I contacted English Heritage to complain about their continued use of an 0870 public contact number, drawing their attention to the COI guidance. I got this rather unhelpful reply, attached to an e-mail inviting me to contact said number if I had any questions! Grrrrr!!!

Please see attached correspondence from English Heritage.
                 
If you have any questions please call our Customer Service team on 0870 333 1181 or email customers@english-heritage.org.uk.






CDB/JH/2066718

14 April 2008

Dear

Contact Number:  500352087

Thanks you for your email concerning the charges that you pay when contacting English Heritage by telephone.

English Heritage does not profit from callers dialling our telephone number. The main purpose for using an 0870 number instead of the local dialling code is to allow us greater flexibility in handling our calls, and enabling us to take full advantage of modern technology to help us effectively monitor our service and route our calls.

This arrangement was set up some years ago, and our intention was not to disadvantage our customers, and this, as far as we are aware, has largely been the case as most callers pay the standard National Rate.  However, clearly some suppliers are starting to vary the rates that they charge for certain services and we would always recommend to our customers that they take any issues up with their telephone suppliers.

We have not introduced 0345 numbers because we would have to pay part of the cost of each incoming call, therefore reducing the funds that we would have available for conserving the historic environment.

Thank you for your comments, and thank you for taking the time to write to us.

Yours sincerely




Joya Hepke
Customer Service Advisor >:(

I suggest you email Simon Thurley, their CEO (simon.thurley@english-heritage.org.uk) and Deborah Lamb, Director of Policy and Communications (deborah.lamb@english-heritage.org.uk), if you wish to receive any kind of sensible response on this matter.  I would include a copy of the nonsense response and point to the latest COI guidelines, Sir David Varney's report plus ASA guidances and the comments of BT's own new CEO (Ian Livingston) about these ripoff numbers.

This garbage reply was obviously prepared for them by the telecoms company that terminates their 0870 calls.[smiley=thumbdown.gif]

trickyd wrote on Apr 19^th, 2008 at 9:02am:

Engish Heritage state: The main purpose for using an 0870 number instead of the local dialling code is to allow us greater flexibility in handling our calls, and enabling us to take full advantage of modern technology to help us effectively monitor our service and route our calls. (

This is totally untrue.  All these facilities can be obtained whilst using an ordinary geographic number.  There are many companies openly advertising that they can provide these facilities and are even encouraging companies to move to using geographic numbers in order to present a local personna to their customers/clients.  For example, Numerstore    http://www.numberstore.com/about-us.asp  and TTNC  http://www.ttnc.co.uk/about/about-us.do

Large telcos like BT (Global Services) can also provide these services with geo numbers but of course they don't advertise the fact.

In other words English Heritage are being disingenuous about this.   They are also reflecting the untruth being put about by the Telephone companies, namely, that you can only get these facilities by using an 084/7 number.

I suggest that you also put this to the Executives of English Heritage, as proposed by NGMsGhost and see what they have to say about it.