mobile phones or the customers of any other UK landline phone provider who might have still gone on being charged up to 40p per minute. I look forward to your comments regarding this error by the BBC and by those directly responsible for controlling BBC Radio 4's program output.

The same number was also displayed and read out on BBC 1 10 o'clock News without any cost warnings.

An endemic problem within the BBC.

It seems like the rest of you are losing your fighting spirit.  Surely this is one that is particularly worth getting stirrred up about.

Predictably no one at the slimey and despicable DEC or at the BBC has bothered to reply to my email.

One imagines that Ofcom has tipped them the wink that they can carry on scamming regardless while Ofcom pretends it is concerned in public. ;) :o :'(

I understand that the Times tomorrow (Saturday) will have on the FRONT page “Thousands fall victim of telephone scams”.  It may prove worth looking out for.  

Keep fighting NGM - you are doing a splendid job.

The DEC donation line has now changed from 0870 to 0370.

Dave wrote on Nov 22^nd, 2008 at 5:15am:

The DEC donation line has now changed from 0870 to 0370.

I wonder if this was insisted upon by the BBC as a condition of continuing to carry the DEC's donation appeal messages or if some of the DEC's member bodies who have themselves changed to using 0370 donation lines insisted on the change as a condition of remaining part of the DEC's activities.  Whilst the BBC have now nominally banned use of 0870 numbers by their own subsidiaries I would have thought they might have still carried on with the DEC message with a price announcement that it was up to 8p per minute on a BT line using the excuse that the DEC is not a part of the BBC.

It seems all those email messages to the CEO of the DEC and with cc to the CEO of all its member bodies I previously sent out after previous campaign appeals by the DEC on BBC Radio 4 may after all have had an impact despite the fact that the DEC never ever had the courtesy to reply to me.

As the old saying goes "slowly, slowly, catchy monkey".  And for those not familiar with this phrase there is even a website about it set up by another campaigning group campaigning on another matter.  See www.slowlyslowlycatchymonkey.com  

It can be seen from the interesting link NGM provided, that the monkey was caught by its own greed.  Let us hope that the same fate awaits those that continue to use clandestine revenue sharing numbers (084x,  087x and 070).

kk wrote on Nov 22^nd, 2008 at 5:14pm:

It can be seen from the interesting link NGM provided, that the monkey was caught by its own greed.  Let us hope that the same fate awaits those that continue to use clandestine revenue sharing numbers (084x,  087x and 070).

Well done both KK and NGM'sG. The analogy is excellent. Those who let go (e.g. by adopting 03xx) are indeed free from being caught. Those unable or unwilling to let go will eventually be caught and made to do so without a struggle ... unless they can show to the world that the fruit is rightfully their's to take.

Not only this appeal, but ALL charities should provide an alternative geographical number; after all we are supporting a worthy cause, but we don't want to feel as if we have been scammed/ ripped off. I would gladly add the cost of the call to my donation, but I resent the fact that they force me to contribute not only to the charity, but to the phone operators

Arcoiris wrote on Nov 27^th, 2008 at 11:30am:

Not only this appeal, but ALL charities should provide an alternative geographical number; after all we are supporting a worthy cause, but we don't want to feel as if we have been scammed/ ripped off. I would gladly add the cost of the call to my donation, but I resent the fact that they force me to contribute not only to the charity, but to the phone operators

Quite right. It's important to remember that the revenue share is only a relatively small proportion of the call cost. The rest if the money goes to the phone companies, to whom the caller is already paying line rental, which is in many cases supposed to include inclusive calls. So the call is paid for twice.

When donating to a charity, you understand that some of the money will be doing towards the charity's admin costs, including phone services, etc. This is something you'll allow for when deciding how much to donate, even if only subconsciously. What benefactors do not need to be doing is adding to the profits of telecom companies, who are definitely not charitable organisations!

jrawle wrote on Nov 27^th, 2008 at 11:46am:

… It's important to remember that the revenue share is only a relatively small proportion of the call cost. The rest if the money goes to the phone companies, to whom the caller is already paying line rental, which is in many cases supposed to include inclusive calls. So the call is paid for twice.

In actual fact on revenue sharing 08 numbers, the majority of the call charge is passed to the receiver's telephone company which operates the number for its client. So the caller's telco incurs a far higher inter-operator charge than if it had been to a 01/02/03 number.