and i have added a say no to 0870 on my site as well near the bottom!

ink4-u wrote on Dec 19^th, 2005 at 11:58am:


Hmm 1 step forward 2 steps back?

Well, yeeeees, but the tariffing is so complicated (weekends, alternate Shrove Tuesdays et al.) that it is better to use a normal geographic number - or freephone. (Or Premium Rate).

Ink - If I rang a conventional geographical number beginning 01 or 02, the call would cost me nothing regardless of where you are. I am based in Hertfordshire - even if you were based in Penzance, John O'Groats or Belfast say, the call would still cost me nothing as I pay a fixed monthly fee to NTL for all my geographical calls regardless of where they terminate.  Even if I didn't have this package, by using 1899 I would still pay just a 0.5 p per minute fee with a 2p connection charge.  BT users only pay the connection charge regardless of the call length. 

HOWEVER, by using an 0845, you are introducing another 'profit taker' into the equation and are costing your customers 3p per minute to ring regardless of whether they have fixed calling plans or not.  Why should I ring an 0845 number?  They are now considered as Premium rate numbers, but obviously not to the same extent as an 0870/1 number.  With a third party non geographic provider involved, there are now 4 companies taking profit out of the customer:-

1) The 0845 NGN telecom provider which has to share it's margin with....
2) The customers telephone line provider the customer rents his line from
3) Your organisation's telecom company where the call terminates.
4) Your organisation which probably gets a 'kick-back' of say 1p per minute when the customer calls.

All the above is paid for by the customer.  Why should a customer have to pay for all these different profit takers?

Alt.

www.cartridges2u.com have a Freephone 0800 number and www.ink2u.co.uk have a normal 01 phone number that is free to call for anyone who has already paid a set monthly fee for the phone calls or who makes them using www.voipcheap.co.uk at 0p per call.  But your 0845 number costs 3p to 4p per minute depending on your customer's phone provider.  Its only 3p per minute you say but if everyone took your line of reasoning these 01/02 inclusive calling plans would be worthless (as indeed they largely already are) and everyone would be paying £40 or £50 a quarter at least extra in phone calls to these 084 and 087 numbers (all 084 and 087 numbers are bad as far as we forum regulars are concerned).

So no sorry your change is not good enough either in an absolute sense or vs your competition who are using 0800 numbers or normal 01 and 02 phone numbers.  But the fact that you used an 0871 number in the first place obviously suggests you can't be a very good businessman.

Are you sure you aren't a friend of redtreble or tripleeight?  The line of reasoning in your posts seems really very similar to his way of thinking as he made a big deal of trying to suggest we think 0845 is perfectly ok when we most certainly do not.

I note that Ink hasn't replied to our last 4 postings!!

Alt (to NGN numbers!!)

Congratulations, as I sure you have now gathered, it will remove a barrier a lot of people had to calling you.

Cheers, Des.