Well as a new member I thought I'd put the cat amongst the pidgeons.

Why do you complain to the person / company providing the service ? Why don't you complain to your telco about the amount they charge to dial 08xx numbers ?

Fundamentally it all comes back to money, however I feel that many people writing on this site underestimate the cost to a business of funding and managing a large call centre environment.

I believe many people have also missed that customer service is crucial, and to enhance your service levels it is necessary to use Intelligent networks to handle traffic dynamically to maximise your opportunity to speak with a person. Whilst at the same time reducing cost to the business.

Now, I've seen that the DVLA is coming in for a lot of flak (disclaimer ; I have not and do not work for the DVLA) and on one of the messages somebody indicated that the estimate was £2m pa income from 0870, at best a guess I suspect.

However lets work on the principle that £2m is correct, that the money doesn't go in to the Chief execs holiday fund, it is put back in to the business. To help pay for the equipment and people with whom you deal. Now if that money wasn't coming in would you be happy to try and get through to 50% less agents with out dated telephone systems and perhaps only having a 1% chance of speaking with someone ?  I guess you'd say that as a government department the funding should come from central government, well I guess the question should be asked 'why should those people not wishing to speak with DVLA support the cost of you calling through additional taxes'. Likewise this arguement applies to all business, why should I pay additional bank charges to help fund people phoning the call centre when I do all my banking on the Internet ?

The arguement about international access could be turned on it's head, go whinge to the overseas telco's, it's not exactly difficult to open up the gateways. The tier one players in this country send out notifications to overseas administrations requesting access is opened on new number ranges, some of them do and others don't ... why ? Money, it's not profitable enough.

Well I've said enough for now other than my closing line for today : There is no such thing as a free lunch and I'll be dammed if I'm paying for yours. You want to use a service you pay for it, if you didn't drive you wouldn't ever need to call the DVLA. There's your solution saving about 20p on your telephone bill and £tens of thousands on fuels, Insurance, purchasing a vehicle etc etc and to boot you are doing something really useful like saving the planet from more CO2 emmisions.

I couldn't disagree with you more strongly. Of course commercial organisations have to make a profit. Of course government departments should be run efficiently.

But both of these tasks are difficult, particularly in a low inflation enviromment. Price/Tax rises are very hard to implement. Increasingly organisations try to achieve their goals by stealth with the explosion of 0870/0845 use being a prime example.

I believe the whole marketing strategy behind 0870 is based on stealth. No rational consumer is going to choose to pay 4-5 times the per minute cost of a call. BT chose not to compete or to develop wonderful products that people would pay for. Instead they reasoned that if they could not force consumers to pay high rates directly they would do so indirectly by kicking back something to organisations called by consumers.

Increasingly we see 0870 justified by saying that this merely covers the cost of the call centre. (DVLC, Barclays Bank)  This is complete nonsense. I run a retail business. I display the price of my goods and that is what my customer pays. That's it! Nothing else. What you see is what you pay. My price includes my overhead including telephone costs. If businesses wish to encourage efficient cost effective channels they can do it through differential pricing but then they have to indicate the price up front which they do not with 0870. A smart company would focus more closely on why people call and try to limit the need for people to call them.

I would not dream of trying to charge my customers for talking to me. Nor would I charge them for walking into the shop or for a carry bag or for a portion of the light bill.

If I put a price on my goods and then charged more for them because the customer talked to me I would probably be acting illegally and would lose customers rapidly. If I then charged customers even more because of the time they queued to pay for their purchase I would lose them even more rapidly. Then if they came back with a faulty product or to ascertain how something worked and I charged them even more money I would close pretty quickly. Yet this is exactly what organisations using 0870/0845 are doing. Furthermore the amount of the extra charge cannot be ascertained by the consumer until after it has been levied. Might be 10p might be £2.00.

Consider obtaining a credit report. Parliament limited the charge to £2.00. Some time ago (before I woke up to the 0870 scam) I held on for 20 minutes on 00870 to get my report. Thus costing me twice what parliament had intended.

No point complaining to BT. They are there to make money out of phone calls. The real problem is that the regulator allows 0870/0845 to exist outside the Ictis umbrella.

P.S. More excellent exposure on you and yours today.

Tungata seems to have no understanding whatsoever of the problem. We as consumers and customers did not want Call Centres in the first place! We prefer it the way it used to be when employees of companies who were actually working on the problem or issue were the ones we spoke to, when we telephone any company or organisation. In those days the employees actually understood what we were discussing. Now, Call Centre operators no longer properly understand the issue or problem. That is also another reason why the telephone calls are longer!

Call Centres were introduced purely for the benefit of companies and organisations, who thought (in most cases wrongly apart from the revenue now taken from customers via NGNs) that they would save them money. In many cases Call Centres are even factored out and the person answering and attempting to deal with the issue or problem does not even work for the company or organisation concerned. It is no wonder therefore that they do not understand the issue or problem, and even after the expensive telephone call there is no proper resolution!

So, you are quite wrong. Most consumers and customers do not like Call Centres at all. They would be much happier if they were all closed, never to return. Give us people who actually know the products, services, issues and problems, and work at the sharp end. To claim that Call Centres are expensive to run is perfectly ludicrous. Save the money by closing them and saving us having to queue to suffer them!

I agree with RBJ's points.

Tungata, it is nice to hear the other side of the story, and in a free and democratic society, it's good that although people like myself, and most other members strongly disagree with the 0870 scam, there are of course people who do justify paying.

Very few people enjoy being ripped off.  Just remember the call centres opened in the first place, and costed over thousands of jobs in local contact centres, to save money.  Why should we then subsidise this even further.

If you went to a restaurant, if the waiter came over, and said that you could stand up, or pay £1 to sit down at your table, you'd find it poor customer service.

However, you arguement would justify the response. Well, I prefer to stand up to eat my meal, why should I subsidise those who sit down!!

Absolutely Dave,

This is a signifcant part of the issue now. The revenue is being used to subsidise the overseas call costs and so effectively to subsidise the loss of UK jobs.

By the way Shiggaddi, they actually do what you are proposing would be quite stupid in a resturant, in many parts of Italy. If you want to sit down to drink or eat you have to pay more for the same food! If you want to sit out on the pavement tables the charges are even higher! They have a number of distortions like that. The locals all know this and stand up! Also in Italy if you hire a taxi they charge you extra if you put luggage in the boot. In parts of Greece they do this too! It really is quite crazy and is an earlier example of confusion marketing and deceipt which is exactly what this scam with revenue sharing NGNs is about.

There have always been confidence tricksters since the earliest days of mankind. It's just that some are more cunning and full of gile than others.

I've never been to Italy dorf, or Greece, but I was using an example that I didn't think would exist in the world!!  However Italians do at least have the choice.  I don't mind the odd engaged tone, or being put through to different departments, all because I choose to call a geographic number, rather than an 0870 number.

However, you still get put on hold, and keep getting through to different department (and now even countries!!) on 0870, so there is no "added value" to us the customer anyway!!

In fact if you're paying by the minute for a call, I'd rather get a few minutes of engaged tones, instead of listening to music.