There is probably no point in me trying to set it all out again for this website when the sequence of events that led to a lady called Ramla Sirat at PhonePayPlus assuring me that 0871 numbers were only charged by the organisation that I was calling at "National Call Rate" is also recorded in the below email to PhonePayPlus's Chief Executive, Paul Whiteing.

If PhonePayPlus's own employees labour under the misapprehension that 0871 numbers are "only national rate" then what hope at all is there that they will ever manage to persuade those call centres who use these ripoff numbers to observe their own regulations about publishing the call cost of the number in any advertisement and also to observe the requirement to give the estimated length of any automated queue on the number when the call is answered.

As a result it appears that bodies like the Lawn Tennis Association and Seetickets will continue to ripoff those who need to call them on the telephone with impunity. :o >:(

Here is the email I sent to Paul Whiteing at PhonePayPlus.


Quote:

-------- Original Message -------- Subject:      Poor Call Handling and Misinformation About Aegon Championships 0871 Number Call Costs Date:      Mon, 07 Jun 2010 18:09:49 +0100 To:      pwhiteing@phonepayplus.org.uk CC:      mpemberton@phonepayplus.org.uk, roger.draper@lta.org.uk, bruce.philipps@lta.org.uk, otto.thoresen@aegon.co.uk, iain.black@aegon.co.uk, sales@seetickets.com, workwithus@seetickets.com, nigel.nathan@eco.co.uk, emma.wellman@eco.co.uk, alistair.graham@phonepayplus.org.uk, robert.chilton@phonepayplus.org.uk, lord.marshall@queensclub.co.uk, michelle.oldham@queensclub.co.uk Dear Mr Whiteing, Poor Training & Behaviour By Complaint Line Adviser Ramla Sirat re Complaint About Aegonchampionships/LTA/Seetickets 0871 Phone Number With No Required Price Disclosure and Long Call Queue I am writing to you in your position as Chief Executive of the premium rate phone line regulator (PhonePayPlus) to complain in the strongest possible terms about the apparent lack of adequate training of and poor customer attitude displayed today by one of your complaints call centre staff called Ramla Sirat. My reason for wanting to contact PhonePayPlus by phone today was in connection with a phone number of 0871 231 0829 shown on the AEGON tennis Championships (being held this week at London's Queens Club) Booking site web page to be found at www.lta.org.uk/Watch/AEGON-British-Tennis-Series/AEGON-Championships/   This number is shown on the AEGON Championships website without any indication of the call cost not being that of a standard geographic rate phone call.  There is also a further 0871 phone number (0871 871 9809) shown for car parking with www.eco.co.uk at Earls Court on another page of their website at www.lta.org.uk/Watch/AEGON-British-Tennis-Series/AEGON-Championships/About/Venue-Information/ where again no indication of the non standard call cost associated with an 0871 numbers is given. I initially logged a complaint about this number on your website last night (Sunday 6th June) indicating that the www.aegonchampionships.co.uk website did not give any indication of the non standard call charges for their own 0871 booking office number but after calling the number today to try to obtain ticket information about ticket sale on the gate and/or resale tickets sold on the gate after 5.30pm I found that the call was answered by an automated call queuing system which told me to wait for an adviser but did not give me any indication of the non standard nature of the call cost at 10p per minute.  Then after I had been kept waiting for 4 minutes and 30 seconds an adviser did finally come on the line but as they were based at the office of Seetickets in Leicester she told me that they had no information about tickets sold on the gate at the ground and also did not know why their 0871 number was in breach of the regulations over call cost disclosure.  I therefore asked to speak to a supervisor about these issues but was then placed on hold listening to music for a further five minutes at the end of which no supervisor had yet come on the line.  At this point I hung up on the call and decided to telephone PhonePayPlus's 0800 call complaints line, whereupon I ended up speaking to Ramla. Later this afternoon I discovered from a phone call to an official at Queen Club that the actual booking office at the ground can be contacted about ticket availability on the gate on 0845 8739462 but this number is not being advertised on the www.aegonchampionships.co.uk website and the 020 number I obtained for Queens Club itself to get this 0845 number for the booking office was only available through a link that Google found to me a supposedly members only part of their website as Queens Club does not choose to show a phone number on its public website and nor does it list a number in the West Kensington area of London with Directory Enquiries.  So I am at a loss to know how the public at large are actually supposed to get hold of this lower cost 0845 number that gets through to ticket staff at the ground instead of at Seetickets in Leicester.

                                                                                Continued In Next Post/...........................

Quote:

My complaints about the way in which Ramla handled my complaint today are as follows:- 1. Although I believe I made it clear to her that I had already reported this matter on your website but now wished to add to my complaint the fact that the company also did not announce the cost of the call when its automated call equipment answered my call Ramla told me that I would have to post a copy of the advertisement containing the 0871 number to you before my complaint could be investigated.  I therefore asked her why she had made such a requirement when the advertisement I objected to was on a website which PhonePayPlus could view electronically and when my complaint about the lack of information about the call price on the phone line and the length of the queue could only be substantiated by calling the 0871 number in question.  I also complained that the ASA did not make it compulsory for a complainant to provide a copy of the misleading advertising they were complaining about.  Ramla simply claimed in response that this was "standard procedure" but her entire attitude towards me as a complainant throughout the call was smug, arrogant and dismissive as though I was being a nuisance and I did not at any time feel that I was not treated as though I was a valuable information resource to PhonePayPlus to help it ensure that regulatory standards were being adhered to. 2. At this point Ramla incredibly went on to tell me that 0871 phone numbers were "national rate numbers" and when I assured Ramla that they had never been charged at such a rate she then went on to claim that some 0871 numbers were charged at 8p per minute and that this was the same as BT's "National Rate".  In other words Ramla seems to be completely mistrained about the nature of 0871 call costs and the fact that their regulation was transferred to PhonePayPlus by Ofcom specifically because their call cost was considered to be a form of premium rate.  It was as though Ramla was an employee of a telephone company that sells these NTS numbers to call centres and that deliberately peddles the lie that they are "National Rate" when they are not. 3. Finally when I indicated to Ramla my total and utter dissatisfaction with her misdescription of the cost of calling 0871 numbers and asked for her name she would only give me her first name and refused to provide her surname.  Yet when I called your switchboard to ask who I could complain to about her behaviour they happily told me that her last name was Sirat.  It does not therefore appear to be official PhonePayPlus policy for staff to withhold their last names. As you may know from my previous responses to ICSTIS consultations on its 0871 regulatory proposals I do not regard your current rules about 0871 numbers as in any way adequate since they do not ban call queuing on these numbers and do not provide for automatic substantial fines for those who deliberately fail to provide advance call cost information or who cynically allow long queues to accumulate but here I had a legitimate complaint about the cost of the 0871 number not being published in accordance with your regulations and yet still your call adviser did not take my complaint seriously and lied to me (either through deliberate mistraining or due to personal ignorance that is not acceptable in someone undertaking this job function) about the call costs of 0871 numbers by claiming they were National Rate. Since all of PhonePayPlus's income is provided by the organisations who attempt to scam the public through operating premium rate numbers I have always been deeply sceptical that you would be able to do your job properly in the way that a regulator that is not commercially in bed with the industry that it allegedly controls could and this incident seems to show that my fears in this regard are indeed well placed. I would therefore be most grateful if you could investigate why Ramla does not seem to have been properly trained to handle calls about 0871 numbers that do not provide the required call cost information to consumers (including the fact that Ramla claimed during the call that 0871 numbers were only charged at "national rate" and also attempted to obstruct my complaint by demanding that a copy of the advert needed to be posted to PhonePayPlus) and also investigate my specific complaint against the operators of the aegonchampionships.co.uk website and/or www.Seetickets.com website or www.lta.org.uk websites in terms of failing to provide the required call cost information about the AEGON Championships booking line on 0871 231 0829 or the www.eco.co.uk car park line on 0871 871 9809. I look forward to hearing from you about this matter in due course. Yours sincerely,

Three months is more than enough time for a thorough investigation by PPP and a comprehensive reply to your complaint.


What was the result?

catj wrote on Sep 13^th, 2010 at 11:42pm:

Three months is more than enough time for a thorough investigation by PPP and a comprehensive reply to your complaint. What was the result?

A message was added within 24 hours to the Aegon Championships website to show that calls to the 0871 ticket line number were charged at 10p per minute at all times.   This did not happen for the other 0871 number on their website for a line run by a car park company instead of by SeeTickets (who ran the ticket booking line).

The telephone ticket booking line was also found to be in breach by not having a message indicating calls cost 10p per minute at the outset or any indication as to the likely current length of the queue (typically around 5 minutes) before getting through to an operator.  However the scamsters at Seetickets alleged not to be able to get the necessary software development done to fix this problem during the remainder of the Queens Tennis.  So they got away with it on the basis of bland promises to sort it out for the future and were not fined a penny piece by PhonePayUseless.

Basically companies running 0871 numbers break the rules all the time and all they get is a polite letter from PhonePayUseless asking them to change the message on the line to comply but as PhonePayUseless are clearly in bed with the scammers and never impose any fines on even the most hardened of scammers running these lines (of which Seetickets is certainly one since they cannot claim to be new to the 0871 phone line business) so they just carry on regardless.

In other words the whole control of this industry is as shockingly and quite pathetically hopeless as I forecast that it would be in my response to PhonePayUseless's original consultation on this subject prior to the transfer of responsibility of 0871 numbers from OFCoN. :o >:( >:( >:(