I am astounded by the number of telephone switchboard operators that have no idea what you mean when being asked for a Geographical number.
Many will quite happily tell you that there is no other number other than the one the one that you have come through on!!!,you have actually just spent the last half hour searching for a number when our little saynoto0870.com Angel cannot provide one or you have been successful by other means.
The need to be even more devious than the companies/institutions that do not provide/publish them is really quite time consuming and often does not produce a result.
Many of these companies/institutions are kept afloat with our contributions to the treasury. That is especially so with HMRC,DWP and the Health Centres/Doctors Surgeries.
In this day & age of more and more people reverting to mobile phones,the making of simple and once "Bundled" calls is now an absolute minefield of potential exhorbitant expense and is only helping line the pockets of the mobile phone companies and the perpertrators of the exclusion of simple low cost telephone communications,the Geographical number.

TheMiffedRooster I am sure all of us here agree with your sentiments.

In my view the principal guilty party is Ofcom who have done as little as they possibly can over the years to educate the public about non standard priced numbers or to force telcos to actively advise the public when a call they are making is not part of their free call allowance.

Ofcom even allowed the 0844 and 0871 number ranges to be introduced alongside 0845 and 0870 when they had never had the same rate as local or national calls and they did this purely because of their weak as water protection of the citizen consumer and their constant cosying up to senior executives in the telecoms industry where many current Ofcom senior staff formerly worked. :o >:( :'(