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bbb,

Paul Heiney, Nicky Campbell and Julia Bradbury are the presenters of WatchDog.  The other people in my email list are senior BBC management people (see below).  You may possibly recognise a certain Michael Grade?

I also copied in various relevant people presenting, researching and producing the You & Yours program for obvious reasons.

Like you I hope it will be the start of an unstoppable landslide against the use of 0870 which the BBC management, C&W and Capita cannot resist.  However I suspect that for now it is something which the Watchdog Producer and presenters have been able to insist on because of what they do and doubt it is the start of an immediate Beeb wide trend.  I do however think You & Yours should be able to get hold of 020 or 0500 for its phone calls on the strength of the Watchdog change.

-----Original Message-----
Sent: 04 October 2005 22:17
To: paul.heiney@bbc.co.uk; nicky.campbell@bbc.co.uk; julia.bradbury@bbc.co.uk
Cc: michael.grade@bbc.co.uk; mark.byford@bbc.co.uk; mark.thompson@bbc.co.uk; mike.southgate@bbc.co.uk; stephen.whittle@bbc.co.uk; tim.davie@bbc.co.uk; jana.bennett@bbc.co.uk; jenny.abramsky@bbc.co.uk; ashley.highfield@bbc.co.uk; richard.lapthorne@cw.com; steve.double@cw.com; tim.stephens@cw.com; paul.pindar@capita.co.uk; rodney.aldridge@capita.co.uk; paddy.doyle@capita.co.uk; bruce.vander@bbc.co.uk; melanie.abbott@bbc.co.uk; rachel.schofield@bbc.co.uk; liz.barclay@bbc.co.uk; john.waite@bbc.co.uk; winifred.robinson@bbc.co.uk; will.yates@bbc.co.uk
Subject: Congratulations to Watchdog on Replacing Its 0870 Ripoff Line

Dear Watchdog,

Congratulations for finally belatedly getting the message about your ripoff 0870 number and adopting an 020 phone number instead, which is covered by the many inclusive calling plans on offer such as BT Option 3.

Now that you taken this welcome step I hope you will also update your website to remove the blurb about high call costs that were only applicable to your old 0870 phone number.  Of course it was good that Watchdog was at least complying with ASA guidelines on calling costs whilst it had its 0870 number, unlike most other BBC programs which stay stubbornly silent on the matter or continue to falsely claim they are "National Rate" calls (a possible offence under Part III of the Consumer Protetction Act 1987)

Also congratulations for being the first major BBC program to pressurise the BBC management to force Cable & Wireless (the Beeb's phone supplier) to give you a normal 020 phone number instead of a covert premium rate 0870 number.

Of course I do find it a little odd that you presumably find that you can now after all make use of "special call handling and routing capabilities that help us deal with your call more efficiently" on a normal priced geographic phone number.  Actually those of us who know about these things know that Cable & Wireless could have offered this facility on an ordinary 01/02 phone number all along.  The only possible reason for not doing so would probably be Cable & Wireless charging the BBC more for its phone lines and phone equipment and/or giving it less offsetiing discount on the BBC's large outgoing phone calls bill.

It does seem very odd that a public service organisation like the BBC has up to now been the uk's leading example of a non profit organisation inappropriately using and marketing these non geographic numbers.

Congratulations once again on making the change although I find it strange that it has taken so long (given the amount of criticism your program has received over the issue) and odd that you did not admit on air tonight why your phone number had been changed.

Let us hope that this change in your program's phone number will be the start of a trend for all BBC contact call centres and program phone lines to drop the use of 0870 numbers.

Regards,

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All other existing BBC Freephone numbers appear to be in the 0500 range.

Are new C&W numbers all 0800 or 0808 then and 0500 purely a legacy Freephone range?

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You would think they would have been forced to convert to 0800 or 0808 by now given that there is, in any case, no well established public knowledge that 0500 is a Freephone number.

Anyone wanting to market that calling them is free is surely shooting themselves in the foot by using 0500?

old 0500 no longer being issued but instead being 'converted' to 0808.

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Who did you send it to?

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Lets hope these people are grateful then.

Unfortunately I find Ms Bown is quite often in the habit of deleting her emails without reading them despite her previous big piece in the Sunday Times regarding the 0845 scam.

None of the Watchdog presenters replied to me which I find more than a little disappointing.

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But they did comment a lot on having a new number.

You say they would get in trouble for drawing attention to other BBC programs still having an 0870 but You & Yours have openly criticised both the whole 0870 scam and the BBC for being a part of it.  So I don't quite see exactly how your argument on this holds up?

They could say they had gone to 0870 because they were responding to viewers who had complained 0870 was not part of their inclusive calling plan scheme.  There wouldn't be a need for them to directly criticises other BBC programs for still having an 0870 number.  They could leave it to their viewers to do this.