Here is my subsequent reply to Mr Strutt.

I actually copied this rather more widely (including journalists and MPs who signed the anti 0870 parliamentary EDM) but suspect that those people would not thank me for listing their email addresses here.

-----Original Message-----
From:  NonGeographicalMan
Sent: 25 August 2005 17:52
To: john.strutt@bt.com

Dear Mr Strutt,

Many thanks for your further helpful email on this issue.

However the prospect raised that BT might accidentally be using the term "Lo-Call" for high priced non geographic 0845 calls (high priced because they cost much more off peak than geographic calls on BT Option 1 and are excluded from all unlimited geographic call options on BT Options 2 and 3) by an act of simple incompetence or neglect actually fills me with far greater concern than my previous belief that BT was simply cunning enough in business terms to want to mislead customers about the call cost of 0845 calls for as long as it thought it could get away with it.  Also why are "National Rate" (geographic) calls not differentiated clearly from their more expensive "National Call" (0870) counterparts in BT phone bills.  Surely you must accept that even the best students of the English language would be hard pressed to see any obvious difference in the two terms which actually conveyed the vast difference in the price of the underlying calls.  Also shouldn't Premium Rate calls costing over 10p per minute have their own clear separate call heading as BT does use this terms extensively elsewhere for 09 calls in its literature.  Of course there are those who maintain that 084/7 calls are now Premium Rate calls too but clearly that's a whole other subject for discussion.

The fact is that the calling landscape was completely redefined on 1st July 2004 when BT abolished Standard Line Rental and made BT Option 1 a minimum compulsory option for 99.9% of its customers (that is everyone aside from those few owners of occasionally occupied country cottages who may possibly still qualify for the Light User scheme).  From that point on 0845 calls cost more than 01 or 02 calls off peak and at the weekend and 01/02 National Calls fell to 3p per minute while 0870 National Rate calls still cost 7.5p per minute in the weekday daytime.  Yet BT did nothing to recategorise the way call cost information was presented in the millions of quarterly phone bills or on its website as a result of this.  And good old Ofcom acquiesced in all this by allowing BT Option 1 to be made compulsory (it apparently suits their long term objective of making BT line rental more expensive so that people may switch to wholesale line rental products with other call carriers more readily) and was seemingly so unaware of what was going on that it did not make rules to force BT to reformat its bills in a manner that reflected the new significant differences for BT Option 1 customers between a phone call to a geographic and a non geographic number.  Unfortunately what Ofcom likes to call Light Touch is what I prefer to call Active Neglect on Ofcom's part.

If all this comes about from senior BT and Ofcom staff being so well paid and so busy that they never personally have time to either want to or need to review what is on their own BT phone bill then that must be a very major cause of public concern indeed.

I look forward to your suggestions on how the presentation of call cost information in BT phone bills and on the BT website may now perhaps be improved.

Regards,