I recently wanted to replace my Aston Martin with another newer one. Imaging my disgust when I found that a number of Aston Martin main dealers will only permit telephone contact by 0870 numbers and frequently either fail to reply to emails sent to their email addresses (which are rarely disclosed anyway ). They also generally fail to return calls even when one does use their 0870 number ( this necessitating, of course, further calls being made to them ).  Not only that, but I frequently found that cars that were seemingly bargains ( by this I mean that they are substantially below market price )had "long since been sold" but not removed from their websites - thereby being a lure to generate 0870 calls to them.  When I complained to Aston Martin themselves, they stated that the use of 0870 numbers provided their dealers with a good marketing tool to ascertain who actually wishes to buy their cars.
How this works is anybodie's guess, but I forcibly made the point that if the dealers want marketing tools they should not financially penalise potential customers, but should fund the marketing themselves.

~ Edited by Dave: Thread title amended

Hi Marlin, welcome to Say no to 0870.

This seems to be the case with most car dealerships. In many cases I have found that the conventional geographical number is available of from directory enquiries services such as BT Phone Book. It is often the one which has been in service since the place opened as they don't seem to change them so as to force callers to phone the 084/087 non-geographical number (NGN). That's not to say that doesn't happen of course.

It is also commonplace to see a single dealership with different NGNs advertised in different places. This allows them to track what marketing is working.

In some cases the dealership is part of a chain and that company gives each one its own NGN and so too does the car manufacturer. Hence the dealer's own website might promote its NGN and the manufacturer's promotes another.

The dealerships and manufacturers are quite happy to allow the telephone companies to profiteer and some will be taking a cut themselves. They now have the choice of 03 numbers if they see it as a benefit to have call statistics, but they should pay for them.