Quote:

The regulator has allowed this rip-off to carry on for the benefit of private telecoms companies. Both consumers, and companies such as yourselves using these numbers have been unaware of the unfolding scam. If companies don't want to remove non-geographical numbers completely, then I would urge them to print both geographical and non-geographical numbers as a short-term measure.

I would also like to suggest that your company responds to Ofcom consultations on this matter and that it makes its opinions known to the regulator. It may be worth pointing out that there are an increasing number of consumers who are expressing their dissatisfaction regarding the company's 084/087 number(s) and that they were put into place in good faith, ie that they wouldn't cost the caller any more that a normal call.

However, you acknowledge that your customers locally had to pay national rate. Why disadvantage those? At the time of local/national divide, this not only included customers within the same code area, but those in neighbouring ones. The only advantage this had was (and still is when you consider 0870 vs 0845) that the caller subsidises the NTS more with 0870.

The issue consumers have is that these numbers are, by definition, premium rate and should be moved to the 09 prefix to make this clear. Would your company be happy with this?

Quote:


My real aversion to 0870 numbers started last summer when BT forced me to go onto "Option 1". For this, I effectively have to pay an extra £3 a month. BT advertise this as being oh so good because I get up to an hour in the evening for 5.5p. Yet many of the calls I make are to businesses, whose NGNs are excluded from the inclusive package. So while I am continuing to pay the same "national rate" for 0870 numbers, I'm also paying extra line rental to BT for a service I can't use. (Have you ever noticed that the BT ads always show people chatting to their family or friends; they never show someone making an order from a company or booking tickets, or complaining to a utility company - things eveyone does in the real world).

While I have some sympathy for small-medium companies such as yours, calls to whom probably only last a couple of minutes so don't cost much extra in the evenings or weekends, some larger companies do tend to hold people in queues for a long time, which is very expensive.

I also agree that having to change your stationery would be costly. But how about listing a geographical number on your website as an alternative, while continuing to keep the 0870 number for the time being? You could also give the geographical number to anyone who requested it. Next time you need to order some new letterheads, they can include the new number. (If that's in a few years' time, then fine).

Seeing as the purpose of your use of NGNs isn't to generate profits, I presume you'd be perfectly happy if Ofcom were to remove the revenue stream, and allow 0870 numbers to be charged the same as geographical numbers.

My advice for any company which is seeing customer complaints on this issue is to make sure that at the next printing cycle of their company stationary they do put geographical numbers - i.e. plan for it now - since the old stationary will take a while to use up - and if they are seeing a trickle of complaints now imagine what a flood of complaints and rate of loss of customers they will be getting in 1 year time, 2 years time etc.

I'd just like to thank everyone who has replied to my comments for doing so. In my time, I've been a member of forums where anyone who dares to challenge popular opinion is shot down immediately. It is refreshing to find the arguments for and against this matter being discussed and people's opinions changing based on what new people "bring to the table".

I would first like to say that you have clearly updated my company's numbers since the last time I looked on this site several months ago- quoting them word-for-word from the letter that I have composed to inform our customers of these numbers. However, some are still correct- one going to a specialist department that would be of no use to most people. i'll be discussing this with my superiors tomorrow, and will see about verifying these. Again, I must remind readers that I am operating outside of my company's authority.

I'm glad to see that there are people on this forum who understand that different companies went to 0870 (and 0845) numbers for differing reasons, and that small-medium businesses chose them primarily for the functionality of the phone systems they provide, and not for the revenue that they generate.

This leads directly to my next point, something that I have discussed with my colleagues at work today. It seems that the revune we "earn" from the 0870 lines is pretty much the same as the costs to run the lines. which I'm sure will lead to comments such as "why should the consumer have to pay this?"

Nothing in life, or in business at least, comes for free. If the costs of running call centre phonelines did not come from the revenue earned by the phone lines, then it would have to come from elsewhere in the company, which would mean either higher prices for products, or cost-cutting elsewhere which would perhaps lead to a poorer quality of service.

I read a post on here about Direct Line's response to the 0870 issue, and I hope no-one will mind if I use them as an example.

Say, for instance, they got rid of their 0870 service, changing it to a freephone number, or perhaps a comeplte rehaul of their phone systems and advertising to account for their various regional call centres to be advertised and orgnaised separately as different local numbers. However, as a result of these changes and the new costs of running these new lines, the cost of their insurance increased by 10-15% for every policy holder, thus eliminating the prices and promises that they have been able to keep all these years. This is perhaps an extreme example but it is a possible outcome, begging the question of what is better for the customer- a self-perpetuating phone service, or increased cost/loss of service elsewhere in the company.

I know that my superiors are in constant contact with various telecom providers, OFCOM/OFTEL and their own superiors pretty much every day at the moment trying to work out how best to resolve the matter and not suffer the costs to our products or service. It is not an easy decision to make but one thing I'm sure of is if we're doing it, you can be sure numerous other companies are doing it too.

I would also like to respond to the constant reference to 0870 as a "scam". While it is true that until recently consumers were unaware that money was being made off these numbers, it was also only fairly recently that the increasingly competitive telecoms industry meant that customers started being charged more for these calls than to a geographic number.

It does really seem that for some people (and I really do not mean everyone who posts on this site) it is merely a complaint that 0870 costs stayed the same while everything else got cheaper. I agree that the numbers need to be re-classified, but as customers were historically not being over-charged for this service, I fail to see how it can be considered a rip-off or a scam.

While reclassification is one answer (although I agree with NonGeorgraphicMan about these numbers to be included as national calls in talk plans/packages), I don't think that they should be reclassified as "Premium Rate"- 7.5ppm is still a far cry from £1 or £1.50p/m.

I would also like to leave you with one final point, one which is based on a direct example of one of our customers. He too complained that he was being ripped-off by our phone numbers, until it was learned that the phone company he was with, whose cheap call package seemed so tempting compared to what BT were offering, was actually charging him extra to call our number. This wasn't our charge. It wasn't BT's charge. It was a charge added by his new call provider, clearly there to cover the costs of his cheap calls to local/national numbers.

Like I said, nothing in business comes for free- the money has to come from somewhere...

Quote:


The reason that BT are now cheaper (at a glorious 7.51p per minute which has only gone down 0.4p per minute in 10 years) than most of their competitors in the weekday daytime for 0870 numbers is because in the name of so called deregulation and competitition Ofcom has now allowed the main telecoms company with Significant Market Power (SMP) in the uk telecoms marketplace, namely BT, to charge its competitors more for terminating 084/7 calls than it charges for terminating calls originated from BT's owm customers.

Ipso Facto this means that customers of other telcos have to pay more than BT customers for making these calls but the extra profit is mainly going to BT or Cable & Wireless who now charge other companies more to terminate them than they charge themselves.  Yet the customer blames the other company for the extra call cost and if anyone then rings BT customer service to complain they cheerfully offer to abuse their "terminate other" CPS power and to reconnect you forthwith to good old cuddly BT.

Why do you think it is that even www.call18866.co.uk who only charge me 1p for each 01/02 geographic call I make (no matter how long it is) now have to charge me 9p per minute (plus 1p connection) for an 0870 call?

It is not because they are a ripoff phone company or because they want to lose my business on these calls but because the call costs to them are so much more than an 01 or 02 calls that they have to charge this much just to make the same profit margin.

How else do you think that companies like yours can earn up to 4.5p per minute for receiving 0870 calls and where exactly do you think the other 3p to 5.5p per minute is going (depending on originating call provider)?  Well that other 3p to 5.5p per minute is usually falling straight into the hands of cuddly old BT or Cable & Wireless.

No wonder BT sales & marketing has worked so hard for so many years to make 0870 into the monster that it has become.  A monster so big that even the more corporate & social responsibility minded BT main board has now finally become frightened of it and wants to kill it off.