It seems that everytime I phone a company, doctor, council, government service, travel agent, electricity supplier, etc. I find that I am increasingly having to dial an 0870 , 0845 or more recently 0844 number. Even small suppliers with less than 5 employees are on the take with 0870 and 0871 numbers.

The only normal numbers I dial now are with friends and family and of course mobiles.

My phone bill is getting bigger even with the use of 18866. In these days of technology the price of phone calls should be going DOWN not UP.

Are people stupid, don't they realise what is going on here?

There is a major conspiracy happening.

Even great consumer champions like Watchdog and Which are on the bandwagon.

This site is great but things just get worse all the time. It's cheaper for me to dial the USA, Canada or Taiwan than call my doctor who is 100 yards away.

Wake up England.

Companies are doing this because they can and OfCOM are doing nothing to stop them because if they did then most government departments would lose their revenue.

I find this amusing from OfCOM website:-

Quote:

Now reading the above, in just what way is OfCOM helping us in allowing the increasing use of these numbers?

Quote:
You would be surprised at just how many people still believe that 0845/0870 are local or national rate.  It took OfCOM nearly a year for them to admit that these descriptions are misleading.  I believe (but not sure) that their consultation finished in January where they admitted the descriptions were misleading.  Yet we are in June now and they still haven't done nothing.  I'm sure I read that it will be August before they force companies, etc to publish the actual cost of these calls.  That's a whopping 8 months after their consultation ended.  Just what they are upto is beyond me!?

Quote:
You hit the nail on the head there.

Quote:
I, like so many others, were not aware of their consultation.  I was only aware of it after reading this site but at that time it was too late.

If OfCOM don't make it public that they are doing a consultation (except for on their website which isn't the most looked at site and not to even mention it isn't really user friendly), then how can people write and complain, etc?  I would have been one of those that put in a complaint to them had I had known of their consultation.

I believe OfCOM are just as guilty (if not more) than the ever increasing number of companies using these numbers.

Oftel before them and Ofcom subsequently have consistently claimed that they "have had hardly any complaints" about these scams! It is all part of their strategy. The truth is they have been FLOODED out with complaints, both from the public and from MPs etc.

The whole thing is a game which they are playing. They do not intend to do anything objective about these scams, nor have they ever intended so to do. The government does not want the revenue-generating racket with queuing to end, because they are now making vast amounts from it. Also the increasing percentage of NGN calls carried by BT and the increasing revenue generated from this is the very reason that Ofcom corruptly assisted BT and removed the data stating BT's share of this, using what they called "redactions" in the publicly-issued version of their last consultation on these issues.

As I have posted hereon previously, if the trend continues soon almost all of the numbers which UK consumers need to call will be NGNs, and competition will be effectively stiffled back to where things were prior to so-called privatisation. This was BT's original strategy to reclaim their previous monopoly, and with the help of corrupt "regulation" it is working.

Firestop, the problem I believe is that now the only assault which could be made against these scams would require vast amounts of money, to firstly publicise the details and raise widespread awareness of the campaign, and secondly to actually take action against the corruption which is at the root of it all in the courts and with the European central court.

You would be fighting an effective syndicate which is now making a vast amount of money every year, and they have a vested interest in the continuation of these abuses. They will fight extremely hard to maintain the status quo and have large sums of money to do so. Then you have the vested interest of the government, who are collecting large amounts of "stealth tax" out of these scams; they control Ofcom.

So you can see that since it is unlikely that it would be possible to raise the sum of money needed to fight these abuses effectively it is very difficult to see any way that can now achieve an end to them. Either you need the large amount of money necessary to expose the scam widely and then fight it in the courts, or you need an end to the corrupt form of government which we now have, which allows and encourages the abuses to proliferate. (People get the governments which they deserve - and vote for!)

I would suggest that we can only continue to do what we are doing but try to do it better. If everyone who wants to fight this added a signature to their e-mail stating the brief details of the abuses (e.g. "0870, 0871, 0845, 0844, 070 and other non-geographic telephone numbers are being used as PREMIUM numbers with queuing, costing you 100s of times what calls should cost. Complain to Ofcom"), that would help to spread the awareness. Then if everyone who wants to fight it put up a site on internet publicising the scams, so that many sites came up on search engiines, that would help. The other key thing is to cease to do any business with companies who abuse NGNs (such as using 0845, 0870 and 0871), and to write to them stating why you are not doing business with them any longer, or at all. Also communicate with any companies you are already locked into a situation with via e-mail or letters only and state why you are doing this.

If everyone who wants to fight this did all of these things it would at least begin to more vigorously address it, and as awareness grew it would have more effect, growing exponentially.

That is all we can do at present I believe. When the proportion of numbers which are NGNs has increased to 90% or so (relative to GNs), which it will, then I believe that will open up new opportunities to contest these abuses on the clear grounds of them having destroyed free and reasonable competition. At that time I believe it will become possible to do something effective. The only question is how VOIP will affect this progression. However the other issue is that more and more of these abused NGNs are being extracted from having a specific associated GN termination which can be used if discovered. This I believe will eventually affect the usefulness of saynoto0870 as a means of circumventing paying the premiums.

MSE Martin did say fairly recently on his site that he was thinking about getting a petition up about 0845/ 0870,and asked for response to his idea.