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I put up with the 1p to 2p connection rise because they were still cheapest but to go from 2p to 3p is too much to suffer.

When they started off they charged 1p a minute and no connection charge, which was a very honest and admirable position.  But since then they have chosen to be devious by bringing in an ever large connection charge not stated in their call price announcements.

Where are you telling your clients to move to Tanllan?  To 1899.com perhaps?

Actually I think it is even worse than you guys have indicated, since 18866 have not even been honest on their web site! At the right hand side they state the connection charge is 3p, but in the middle under the boast that calls cost only 0 p per minute they still state the connection charge as "2 p". That really is an attempt to deceive customers who do not examine the detail.

It seems their strategy was to obtain a customer base by offering very low cost calls, and then relying on customer lethagy in changing to gradually increase the charges. This seems to be an increasingly common marketing tacket nowadays. I shall watch them extremely carefully now. This increase means that for short calls they will not now often be competitive.

If you go to the any questions section of the 18866 site,and look under (How much will i be charged for my calls) you will see another misleading statement which suggests that BT and One tel charge a connection fee.

I have just posted this in the other 18866 vs 1899 thread.  It unfortunately shows that in cancelling 18866 and using 1899 I am indeed cutting off my nose to spite my face!

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http://order.internic.co.uk shows that http://call18866.co.uk is indeed registered to Finarea SA of Lugano in Switzerland but http://call18866.com is registered to Melbourne IT Ltd, a domain name specialist, but it still points to the same website.  http://www.18866.co.uk is registered to Finarea but http://www.18866.com is registered to Melbourne IT.   Again they all point to the same site.

http://www.1899.com is registered by The Registry at Info Avenue and points to 1899s site, whereas http://www.1899.co.uk is registered to an I Ramirez of 8 Liverpool St of Ealing, London W5 - this address does not point to a live website and Mr Ramirez seems to have failed in his effort to make a killing on this one.  http://Call1899.co.uk is interestingly also registered to Finarea of Lugano, Switzerland, but http://www.1899.com is registered to Network Solutions LLC and yet both point to the 1899 site

http://www.18185.co.uk is also registered to Finarea SA, again in Lugano but at a PO box number that differs from other Finarea addresses.  It was first registered on 20th March 2002 and renewed on 20th March 2006, so strange they held it for so long without launching the product.  http://www.18185.com and http://www.18185.net are both pointing at Japanese websites that are unreadable to me but clearly nothing to do with Finarea or 18185.  http://www.call18185.co.uk was first registered to Finarea on 6th Dec 2002, whereas http://call18185.com was also first registered on 6th Dec 2002 but to Melbourne IT.  There seems to be a pattern developing here.

http://www.dialaround.co.uk is again registered to Finarea SA at the Viale Carlo Cattanea 1 in Lugano as with various other above registrations.  It was first registered on 8th Oct 2003 though.  Other Dialaround name variants do not point to the Dialaround site.  So anyhow Dialaround really is linked in with Finarea (its web site presentation is very different to 1899 and 18866 and 18185 and it also uses NGNs instead of a dial prefix) and yet they can offer 5p per minute to 0870 and 18185 4p per minute but 18866 and 1899 stick to 9p per minute.  That makes no sense.

http://www.dialwise.co.uk is again registered to Finarea SA at the good old Viale Carlo Cattaneo 1 in Lugano and was first registered on 8th Oct 2003. No other dialwise www variants point to this website.

http://www.telesavers.co.uk is also registered to good old Finarea SA at the Viale Carlo Cattaneo 1 in Lugano.  It was first registered on 8th Oct 2003 like 18185.co.uk which is interesting.  It also has access to the 5p 0870 rate offered by dialaround but not by Finarea's prefix brands.  No other telesavers www variants point to this website

Call18866, Dialwise and Telesavers are also all linked with Finarea at http://www.magsys.co.uk/telecom/opnotes.htm but only the entry for Call18866 shows the link with Connect Telecom.  The Companies House website shows a Connect Telecom Ltd in Manchester created in 1997 and now in liquidation - not seemingly the one.  It also shows a Connect Telecommunications Ltd of Cumbernauld, Glasgow with Full accounts Exemption so unlikely to be the one given the scale of the Finarea uk telecoms business.  Then finally it shows Connect Telecom UK Ltd of 12 Sheet Street, Windsor, Berkshire.  The previous name of this company is Web.Coms Ltd until 2001.  Looks very promising to me and Windsor is close to my mother's home.  Must investigate.

But the Ofcom website shows a listing for Connect Telecom UK Ltd, PO Box 44714, London
SW1Y 4XD, Tel: 0845 056 1237
Provision of international simple voice resale services
There is no Ofcom listing for Finarea.

In short the Finarea telecoms web is a complex one and also seems to possibly involve Connect Telecom as a middle man.  As to why some of the www addresses are done through domain registering middlemen instead of direct to Finarea I suppose that's anyone's guess.

Interesting though to finally confirm all these sites are one operation.  I don't believe there are in fact any franchises involved and having 6 brands and 2 different calling formats is obviously an attempt to maximise the calling business against the extensive competition.  So no doubt 18866 will be losing absolutely no sleep at all over me cancelling my account with them due to their hiding their connection charge increase from 2p to 3p.  The fact that I am now only using 1899.com will clearly not be bothering them one

NGN.

I have been tracking these people for some time.Their are 5 more uk sites to my knowledge.See list below.They have some sites registered on Eire Domains,and a lot of other European Countries.

www.topupnow.co.uk
www.mobileminutes.co.uk
www.cheapestcalls.co.uk
www.bestminutes.co.uk
www.budgetcom.co.uk


PS.Come to think of it they also have a Uk Voip site which i cant recall the domain name of.

Sometime ago there was a lengthy thread entititled i think "who is behind 18866" which covered some of this ground.I cant find it at the mo.

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I have always thought it to be one company, with different brands.

I have domain checked each company as it has launched,and the only ones i have come up with so far are the ones we have listed.

The owner of the www.niftylist.co.uk is in touch with them,and i have asked him if he can throw any more light on the set up.I will post the info in due course.

(He has now replied to me.Basically he has no idea either ,personaly he thinks that the way its set up, is part of their marketing strategy.)

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1.No i did not miss them, i said earlier there was a voip domain i could not remember,and in fact their are 2 as you have pointed out.( I was including them in the ones we had listed,as you mentioned them in the previous post to mine.)

2.Yes i expect that could be the case,and i would imagine they already have some new domains listed,ready for new offspring(products).