NGMsGhost wrote on Jun 2^nd, 2009 at 5:00pm:

My position that there is nothing unacceptable in principle with premium rate telephone services remains unchanged. I acknowledge that many members do not share this view. Any hidden charge for any service is unacceptable and there are many cases where telephone service providers and users of premium rate services are not sufficiently transparent. In general terms it is the matter of transparency that I would seek to address.

Taking the political angle, in the commercial sphere I believe that regulation should demand transparency about charges for services rather than prohibiting use of the premium rate / revenue sharing mechanism.

My primary campaigning efforts, which I am delighted and keen to see exceeded by others, are focussed on the public sector. It is unacceptable for any service that is thought or said to be taxpayer-funded to benefit from revenue share, as the cost of this must be carried by service users.

I shamelessly aim to apply my energies to those areas where they may have the greatest effect. I encourage others to join me in my efforts and am delighted to work with those who may share common objectives. I have no interest in who is leading; some may be moving more quickly and some may have got further down the road than others, that is all.

Perhaps our biggest difference is that I infer no sinister motivations on the part of those who work for organisations involved in the rip-off.

NGMsGhost wrote on Jun 3^rd, 2009 at 12:10am:

For an understanding of my spiritual position, I can commend the words of John Lennon in "Revolution". I do not share the wholly politically anarchist creed of "Imagine" (why do so many non-anarchists claim to hold to this creed?), but the guy had a lot of things right.
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NGMsGhost wrote on Jun 3^rd, 2009 at 12:43am:
I am broadly in agreement with the points made, however I see the possibility for progress being made by separating out the issues in two respects. Firstly, according to level of agreement that may be readily secured and secondly, according to the practicality of instigating change from the imperfect world in which we find ourselves to the slightly less imperfect world that we may be able to achieve.

The greater controls on accessing NTS or PRS to make them acceptable that SCV seems to espouse (such as PIN number protection specific to different users of the phone line in order to be able to access them) could long ago have been introduced if Ofcom had wanted to.

The only reason they are not introduced is because the whole of this industry is reliant on the covert nature of these charges in order to continue to exist.  If the charges were made overt then by and large most people phoning the services would not be prepared to pay the current charges being levied to call these phone numbers and/or political or customer pressure would lead to the abolition of the additional charges.

The 070 hospital bedside phone lines used by Patientline are a case in point.  Ofcom originally proposed moving them to the 06 number range so they could not be confused with mobile phone calls but after Patientline went bust and Hospedia came on the scene Ofcom were told that the whole scam system could not carry on unless patients continued to be deceived about the cost of calling the hospital bedside numbers that was inherent in the use of the 070 range instead of the 09 range on to which calls to bedside hospital phone lines should always have been required to be allocated at the rate that was being charged.

But when Ofcom was told this they soon rolled over and agreed to allow these hospital lines to remain on 070 with no warning to anyone calling of the high cost of the charges or their non inclusion in mobile phone bundled minutes (instead being charged at a very high rate from mobiles).  This proves that the whole 084 087 and 070 industry is reliant on conning the public about the level of phone call charges paid.  I also do not approve of 09 numbers in their current form without further security measures (eg user specific PIN protection and a limit on the value of each individual 09 call and the total daily value of 09 calls that can be made) as they usually seem to rely on distorted consumer choices from individuals when they are drunk or lonely late at night (see Sky channels in the 900 range and the 09 numbers they advertise at £1.50 per minute).  By and large 09 numbers rely on scamming the technically illiterate (most of whom can't afford £1.50 per minute) as most technically literate people would have access to the internet and be able to access the same kinds of services for free or for far much lower amounts of money.

I am all for the free market but only when the market is properly competitive and only when consumers genuinely know what they are required to pay for a good or service before they buy it.  This is why solicitors and their covert methods of billing and failing to keep customers properly updated with total costs during the course of a case again seem to be unfair, immoral and highly anti competitive.

Wow Did this thread take a turn to the left

@ rapidremap

...If your alarm system does not have Police response then you do not need the remote reset facility. For systems incorporating confirmation technology, the client at the alarm control equipment may restore unconfirmed alarms conditions without any reference to the Alarm Receiving Centre; refer to clause 10.1 of BS8473: 2006. i.e. only alarms that have been or could have been passed to the police require a remote reset...Its true you can look it up.

I agree that if you are calling a company to resolve an issue that may have been caused by them ie if you have a complaint, you should not have to pay for the privilege. For customer service centres I support the use of geographical numbers, however consider this, the ADT monitoring centre, or any monitoring centre, is not a typical customer service call centre

They are an ALARM RECIEVING CENTRE Their purpose is to monitor and react to signals recieved from your alarm system including life safety alarms such as fire and personal attack/panic alarms and the calls you make to the centre from time to time for administrative issues are not really part of the service you have paid for i.e. the monitoring of your alarm system.

You also are going to get the service you pay for. Consider why you chose to remain with ADT as your supplier? was the price a factor? You want ADT to provide free calls to their monitoring centre? Be prepared to see your monthly subscription increase significantly (you know, so you can contribute towards everyones calls to the monitoring centre) You want ADT to employ enough staff so that your calls can be answered immediatly? How much are you prepared to tag on to your subscription for that? (although Im going to agree with you that 10 min on hold is completely unacceptable)

At least you have a choice to move to an ADT competitor or do without the service they are offering

naysayer wrote on Sep 27^th, 2010 at 4:33am:


Well that seems clear enough so either you must support ADT using an 080 or an 03 number for customers or possibly both (depending where one is calling from - landline or mobile)

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Utter tosh and bunkum.   ADT took over my mother's small independent local alarm company and ADT now both service her alarm and provide the monitoring for it.  The expensive servicing contract is complete nonsense as her alarm type means they make unnecessary servicing visits every 6 months and yet the only servicing that ever takes place is the walk test (which an end user could do themselves to check each detector is still detecting) and changing rechargeable batteries in the main control panel or the two sounders and they all have batteries good for around at least three years life.  The unnecessarily frequent servicing just takes advantage of the fact that at the time her alarm was made the British Standard for alarms hadn't changed to let it be less frequent than every 6 months, even though her mid 90s Scantronic alarm uses quite robust electronics and charging systems.

So my point is that monitoring and servicing are interlinked.  A badly serviced alarm can cause false alarms to the monitoring centre.  So it is rubbish to claim that monitoring can be divided from correct servicing and maintenance (and the latter is an area where mistakes can be made by the alarm company).  Also companies will not monitor alarms that are not also being serviced on a set schedule.  Also ADT try to avoid doing maintenance if the customer doesn't notice.  I was there when my mother's alarm was last "serviced" and both I and my mother could tell one of the two sounder bells was not working as we know the usual sound.  But the ADT guy didn't spot this as he didn't go out and walk around to each alarm as it was sounding as he should have done.  So a replacement sounder would not have been fitted if the customer had not intervened to ensure the ADT person did their job properly.  Speaking of which when I tried to get a fire detector added to my mother's system at what was meant to be an original £75 (the quote from the alarm servicing guy) she was then later visited (when I wasn't there) by a sales guy who tried to claim her whole alarm system was out of date and in need of replacement and her current one couldn't take a fire detector.  

This was a complete lie (as confirmed by the next servicing guy who said her control panel had three free sensor points) but the net result was that she didn't get the fire sensor installed so her home might burn down completely if there is a fire while she is not there.  All because ADT was greedy, as large companies are, and tried to replace a system that worked perfectly well.  Justified cause for complaint and not on an 0844 or 0871 number I would have thought?

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So now you do seem to support the scam 0871 number used by ADT for alarm activations and either 0844 or 0871 for manual customers service calls.  The argument you get the service you pay for could be used as an excuse for every £1.50 per minute 09 number in the land.  Whereas in reality those calling 09 numbers are usually going to be drunk, stupid or stealing from the bill payer (sex chat lines) or desperate and/or stealing from the bill payer (technical and legal advice lines).

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I'm sorry that is totally untrue. I have particularly looked in to getting competitive quotes for alarm  monitoring and it is near impossible.  There is no confuse.com and no comparethemeerkat.com and in fact no one the industry seems to want to allow you to move.  They just want you to remain with them as a captive customer (as you are if you need your alarm monitored) without being able to shop around.

ADT should charge enough for what is anyway an uncompetitive monitoring rate that you cannot shop around on so that there is no need for them to use anything other than standard rated 01, 02 or 03 numbers.  Your argument that you only get what you pay for is a standard card carrying 084/7 number using scammer's approach.

Dave wrote on Sep 27^th, 2010 at 9:59am:


Hear, hear.  They already charge annual monitoring fees well in to the hundreds of pounds.  To say that this cannot incorporate the cost of one call or less per annum from those customers about an actual alarm activation to the receiving centre is complete and utter nonsense.

ADT_Engineer wrote on Nov 4^th, 2010 at 9:32pm:

Hello and welcome to SAYNOTO0870.COM.

Up until 1 August 2009, the way 0870 numbers operated meant that all users received a subsidy from callers, which is why telephone companies charged more for the calls. As you can see, and as you know, ADT has been using 0870 numbers for many years, and was therefore a user in the days when they carried the subsidy.

Sadly, following these changes, many telephone companies still levy a premium on callers (within their retail prices) even though they no longer pass on a premium when connecting with the receiver's telephone company.

I am quite surprised that ADT has not done what many others have done and simply switched to other premium number ranges, 0844, 0845 or even 0871. As it stays on 0870, it no longer gets subsidy from customers via their telephone bills. This is exactly the same position it would be in if it switched to 03 numbers, but customers wouldn't incur a premium because telcos aren't allowed to charge 03 calls above the price of 01/02 calls on each respective tariff.

So why doesn't ADT simply switch to 03 numbers to alleviate the issue? It wouldn't cost it more and it could be carried out during routine engineer visits.