Dave wrote on Jan 10^th, 2014 at 7:41pm:

[quote author=Snagglepuss link=1329771905/9#9 date=1389354375]01482 407407 - No answer but this was the number I got when called.[/quot]I've just found out from looking at the Tesco Store Locator that the 0845 branch numbers have been replaced with their 0345 counterparts

Thats a good start. :) They actually only publish 0345 numbers for bigger shops, convenience type stores etc are still listed with 0345 numbers. They havent got around to altering till reciepts yet , my local extra store number is on the store list with an 0345 number but still shows 0845 on its recent  till receipts.

I have just checked a few in East Sussex (Eastbourne Extra and Kingfisher Drive Metro) both are listed with 0345 numbers, BUT the Express stores still give 0845 numbers.

Perhaps this is a tide turning at Tesco? I will give it a week or so and re-check the others and see what has happened.

:)

Is that because the number hasn't yet changed, or because the entry on the website hasn't been updated?

There's a number of smaller stores listed with 03 numbers. There's no pattern to what has changed and what has not.

What's the evil-corporation conspiracy theory on this one then?
Just waiting for someone to say that if they really wanted to do this, it would all have been done in one day...

IanG I am not sure who your reply was to...

I think that as long as they are changing ALL of their contact numbers ie: Stores, Optical, Tesco Direct, Bank etc to geographic or geographically charged numbers then that's good.. if it takes a few weeks or months then fine.. as long as ALL of them are changed

:)

EDIT: Following on from my previous post.. I decided to check a few additional area's that I know have Extra or Superstores and so far ALL have 0345 numbers where as the local Express or smaller stores still have 0845 numbers.  I would therefore assume it's a phased process.

Good Morning All!

Following my previous post I have now checked ALL my local Tesco store's including the Express and Metro store's and they ALL now have 0345 numbers!

It would now be worth others on here checking if their local store's inc Express and Metro have also changed.

Well done to Tesco Store's so far!

:)

A further update: It would appear that the "contact us" page has also been update for "most" of the Tesco divisions including Store Customer Service and Tesco Direct with 0800 numbers for land-line and 0330 numbers for Mobiles.

So far excluded are: Tesco Phone Shop (0844) and Tesco Mobile (0845)

More info: http://www.tesco.com/help/contact/

All stores changed their number to the matching 0345 number on 6 Jan 2014.

It took a week for all of the entries on the website to be updated:
http://www.tesco.com/store-locator/uk/asp/towns/?l=L&t=LONDON

Just to confirm I have just looked up the number for the very newly opened Tesco Express store in Dorking (Dorking has been virtually unique up to now in being a completely Tesco free town only served by Sainsbury, Waitrose + a tiny M&S) and it is an 0345 number.  I then checked all my other nearby stores that have been open much longer and they are also all now showing 0345 contact numbers.

I suppose Tesco realised the writing was on the wall with the forthcoming EU Directive's implementation and that they would have to change by next year anyway so why not do it now and get some credit it for it rather than wait till the end and start to get unwelcome media attention as one of the UK's largest retailers.

So there does seem some hope that the big names will simply change all their numbers rather than try to get clever and bring in 0345 for customer service but keep 084 for any other form of telephone enquiry.  I expect their legal advice is you can't differentiate where customer service ends and technical support or similar starts.

Of course Tesco may actually have decided to change for marketing reasons given that their sales are now falling and one of the reasons for this is I think that they have become very complacent about offering good customer service and/or value for money on many of their food lines.

I also feel sure that their customer care statistics cannot have been at all short of regular customer complaints about the high cost of telephoning them.

CJT-80 wrote on Jan 15^th, 2014 at 11:10am:

So far excluded are: Tesco Phone Shop (0844) and Tesco Mobile (0845) More info: http://www.tesco.com/help/contact/

Tesco Mobile do have an 0800 number for Sales.  So their customer service side seems to be the main place still left to change.   I wonder if this will take a while yet given that I suspect their phone operation is actually a franchise run under their label by somebody like Phones4U or CarPhoneWarehouse.

NGMsGhost wrote on Jan 16^th, 2014 at 4:26pm:

Tesco Mobile do have an 0800 number for Sales.  So their customer service side seems to be the main place still left to change.   I wonder if this will take a while yet given that I suspect their phone operation is actually a franchise run under their label by somebody like Phones4U or CarPhoneWarehouse.

Tesco Mobile is a 50:50 joint venture between Tesco and O2.

Dave wrote on Jan 16^th, 2014 at 4:34pm:

Tesco Mobile is a 50:50 joint venture between Tesco and O2.

Well O2 appear to have a longstanding love affair with 084/7 numbers like all the big mobile firms so this may take Tesco a while yet to unscramble.

In any event it seems I spoke far too soon in my thanks to Tesco for the new 0345 numbers as I have now tried using the listed number for the Tesco Reigate Road store of 0345 6102872 and on each occasion it rings once or twice but is then hung up on me.  I am not clear if this is being done automatically or by a person and as it costs me 5p every time it happens I am not going to keep on ringing to find out. :( :'(

So it seems Tesco have quite some more work to do yet to get their new 0345 numbers functioning properly.

NGMsGhost wrote on Jan 16^th, 2014 at 4:47pm:

In any event it seems I spoke far too soon in my thanks to Tesco for the new 0345 numbers as I have now tried using the listed number for the Tesco Reigate Road store of 0345 6102872 and on each occasion it rings once or twice but is then hung up on me.  I am not clear if this is being done automatically or by a person and as it costs me 5p every time it happens I am not going to keep on ringing to find out. :( :'(

Both 0845 610 2872 and 0345 610 2872 return unobtainable when called from a BT landline.

Dave wrote on Jan 16^th, 2014 at 4:53pm:

Both 0845 610 2872 and 0345 610 2872 return unobtainable when called from a BT landline.

I don't have an Anytime landline calling plan or a mobile with thousands of free minutes (as you would seem to do) so unfortunately did not test the 0845 number variant.

In any event the phone was definitely answered rather than ringing unobtainable when called via www.18185.co.uk

Of course I may well soon be joining you in the land of Anytime Call Plans or 2,000 minute mobile allowance given Ofcom's recent announcement on the impending removal of BT's obigations to offer Indirect Access and Carrier Pre-Selection.

Good old Ofcom we know we count on them to always fully discharge their principle duty under Section 3(i) of the Communications Act 2003 ::) :o :'(

See http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showthread.php?t=1894107

Yesterday evening I needed to call Tesco in a hurry about an Online Grocery order that I was possibly not going to be able to at home for when it arrived.  I was only able to call from a mobile (Tesco as it so happens) phone and the call was urgent as I had to decide whether or not I could cancel the delivery rather than make a 2 hour drive home to be there in time.

On the main web page for Tesco Online Grocery shopping at http://www.tesco.com/groceries/ the only phone number listed at the bottom of the page is 0800 323 4040.   I was concerned that even though I have a contract mobile with 750 minutes of calls that the conniving mobile bandits might find a way to not let me use these minutes to a free 0800 number.  This is even though these minutes include all normally payable 01/02/03 numbers.  I do understand that calls to 0800 numbers on mobiles are not currently free.

I therefore visted this website's (www.saynoto0870.com) home page at www.saynoto0870.com and entered the Tesco Grocery number of 0800 323 4040 in the Search To Find Alternative Number box.    On doing so the only single Verified entry returned was for "Tesco.com" and showed both the 0800 number I had entered and an 0845 alternative.  There was no listing at all of either an 01/02 or an 03 geographic number that I could be sure was in my call package.

In a hurry and desperation I called this 0800 number and discovered if I was not at home Tesco simply took my shopping back to base and did not charge me for either the goods or the delivery fee.  Their only comment was one should not do this too often or Tesco might refuse to make future grocery deliveries.

Today I had more time to think about the call charges and so checked my Tesco Mobile online account only to find to my horror I had incurred charged of £0.17 and £1.32 for calls that were respectively 50 and 396 seconds long to the 0800 number.  This suggests a 20p per minute call rate for calling 0800 numbers on my call package compared to approximately 1p per minute for the bundled 750 inclusive landline/mobile minutes (if we assume 1p per minute for those calls and £2.50 per Gb in my 2Gb monthly data allowance).  I found this totally unacceptable given that when I called the 0800 number with Tesco Mobile there was only a warning that the call was not free and that I needed to recall it removing the initial zero.  There was no warning at all that 0800 calls were not even covered by my call bundle for chargeable calls.

I rang Tesco customers services and told them I thought it was despicable to charge for calls to 0800 at 20p per minute when these were cheaper than 01/02/03 to call (i.e. always free) on a landline and therefore surely also cheaper for Tesco Mobile to originate as the called party paid for a part of the call.  I asked not that the 0800 calls be free but only that they be covered by my 750 inlclusive minutes.  Grudgingly they agree to refund the charge on the basis of the misleading announcement about pricing not mentioning that 0800 calls were excluded from call bundles and me never having called an 0800 number with them before.

However on visiting the Tesco Contact Us page at www.tesco.com/help/contact/ just now I discover that they do actually have an 03 alternative number there  for the 0800 number for Tesco Groceries of 0330 123 4040

Can I therefore please request as a matter of urgency that the Verified entry on this site for Tesco.Com is updated to include the 0330 123 4040 number that will be covered by any inclusive calls package on a landline or a mobile.  The current entry is very unhelpful to mobile users by encouraging them to call either an 0800 or an 0845 number when neither of these numbers is likely to covered by a mobile phone inclusive minutes calling package. :o :( :'(

Hi NGM.Out of interest why didnt you use someone like www.0800buster.co.uk if you knew that 0800 calls were chargeable. Its not as if they dont make clear in their Tariff Guide.

bigjohn wrote on Feb 11^th, 2014 at 8:25pm:

Hi NGM.Out of interest why didnt you use someone like www.0800buster.co.uk if you knew that 0800 calls were chargeable. Its not as if they dont make clear in their Tariff Guide.

I have only recently (as in two weeks ago) switched to having a contract mobile phone (one month contract SIM Only) with Tesco Mobile so I am not in the habit of having lots of free minutes that can be used to call 0800 numbers in this needlessly circuitous manner.

As I thought I made clear I was in a hurry and had very little time left to decide whether or not to stay where I was for another day and cancel the delivery from Tesco (if it was possible) or to drive home in order to be be there for the arrival of the delivery driver.

I went to the main page for Tesco online shopping.  I annoyingly only found the 0800 number there and I consulted this website (which is well aware of the problems with 0800 numbers and being chargeable from mobiles) who still only listed an 0845 alternative for the Tesco Online 0800 grocery number.

In then feeling I had no alternative but to call the 0800 number I was surely in no different a position to the one that 99% of ordinary mobile phone users would be in rather than the 1% of expert money saving geeks who inhabit this website and go to endless handsprings to avoid the normal telco ripoff that most ordinary phone users suffer every day.

We all know why 0800 numbers have not historically been free to call from mobiles (i.e. their own high call rates on pay as you go could then be circumvented) but not to make them inclusive calls in a bundled minutes package when they are cheaper to connect for the mobile network than 01/02/03 numbers is surely inexcusable. :o >:( >:( >:(

EDIT:-  I have added the 03 number for 0800 buster to my mobile phone address book but life should not have to be this devious or complicated in order for the customer to get a fair deal.  Especially as Tesco has now switched to 03 numbers so should be directing any of their customers who need to call them from a mobile to use the 0330 instead.  Not least because this will also save Tesco money........

NGMsGhost wrote on Feb 11^th, 2014 at 7:53pm:

I therefore visted this website's (www.saynoto0870.com) home page at www.saynoto0870.com and entered the Tesco Grocery number of 0800 323 4040 in the Search To Find Alternative Number box.    On doing so the only single Verified entry returned was for "Tesco.com" and showed both the 0800 number I had entered and an 0845 alternative.  There was no listing at all of either an 01/02 or an 03 geographic number that I could be sure was in my call package.

The 0845 number is the old number — Tesco replaced them. It was possibly a few months back when I updated the listings with the new 0800 numbers.



NGMsGhost wrote on Feb 11^th, 2014 at 7:53pm:

I rang Tesco customers services and told them I thought it was despicable to charge for calls to 0800 at 20p per minute when these were cheaper than 01/02/03 to call (i.e. always free) on a landline and therefore surely also cheaper for Tesco Mobile to originate as the called party paid for a part of the call.  I asked not that the 0800 calls be free but only that they be covered by my 750 inlclusive minutes.  Grudgingly they agree to refund the charge on the basis of the misleading announcement about pricing not mentioning that 0800 calls were excluded from call bundles and me never having called an 0800 number with them before.

The prefix 0800 3234 is allocated to BT. Referring to the BT Wholesale Carrier Price List - Section B1: Telephony and downloading the spreadsheet which is part 1.06 Non Geographic Call Services gives the termination rate. This says that the cost of termination by the mobile operators to BT freephone numbers is nothing. So BT doesn't pay the mobile network and the mobile network doesn't pay BT.



NGMsGhost wrote on Feb 11^th, 2014 at 7:53pm:

Can I therefore please request as a matter of urgency that the Verified entry on this site for Tesco.Com is updated to include the 0330 123 4040 number that will be covered by any inclusive calls package on a landline or a mobile.  The current entry is very unhelpful to mobile users by encouraging them to call either an 0800 or an 0845 number when neither of these numbers is likely to covered by a mobile phone inclusive minutes calling package. :o :( :'(

The 0330 numbers were not shown on the Tesco contact page when I last looked at it (IIRC) a few months back. They have now been added to the listings.

Requesting that this be done "as a matter of urgency", emboldening and underlining the paragraph does not affect the speed at which this is done, although it does stand out from the rest of the posting.

Dave wrote on Feb 12^th, 2014 at 12:27am:

The prefix 0800 3234 is allocated to BT. Referring to the BT Wholesale Carrier Price List - Section B1: Telephony and downloading the spreadsheet which is part 1.06 Non Geographic Call Services gives the termination rate. This says that the cost of termination by the mobile operators to BT freephone numbers is nothing. So BT doesn't pay the mobile network and the mobile network doesn't pay BT.

So in other words there is absolutely zero moral excuse for Tesco and/or O2 (Tesco Mobile is a 50/50 joint venture between the two) not allowing calls to be made to 0800 numbers out of a caller's bundled minutes on a Contract Mobile, even if they may have a slight argument that they can reasonably charge calls to 0800 on Pay As You Go phones at the same rate as an ordinary call to an 01/02/03 number until such time as Ofcom mandates otherwise.  They charge 20p per minute to contract customers with remaining bundled free minutes purely because they think they can get away with it and even though connecting a call to an 0800 number is a lower cost action for them than connecting a call to an 01/02/03 number. >:(


Quote:

Requesting that this be done "as a matter of urgency", emboldening and underlining the paragraph does not affect the speed at which this is done, although it does stand out from the rest of the posting.

I regard the matter as urgent purely because of the very large number of daily callers to Tesco's online grocery shopping service and because of the fact that Tesco Mobile itself fails to warn customers not just that calls to 0800 numbers are not "Free" but also that they are not even covered by a caller's bundled minutes package that does cover 01/02/03 numbers.

We all know the huge amount of effort you personally put in to this site Dave but equally we also know that you prefer to retain almost total control of it and not to share the burden of the work involved with other long term members of this forum.  For instance in relation to the Geographic Requests you could long ago have broken up the work of responding to posts and making changes to the database say A-D, E-H, I-L etc across different established forum members who were willing to volunteer.

You and the owner of the site choose not to do this so sadly this means all the work falls on you but nonetheless some of the rest of us who have passionate feelings on this subject do not like to see customers continue to be encouraged to call a well used number that will cost them significant money (20p per minute or more) from a mobile when a call bundle inclusive alternative number (03s not strictly speaking being geographic numbers) is available.

I also note that I once again did not receive a post update email for this thread despite being subscribed to it even though I do receive some post update emails from this forum.  This is despite whitelisting saynoto0870.com with my ISP's spam filtering service.

I have also written jointly to the CEO's of both Tesco and O2 (given that Tesco Mobile is a 50/50 joint venture) both drawing their attention to my disquiet over their failure to take 0800 calls out of a customer's bundled minutes package and specifically stressing the need to urgently complete the corporate migration of the Tesco brand to only using 03 prefixed phone numbers by changing the remaining 084 customer service and other similar related numbers still in use by Tesco Mobile for calls from landlines (they provide a free number for calling them from a Tesco Mobile - at least for contract customers they do anyway) over to an 03 prefix

I was telephoned this morning by Luke, who is a senior IT or project manager of some kind, and who is overseeing the process of migrating Tesco's phone numbers to 03, including their presentation on the Tesco website.

He says that the main online grocery shopping page that only currently shows an 0800 contact number at the bottom will be changed in due course to also show the mobile friendly 03 number but this may take a while yet as this particular page is "hard coded" rather than the pricing information coming from a database that can easily have its content amended.  I got the impression the individual 03 store numbers were all contained in a database of some sort that then populated web pages so was not difficult to change in the way this 0800 number was.

Regarding the Tesco Mobile 084 numbers he said a business decision to change these to 03 had been taken but it was a longer process with different timings as it was under the control of the Tesco Mobile business who also work with O2 and operate independently from most of the rest of the main Tesco stores grocery and online shopping businesses.  For this reason they might not change until this summer closer to the regulatory requirement for them to do so.

So in essence the war on discontinuing use of 084 numbers at Tesco has been won and we are supposedly simply waiting for the final pieces in the jigsaw puzzle to drop in to place.  Other forum members will probably recall that at the BBC the full conversion of all their contact numbers to 03 has also been a long and drawn out process.

NGMsGhost wrote on Feb 12^th, 2014 at 3:55pm:

I was telephoned this morning by Luke…

That is excellent news, and good communications. After very many years of hard work (which I joined relatively recently) the message is at last being understood widely.

It is deeply frustrating that it has taken so long, and full implementation will take longer still, with some exceptions likely to continue, perhaps for ever. It is however wonderful to read postings such as the above in this forum.

I have also now received an email from the email address of ceo.customerservice@tesco.co.uk written by Scott in response to my earlier email to the Tesco CEO, Philip Clarke, on these issues.

He largely confirms the points made by Luke, but instead in writing, as well as responding to another one that I had mentioned regarding the message currently received when dialling an 0800 number from a Teco Mobile SIM card that "calls to 0800 numbers are not free" and to instead redial omitting the zero if one still wants to go ahead.  My point was that the message was misleading since it merely implied 0800 calls were not completely free calls as they are on a landline but does not make it clear that 0800 calls are not even covered by inclusive minutes bundles to 01/02/03 numbers that many Tesco Contract or Pay As You Go customers may have available to them.

All in all given John Lewis's extraordinary and quite uncharacteristic own goal in adopting 084 numbers long after their use had achieved pariah status I am beginning to get the impression that someone senior at Tesco has seen an opportunity to steal a march on one of their main rivals (since John Lewis not only compete head to head on some of the Tesco Extra product offering in televisions and electricals and clothes but also compete directly with Tesco as a grocery store as Waitrose) by becoming the good guys and switching over to 03 numbers ahead of most of the commercial high street competition.

Over at the John Lewis Group both the main www.johnlewis.com and www.waitrose.co.uk now seem to go out of their way not to provide any Contact Us option on their home pages (unlike Tesco where the Contact Us link can be easily found) and to instead advocate that you communicate with them via Twitter or on their Facebook page.  However there is an Our Shops link on the John Lewis home and a Find Your Branch link on the Waitrose home page both of which lead to a postcode or town finder that list your nearest stores.

Strangely Waitrose stores are all still shown with normal 01/02 geographic numbers for each store but all John Lewis stores continue to show customer alienating and aggravating 0844 numbers even though their old geographic numbers must still exist and could easily be switched back to at the drop of a hat.  It seems that the current CEO of John Lewis (Andy Street) is more concerned about not having to pay the penalty clause to exit their current 0844 number agreement than he is about not upsetting the company's normally extremely loyal band of regular shoppers.  This seems odd given that Mr Street has spent all his life with the group and is not an incomer from another conventional commercial retail group.  So he ought to understand why it is simply not on to rip off his customers with covert premium rate numbers, the high charges for which the company currently rather disingenuously tries to blame on a customer's own choice of mobile or fixed line telephone provider.