I've always been uneasy that they won't allow us to pay by direct debit which would give us protection in case if unauthorised debits from our accounts - a protection we don't enjoy whilst they charge our credit cards.

Brian

Martin Lewis of money saving expert has the phone number and posted this recently:

As most regular MoneySavers will know call18866 is my recommendation for rock bottom no-frills cheapest calls providers in the UK (see the Cheapest way to make calls article).

Yet 'no-frills' really means that, and it makes getting in touch with it a nightmare. As I have 'the phone-number' to get through and a number of issues have arisen I thought I would put them to 18866 so people know what's going on. Here you go:

ML Question: The other day the service was engaged when you tried to call? Are you struggling with capacity?

Answer: On 22 Feb we experienced a fault which affected some of our customers. This was due to part of the network of one of our providers being down. Unfortunately this fault lasted most of the day for some customers, but please be assured we do everything we can to prevent these sort of disruptions.

(ML note: One of the advantages of call18866 is that as it isn't a carrier pre-select service, where all your calls automatically go that way, if it doesn't work you can just not dial the pre-fix. If that does happen, and you're on an expensive BT package, you can access Telesavers at 1p/min to any UK number as a back-up, and you don't need an account for it)

ML Question. Are you facing capacity issues? Have you got too big? People are reporting this when they try to sign up.

Answer: Some new customers are having problems signing up due to capacity issues. We are working hard to expand our capacity but this takes some time and in order to keep the network available for our existing customers we sometimes temporarily have to decline new customers.

ML Question: AOL customers don't receive their e-mails, and therefore don't get their bills. What's being done?

Answer:The AOL issue is still ongoing. AOL has very strict policies and is not willing to budge. Unfortunately AOL has chosen to block our emails and this means customers point the finger at us for not responding. As a result we have been forced to not allow AOL email addresses when signing up. It is also not advisable to email us any questions from AOL addresses until this issue is resolved as our replies are being blocked by AOL.

(ML info: I've pushed AOL in the past about this personally, as i get so many e-mails about it. I know AOL are trying to sort it out and there has been dialogue between it and Call18866 (I gave it 18866's number, yet I think both sides need to try a little harder), slapped wrists to both. Full details on the AOL&Call18866 issue can be found here).

Hope this is useful

Martin

An email to him might get some info.

I won't touch them until they do Direct Debits

Quote:


There have been much advice(including on this forum) about the dangers of Continuous Credit Authority(CCA)

The main objection is that the onus is on the customer, rather than the card company, to sort out any problem with the firm concerned.

Even respected pundits like Martin Lewis earlier advised that you should only sign a CCA with a well known firm in which you have confidence – albeit he now recommends 18866.

Given the quote above, if you do have a ‘problem’ in the future, say if the 'organisation' behind 18866 went bust, who do you contact?

I recently saw your article, asking the question of whether or not I was behind 18866.

The Darren Thomas, chief executive of Blue Telecommunications is NOT the individual behind 18866, despite the fact that there is a simmilar industry and same name.  Blue is a provider of wholesale line rental services, least cost routing, and provides services o the corporate sector.

I have no knowledge of the other Darren Thomas, and should someone wish to contact me directly, this can be easily confirmed.


Best regards,
Darren Thomas

Hi,

The identity of the other Mr Thomas remains a mystery to me too.  It is, however, not unusual for a company to operate a number of services, of which least cost services is simply one.

It may be that they have a carrier agreement which allows them to be billed for usage rather than bandwidth.  Meaning that, if nobody uses their services, then they would have nothing to pay?  But of course if they have subscribers using their access code then they would receive a bill from the carrier, apply a margin/mark-up and then bill the end user.

Either way, good luck in your search for the other Darren Thomas.  When you have concluded your investigation, please let me know your finding.

Best regards,
Darren Thomas

In other words NonGeographicalMan,

since 18866 seem to provide an excellent, at present unbeatable service with accurate billing (and I would agree on those points from my own experience) does it really matter if we do not know the name of the individual or individuals running it? They probably have their own reasons for remaining incogneto. I would think if they were known overtly to BT for example they would get some undesirable attention!

I think this guy is probably right to remain low key. If I were in his position I would probably do the same. In the meantime if he continues to give me the current lowest call charges and accurate billing which I get I am well pleased.

Many companies offer very good deals, and take out lots of advertising.

What then happens is that loads of people take advantage of it, and they don't have enough staff to cope with the extra demand, and then can't spare their current staff to help train new staff, and so it all blows up in their face.

This of course leaves new customers with a bad impression of the company, and alienates current customers, who receive a lesser level of service than before.

Call18866 is probably happy to not have a large marketing department, and receive small amounts of new customers through word of mouth.

They sound like a small company which knows it's limitations.

As for operating from a PO BOX, as I believe, you can request from Royal Mail, at no charge the name and address of the owner or business of any PO BOX address.  Has this been tried in your investigation.

Being publicity shy does make this sound like a fly by night company though.  Fair enough, you don't want a call centre, but if you give a means of contact via e-mail, you should at least answer them!!

Quote:


They never answered any of my questions asking why they now charged more per minute than BT for 0870 calls and why they didn't simply not carry the calls to 0870 rather than do this.

They also never answered my query asking why they don't offer a CPS service.

It looks like you must have either asked a question to which they had a handy stock email answer prepared or may be your answer was in the form of one of the many FAQ scenarios displayed on their website?

Or may be you asked your question when they only had 500 customers rather than the current 10,000 customers?