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Message started by NGMsGhost on Aug 27th, 2010 at 2:56pm

Title: Cost of 084/087 calls from BT Payphones
Post by NGMsGhost on Aug 27th, 2010 at 2:56pm

Dave wrote on Aug 27th, 2010 at 2:07pm:
I have added this 0808 number to the entry for Cruse Bereavement.

The number is free to call from Virgin Mobile, Orange, 3, T-Mobile, Vodafone and O2 as it begins 0808 80. The Helplines Association provides these numbers to special organisations and these mobile companies agree to waive their charges:
http://helplines.community.officelive.com/mobilefriendlyfreephones.aspx


Good work Dave.  This should certainly help to focus the attention of their lady finance manager on the popularity and cost effectiveness of their 0844 number vs a cost neutral 03 prefixed number. ;)


Quote:
Just like many aren't aware of the high call charges associated with 0844 numbers, far more are unlikely to know that 0808 80 numbers are free to call from these mobile operators.


I absolutely agree with you Dave but we have useless and/or corrupt OfCoN (I personally favour the latter theory giving the lack of any significant restriction on most of their middle ranking policy staff on jumping straight back in to jobs in the telecoms sector) to thank for this along with the fact that certain 116 Europe wide helpline numbers now being introduced (eg the Samaritans) will be free to call from all numbers, some will only be free from landlines and some will have a fixed fee per call even on a landline.  The fact that BT does not have to make a pre connection call cost announcement for all non standard rated calls from BT Public Payphones or publish the prices of those call types in their Public Payphone boxes (apparently all 0844, 0845 and 0870 calls are actually now charged at one single 20p per minute rate and all 0871 calls at one single £1.00 per minute rate so there is hardly a space problem) is an utter disgrace as is the so called BT price list that currently also seems to be broken on their website (or at least on the link to it from the BT Payphones website at www.payphones.bt.com/publicpayphones/paymentprices.htm)  so that you cannot get the price of any non standard call. :o >:(

Turning back to Cruse any research must surely show that by far the largest percentage of the bereaved are actually aged 18+ with the largest segment being 30+ and with by far the most vulnerable group being single people (either the elderly and/or those who are not currently in a relationship or who do not have any children, especially if the deceased person was also their partner) who live on their own (who therefore have no support when they are at their lowest in the early hours of the morning which is almost always the worst time for anyone who is recently bereaved) so for them to target only the under 18s who are bereaved when most under 18s who are bereaved must normally be living with people who can provide some on the spot support seems like a nonsense to me.



~ Edited by Dave: Thread split off from Cruse Bereavement thread and retitled

Title: Re: Cost of 084/087 calls from BT Payphones
Post by Dave on Aug 27th, 2010 at 3:21pm

NGMsGhost wrote on Aug 27th, 2010 at 2:56pm:
… as is the so called BT price list that currently also seems to be broken on their website (or at least on the link to it from the BT Payphones website at www.payphones.bt.com/publicpayphones/paymentprices.htm)  so that you cannot get the price of any non standard call. :o >:(

The hyperlink you are referring to is:
http://www.serviceview.bt.com/list/public/current/Call_Charges_boo/3545_d0e5.htm#3545-d0e5

A few months ago, the BT Price List was moved from the serviceview.bt.com domain over on to bt.com/pricing which means that the new location is:
http://www.bt.com/pricing/current/Call_Charges_boo/3545_d0e5.htm

Perhaps you could politely point out to them that this link needs updating rather than simply moaning about it not working and attacking them with some sort of conspiracy theory as to why it doesn't work!

Title: Re: Cost of 084/087 calls from BT Payphones
Post by NGMsGhost on Aug 27th, 2010 at 3:52pm

Dave wrote on Aug 27th, 2010 at 3:21pm:
Perhaps you could politely point out to them that this link needs updating rather than simply moaning about it not working and attacking them with some sort of conspiracy theory as to why it doesn't work!


Are you saying that their vast and monolithic size also gives them an excuse to be totally incompetent on something as crucial as call pricing?  When their prices are as unreasonably high as they are for 084/7 numbers for BT Payphones surely it should be their duty to actively publish them in an easily understandable form and not mine to extract them like getting blood out of a stone.  All I can get from the redirect link is a few zip folders containing htm links that give me parts of pricing web pages.  This is not even a vaguely useable document.

Thousands of customers a day ought to need to be able to access their pricing list and their pricing manager should be monitoring that the information is accessible every day.

I have reported the matter using the officially listed complaints number for BT Payphones at ww.payphones.bt.com/contactus/bytelephone.htm of 0800 661 610.  What else exactly would you expect me to do beyond this?  I'm at a total loss to understand your suddenly hostile attitude when I thought we had just achieved a positive outcome for bereaved people needing to talk to Cruise.  Its as though you have suddenly turned in a moment in to rude DaveM (not to mention andy9) instead of polite Dave. :o :o :o

Or has this sudden change in tone by yourself something to do with me making a post in response to SCV's post about the RAC motoring forums?  I'm quite happy to absent myself from the forums again completely if you and SilentCallsVictim would rather have them entirely as a place for your own private personal discussions.

I also wonder whatever became of our forum moderator bbb_uk by the way?  Answering my own question I see he has made only a handful of posts since April 2009 although one of them was only a couple of weeks ago.  I wonder why this moderator suddenly seemed to lose interest in his job?  Did he perhaps find that he couldn't compete successfully with Dave?

Title: Re: Cost of 084/087 calls from BT Payphones
Post by Dave on Aug 28th, 2010 at 10:39am

NGMsGhost wrote on Aug 27th, 2010 at 3:52pm:
Are you saying that their vast and monolithic size also gives them an excuse to be totally incompetent on something as crucial as call pricing?  When their prices are as unreasonably high as they are for 084/7 numbers for BT Payphones surely it should be their duty to actively publish them in an easily understandable form and not mine to extract them like getting blood out of a stone.  All I can get from the redirect link is a few zip folders containing htm links that give me parts of pricing web pages.  This is not even a vaguely useable document.

BT is not "totally incompetent" in this matter as it has published the information, so it has gone quite a way to be competent.

I am also not sure what difference the size of the business makes on whether it has an "excuse" to make a correctable error in its pricing information (and links to it).



NGMsGhost wrote on Aug 27th, 2010 at 3:52pm:
I have reported the matter using the officially listed complaints number for BT Payphones at ww.payphones.bt.com/contactus/bytelephone.htm of 0800 661 610.  What else exactly would you expect me to do beyond this? …

I reported it to webmaster at BT.com.



NGMsGhost wrote on Aug 27th, 2010 at 3:52pm:
… I'm at a total loss to understand your suddenly hostile attitude when I thought we had just achieved a positive outcome for bereaved people needing to talk to Cruise.  Its as though you have suddenly turned in a moment in to rude DaveM (not to mention andy9) instead of polite Dave. :o :o :o

It's most probably a genuine mistake by BT. Get over it; everyone makes them.

Title: Re: Cost of 084/087 calls from BT Payphones
Post by NGMsGhost on Aug 28th, 2010 at 11:08am

Dave wrote on Aug 28th, 2010 at 10:39am:
I reported it to webmaster at BT.com.


I have also now reported this issue directly to BT Payphones Manager John Lumb and he has responded by email to indicate he will look in to the matter.


Quote:
It's most probably a genuine mistake by BT. Get over it; everyone makes them.


Sorry I just don't agree with you here as the BT Price List has very longstandingly been a deliberately impenetrable and hard to use document.  In the era of the internet there is no excuse for me to not just be able to enter a phone number I want to call and also specify the point of call origination (i.e. BT Payphone rather than BT Residential with such and such a price plan) and get a price per minute along with the connection charge.  I should not be expected to wade through a 100 page document that is no longer in a contiguous form but broken in to numerous random web pieces without any index to those pieces.

I am astounded that as webmaster of a site dedicated to stopping people being ripped off by 084/7 numbers that you should appear to condone such incompetent neglect of access by the public to price information about using BT's services.  Do you suppose that they would leave their web page allowing you to "Come Back To BT" down for more than a few minutes of the day?  No of course they wouldn't because it would cost them money.

There is no excuse at all for how hard BT makes it to get hold of prices for using its payphones (as I told you previously there are no prices published in the payphone box for 084 or 087 numbers or mobile numbers), especially when many of its rates to numbers other than those starting 01/02/03 are so unreasonably high.  If they were forced to publish them as actively as they publish their rate to call 01/02/03 numbers from a Payphone then I very much doubt they would be anywhere near as high as they are.

I really don't appreciate your tone with being told to "Get Over It" and so on when to my mind BT's repeated failures to make pricing inaccessible for numbers other than 01/02/03 are at the very heart of their whole scam with conning customers in to buying "Anytime" calling plans while not telling them that loads of numbers that they routinely call will not be included in the plan.

This website has already lost most of the original participants in its discussion forum due to the ambiguous commercial behaviour of the site owner and due to bad moderating in the past by DaveM when he used to be more active in the forum.  If you carry on with these abrasive comments towards forum members who share the same underlying campaigning objectives as yourself I would suggest that the site will very soon have almost no traffic at all.  As things stand the NonGeographicalChat section consists of only one page for the entire month of August.  This is way down on previous years.

Yours disappointedly

NGMsGhost

Title: Re: Cost of 084/087 calls from BT Payphones
Post by Dave on Aug 28th, 2010 at 11:53am

NGMsGhost wrote on Aug 28th, 2010 at 11:08am:

Quote:
It's most probably a genuine mistake by BT. Get over it; everyone makes them.


Sorry I just don't agree with you here as the BT Price List has very longstandingly been a deliberately impenetrable and hard to use document.  In the era of the internet there is no excuse for me to not just be able to enter a phone number I want to call and also specify the point of call origination (i.e. BT Payphone rather than BT Residential with such and such a price plan) and get a price per minute along with the connection charge.  I should not be expected to wade through a 100 page document that is no longer in a contiguous form but broken in to numerous random web pieces without any index to those pieces.

I totally agree with you that pricing information should be made available in a number of different forms, including online, both as some sort of easy to navigate list and a form which allows the user to enter a destination telephone number and point of call origin and it will tell them the price of that call, including any call set-up charges and any rounding on the duration and charge that may apply.

The "genuine mistake" I referred to was the fact that the hyperlink in question is now wrong; i.e. it doesn't go to the correct page. Hopefully this will be rectified soon, following our communications to alert BT to this error.



NGMsGhost wrote on Aug 28th, 2010 at 11:08am:
I am astounded that as webmaster of a site dedicated to stopping people being ripped off by 084/7 numbers that you should appear to condone such incompetent neglect of access by the public to price information about using BT's services.  Do you suppose that they would leave their web page allowing you to "Come Back To BT" down for more than a few minutes of the day?  No of course they wouldn't because it would cost them money.

If someone/some-body makes a mistake, and this is drawn to their/its attention, and it is corrected, then I see no need for condoning a genuine mistake.



NGMsGhost wrote on Aug 28th, 2010 at 11:08am:
There is no excuse at all for how hard BT makes it to get hold of prices for using its payphones (as I told you previously there are no prices published in the payphone box for 084 or 087 numbers or mobile numbers), especially when many of its rates to numbers other than those starting 01/02/03 are so unreasonably high.  If they were forced to publish them as actively as they publish their rate to call 01/02/03 numbers from a Payphone then I very much doubt they would be anywhere near as high as they are.

I've covered the accessibility of the pricing above.

I put this quote in because you have a bee in your bonnet about the "unreasonably high" call costs of 084 and 087 numbers and have made this abundently clear in many of your postings. Yet, despite being in an era of mobile phones, you make no mention of the fact that a call to a mobile telephone will cost three times the cost of a call to a 0844/0845 number!

I must say, I think it's excellent that BT Payphones provide large discounts on calls to 01/02/03 numbers.



NGMsGhost wrote on Aug 28th, 2010 at 11:08am:
I really don't appreciate your tone with being told to "Get Over It" and so on when to my mind BT's repeated failures to make pricing inaccessible for numbers other than 01/02/03 are at the very heart of their whole scam with conning customers in to buying "Anytime" calling plans while not telling them that loads of numbers that they routinely call will not be included in the plan.

Which numbers BT's customers routinely call has nothing to do with BT as a call originator. We cannot have a situation where numbers that carry a premium are included in packages (as zero fee) because all that will happen is the cost of those packages and using the telephone in general will rise and more businesses will jump on the 084/0871/2 gravy train.

Title: Re: Cost of 084/087 calls from BT Payphones
Post by NGMsGhost on Aug 28th, 2010 at 12:25pm

Dave wrote on Aug 28th, 2010 at 11:53am:
Yet, despite being in an era of mobile phones, you make no mention of the fact that a call to a mobile telephone will cost three times the cost of a call to a 0844/0845 number!


Well I certainly mentioned it in my email to BT's Payphone Manager cc'ed to members of their Executive Board as that was the last bad experience I had with a Payphone in July when I had a flat mobile battery and my £1 scarcely lasted long enough to give my friend the payphone number to call me back on from his mobile (he has extensive free bundled minutes).  I tried to find out the cost of calling a Vodafone mobile before making the mobile call but the operator on 100 couldn't tell me and I didn't get through to customer services even after holding for 10 minutes.


Quote:
I must say, I think it's excellent that BT Payphones provide large discounts on calls to 01/02/03 numbers.


It merely demonstrates the complete absurdity of their current pricing regime from BT Payphones when other regular numbers people need to call like bus enquiry lines cost 9990% more per minute to call than an 01/02/03 number.


Quote:
Which numbers BT's customers routinely call has nothing to do with BT as a call originator. We cannot have a situation where numbers that carry a premium are included in packages (as zero fee) because all that will happen is the cost of those packages and using the telephone in general will rise and more businesses will jump on the 084/0871/2 gravy train.


But what we can have is a situation where people who just want line rental without any bundled minutes (many of them may only want the line for broadband) can obtain it at a cost that does not cross subsidise customers who make lots of calls with BT or especially families who make large large numbers of minutes of calls per month.   Why should the elderly widow or the young single person who almost never make any calls cross subsidise those who make a lot of calls?

It is complete and utter rubbish for you to claim which numbers customers routinely call has nothing to do with BT as it has everything to do with their pricing strategy and their efforts to make formerly local rate business numbers in to an overt and/or covert premium rate class of numbers that cost a fortune to call (especially from BT Payphones).

Title: Re: Cost of 084/087 calls from BT Payphones
Post by Dave on Aug 28th, 2010 at 3:13pm

NGMsGhost wrote on Aug 28th, 2010 at 12:25pm:

Dave wrote on Aug 28th, 2010 at 11:53am:
Yet, despite being in an era of mobile phones, you make no mention of the fact that a call to a mobile telephone will cost three times the cost of a call to a 0844/0845 number!


Well I certainly mentioned it in my email to BT's Payphone Manager cc'ed to members of their Executive Board as that was the last bad experience I had with a Payphone in July when I had a flat mobile battery and my £1 scarcely lasted long enough to give my friend the payphone number to call me back on from his mobile (he has extensive free bundled minutes).  I tried to find out the cost of calling a Vodafone mobile before making the mobile call but the operator on 100 couldn't tell me and I didn't get through to customer services even after holding for 10 minutes.

The prices of the most common call types should be advertised in call boxes. They include the cost of:
  • geographic calls and calls to 03 numbers;
  • calls to mobile numbers with the main five network operators;
  • calls to 0500, 080, 084 and 087 numbers.



NGMsGhost wrote on Aug 28th, 2010 at 12:25pm:
But what we can have is a situation where people who just want line rental without any bundled minutes (many of them may only want the line for broadband) can obtain it at a cost that does not cross subsidise customers who make lots of calls with BT or especially families who make large large numbers of minutes of calls per month.   Why should the elderly widow or the young single person who almost never make any calls cross subsidise those who make a lot of calls?

Why should they indeed! I was drawn to this campaign in 2004 when the BT Standard tariff was abolished.

Having previously been on BT Together in its infancy when all calls were charged on a per minute basis, I moved back to BT Standard in 2003 when short evening and weekend calls increased.

BT Standard was essentially the pre-competition tariff and therefore did not cross subsidise those on inclusive packages. Its removal, therefore, came about as a result of the opening up of the telecommunications market.

On BT Standard, during the daytime a local call cost 3.95 pence per minute and a national call was 7.91 pence per minute. These calls attracted a minimum charge of 5 pence and were billed to the next whole second.

With today's pricing, a local call is always more expensive than on BT Standard; that's a minimum of 11 pence more which applies to calls lasting 59 seconds or less. A national call is more expensive for anything up to almost six minutes and only becomes cheaper after that.

Come October, local calls will be anything from 13 pence more expensive (for 59 seconds or less) and national calls will be cheaper when the call length reaches almost eight minutes.



NGMsGhost wrote on Aug 28th, 2010 at 12:25pm:
It is complete and utter rubbish for you to claim which numbers customers routinely call has nothing to do with BT as it has everything to do with their pricing strategy and their efforts to make formerly local rate business numbers in to an overt and/or covert premium rate class of numbers that cost a fortune to call (especially from BT Payphones).

With the opening up of telecommunications services by different operators, it is now no longer the case that the person or organisation being called is with BT; he/she/it could have any one of a number of telcos as their provider.

That provider levies a different fee on the caller's provider, depending on what type of number the call is being made to. What's more, the caller's provider can be any one of a number of providers, yet you are referring to BT, rather than originating providers in general.

But as you do only make mention BT (as call originator), I should point out that BT's pricing is regulated with 084, 0871/2 and 09 numbers to a very low level. So I'm not sure what your point is.

The "formerly local rate business numbers" you refer to are 0845 ones and cost no more than a local call (and sometimes less) with BT. There is no premium, that only applies to originating other providers which you make no mention of.

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