http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/youandyours/

0870 Telephone Numbers
These numbers are often advertised as 'costing you the price of a national call'. In fact it will cost you much more than what most people pay for national calls, depending on your chosen tariff. Also, the company you're phoning often makes money out of your 0870 call to them.
Paraic O'Brien finds out more.

Listen again: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/youandyours/ram/youandyours_20041108_1.ram

Many thanks for these two urls Dave, extremely interesting, particularly http://www.freeweb.telco4u.net/rachelf. ; I always suspected that all these options and the long delays were somehow more than accidental!

Just before reading your post I went into the Ofcom site - not the easiest I have come across - but following the helpful advice provided on the first of these sites I can now ensure that my view is recorded correctly - and I would urge everyone else on this forum to do the same.  It was certainly interesting to hear in the programme the Ofcom rep making the right noises about this iniquitous premium rate service in all but name.

I have a small confession to make - I was the one who wrote to You & Yours, asking them to give this scam some exposure, following which I was contacted by their reporter (Pairac) a couple of times and we talked about the whole subject in some detail on the Thursday before the programme went out on the 8th.  I have also written to my MP, who is currently seeking an explanation from my daughter's university.

What a simply cracking site this is - and it also helped me to obtain the standard '01' number for the line in her room, thus bypassing this thoroughly nasty and exploitative practice.  I don't mind paying a reasonable rate for my calls, although now I can now make full use of our free One.Tel calls at weekends............

Keep up the good work, folks, let's hope this classic example of rip-off Britain bites the dust asap.

The Campaign sites have now been updated and allow you to submit your consultation responses more easily and quickly. (The Ofcom documents are very weighty and would take a long time to go through yourself.) Either of these sites help you to compile your own response much more quickly.

I think everyone that is annoyed by these 0870 etc. DPNs should send  responses to these consultations to show Ofcom just how many consumers there are that are annoyed by this problem. There are 2 responses to send. Don't foget to send yours!
http://www.freeweb.telco4u.net/rachelf ; (no ads) or 
http://0870abuse.tripod.com.