pw4 wrote on Jan 23^rd, 2006 at 12:15am:
Well unless it's changed but last time I called a 07 PNS number there was NO price indication at all.

Going by Patientline (I can't comment on other providers) I agree they do publish the cost of the calls on the little credit size type cards available at the hospitals but it is small print (as you pointed out) and I believe that it would be very easily for an older person to just read the 07xx number out without even thinking of reading the cost of the call out (whether they could see it or not).  Whereas had Patientline used a 09x number then most (if not all consumers) are aware these calls are expensive and that revenue sharing is in operation and more importingly that the cost of the calls has to be announced at the beginning of the call and things like call queuing, etc are not allowed.

Patientline using their 07x number have bypassed all the safeguards that an 09x number would bring us (including clearer price transparancy).  As mentioned in previous posts, Patientline have technically broken all rules with regard to using 07x numbers.  The main one is that 07 PNS numbers are not meant to have revenue sharing in operation and the revenue sharing is passed to the telecom company that provided the number to allow free transfer of calls from one location to another at the request of their customers (the end-users).

Now Patientline have purposely gone out of their way by becoming a 07 reseller so they could purposely collect the revenue sharing from it which would not be possible if they used normal methods of using an 07 number (ie an end-user like you and I would).  This is obviously deceitful and ofcom's lack of authority in this case just confirms how useful ofcom actually are in enforcing regulations currently in place.

As mentioned in a previous post by me, if Patientline weren't out to be deceitful then why have they gone well out of their way to use a 07 PNS number and not a 09x number (even an 09x that cost the same as the current rate of the 07 PNS number)?  Simple.  To avoid the high consumer/patient knowledge that 09x are premium rate and to avoid all the consumer protection guidelines in place for 09x numbers.

Instead they have gone out of their way to become a PNS reseller and therefore use numbers and gain revenue from it just as a PNS reseller are allowed to do whereas a normal PNS end-user customer (ie me) would not gain any revenue from the call.  A 07 PNS reseller are only allowed to gain revenue so as to provide a free facility of diverting the 07 number to multiple locations at either no cost or a low cost to the end-user and hence the reason why a normal user of an 07 PNS number cannot gain any revenue.

This to me leads me to question just how honest Patientline (and other similar providers) actually are!

Yes our friends David Currie and Stephen Carter at Ofcom seem to have shown that they can lean on senior staff further down the organisation to not do anything to inconvenience the finances or policies of the government which appointed them to their jobs.  I am sure the same thing will happen over 084/7.

Ofcom's signing off of Patientline's continued use of 070 so long as they make them direct dial to the patient bedside is nothing short of shameful.

070 numbers are meant to be numbers you can keep for life and redirect wherever you want (the number should even be portable from one PNS provider to another if you aren't getting a good deal with the current one), whereas a Patientline 070 is just a number that Patientline assigns to you while you are in hospital.  So far as I am aware you cannot take it away with you after you leave hospital and continue to use it to direct calls to any uk or overseas landline or mobile of your choice.  Yet at the rates charged by Patientline that is certainly what you should expect to be able to do and in fact the k PNS rate which provides all such facilities is significantly cheaper than Patientline, especially at the weekend when it costs less than one third the Patientline weekend rate.

Dave wrote on Jan 23^rd, 2006 at 1:03am:

Well, quite - there seems to be no difference. Unless perhaps to explain the apparent contradiction in trevord wrote on Jan 23^rd, 2006 at 1:45pm:



Quote:
They are consecutive. Originally, TV was charged per hour. This was abandoned - ironically in view of the question - because patients often doze off with the TV on, and their credit used to get used up hour by hour whilst they were asleep.

Surely in the public wards they don't let people watch Patientline tv 24 hours a day do they?  Isn't there an enforced night period where the tv screen service isn't available so it doesn't keep other nearby patients awake?  I suppose the radio service could be 24 hours as long as people used headphones.  Also isn't the real truth on the free hour of tv that the only free hour is the one free hour in the morning that everyone gets free and no one pays for as that hour is not an hour of chargeable service?

Lastly when Patientlne used to charge by the hour how much per hour did they used to charge?

trevord wrote on Jan 23^rd, 2006 at 12:56am:

Don't know, but Patientline's, I would imagine.


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Again; don't know, or even whether they asked first or the usage was approved in retrospect.


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I don't doubt it was Patientline's choice. I can find no information about Patientpal, but the other two companies both appear to use 070, except in the case of one hospital in Scotland which is 09111.

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Yes. Telling you the cost and much else presumably. And that was part of Ofcom's investigation.

pw4 wrote on Jan 25^th, 2006 at 1:09am:


So no patient ripoffs are any longer taking place at Redhill then it seems?

Quote:
In our local hospital anyhow the TV's can be watched 24/7 if the patient wants to.  The reason for this is that you can only listen to the TV/radio with the headphones on so therefore other patients are not able to hear your TV/radio.

The 24 hours starts from the time you start your TV by pressing 'buy' as mentioned by pw4.  In other words if at 18:00 I press the buy button obviously after buying their rip-off cards then at 18:00 the following day the TV will switch off again until you press buy again.

trevord wrote on Jan 23^rd, 2006 at 1:45pm:

8am - 9am


pw4 wrote on Jan 25^th, 2006 at 12:43am:

Your information is correct, I was wrong. The TVs do come on at 8am. But the patients can turn them off.


Quote:

In general the TVs can be used 24 hours a day. The loudspeakers are switched off at night so headphones have to be used during that period whether for radio or TV, and inbound phone calls go straight to voicemail. However, the hospital has the option on a ward by ward basis of the TVs being turned off at night, or even (I believe) specific terminals. Typically, TVs in children's wards are switched off automatically for the night.

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Sorry, I can't remember. (I've only been visiting wards in a hospital equipped with Patientline since after they changed to per day charging).