http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2009/09/28/fury-at-helpline-rip-off-115875-21705874/

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Fury as companies continue to use premium-rate phone helplines

By Ruki Sayid  28/09/2009

Many companies are still ripping off customers and raking in a fortune with premium-rate phone helplines.

The giant firms were urged to switch from special-rate to low-cost phone numbers by watchdogs but most ignored the pleas.

A year after being named and shamed by consumer magazine Which? we found that banks, insurers and energy firms have failed to comply.

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Dave wrote on Sep 29^th, 2009 at 8:40pm:

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2009/09/28/fury-at-helpline-rip-off-115875-21705874/ << Fury as companies continue to use premium-rate phone helplines By Ruki Sayid  28/09/2009 Many companies are still ripping off customers and raking in a fortune with premium-rate phone helplines. The giant firms were urged to switch from special-rate to low-cost phone numbers by watchdogs but most ignored the pleas. A year after being named and shamed by consumer magazine Which? we found that banks, insurers and energy firms have failed to comply. […] >>

From your link :-
On average an 0870 number can earn a company 1.5p a minute.

£150,000
AMOUNT FIRM CAN EARN A YEAR FROM 0870 NUMBER WITH 3,000 CALLERS A DAY EACH HOLDING FOR 10 MINUTES

I thought the revenue sharing stopped on August 1st on 0870 numbers!


"Carphone Warehouse is still using the more expensive 0870 number at 10p a minute from most landlines."

Amazed that CPW are still using 0870, as don't THEY now get charged a ppm for incoming calls?

derrick wrote on Sep 30^th, 2009 at 11:16am:

From your link :- On average an 0870 number can earn a company 1.5p a minute. £150,000 AMOUNT FIRM CAN EARN A YEAR FROM 0870 NUMBER WITH 3,000 CALLERS A DAY EACH HOLDING FOR 10 MINUTES I thought the revenue sharing stopped on August 1st on 0870 numbers!

Looks to me like a journalistic error. Perhaps not realised that this was applicable before 1 August.


Note that rates quoted for 0845 and 0870 numbers are "around" that of Virgin Media's charges, i.e. 7 pence per minute for 0845 and 10 pence per minute for 0870.

This clearly deserves a letter to the editor of the Daily Mirror to demand that they run a further article correcting their errors and also suggesting they need to retarget their energies towards asking why some landline providers and most mobile providers and of course BT's Payphones division all still charge a large premium rate to call 0870 even though revenue share has now gone.  The Daily Mirror needs to be told that it should refocus its energies towards the activities of large call centres like those run by DSG Retail and Sky who have changed to using 0844 from 0870 to continue benefiting from revenue share.  Also the question needs to be asked as to when revenue share is going to be abolished on 0845 numbers given that these are still heavily used by the public sector and Ofcom's original justification that getting rid of revenue share on 0845 would damage the dial up internet industry is no longer in any way credible.

However as the recent minutes of Ofcom's NTS Focus Group show Ofcom's only real concern is about whether or not the negative PR it may get for continuing to deliberately featherbed the telecoms industry on 0845 call charges will eventually be bad enough for it to be forced to do something but needless to say that telco centric Ofcom will not do it just because it is the right thing for it do in the public interest. :o >:( :'(