I just got an email from Cahoot (Abbey National) with a contact number of 0844 9009092. No price indication given but it seems to be BT G12 charged a 4p/min at all times.

I got the same email last week but it was an 0870 contact number given.
Are they moving protect their revenue stream already?

gdh82 wrote on Mar 9^th, 2006 at 11:42am:


4p per minute instead of 1.5p per minute at the weekends for 0870 so I'm not sure that it is any better overall.

Dave wrote on Mar 9^th, 2006 at 12:18pm:


Its obviously based on the disgusting lies of some NEG or Windsor Telecom type salesman to Abbey National that 4p per minute is the BT Standard Local Rate.

But as we know only the tiny number of BT Light User scheme customers pay BT Standard call rates and even they only pay 1.5p per minute in the evening and 1p per minute at the weekend.

The frightening thing is these kind of decisions often don't get taken at board level but by some kind of dumb idiotic middle manager in the IT or procurement departments of companies.  Of course the later complaints about the numbers obviously do show up at board level on the monthly complaint stats - at least I hope so.

Of course I am sure that the use of 0870 by Sky and NatWest is a board level decision so it depends on the company as to how it initially gets implemented..

Only 0845s can be on Friends and Family, 0844, 0870 and 0871 cannot.

Either way the consumer (even me in this case) doesn't get to know the rules of the game and so won't make an informed decision.

For instance why is it that some 0845 phone calls on my BT bill are called "Local Rate" and others are called "Lo-Call" when they all seem to charge exactly the same call price and that is definitely not my LOCAL fixed line rate for 01/02 calls.

Again Ofcom allows confusion to reign and competition not to work.  Does anyone have a B Ark at the ready to send Ofcom away on along with all the Telephone Sanitisers!

Shouldn't that be an extra bit of marketing Disinformation on BT bills Tanllan given that 0845 numbers all cost me the same high non standard non geographic price regardless of whether they are called "Lo-Call" or "Local Rate" by BT?

And how is BT Retail's Phone Bill presentation policy reconciled with the comments of its CEO, Ian Livingston to The Scotman newspaper?

See http://business.scotsman.com/banking.cfm?id=764772005

gdh82 wrote on Mar 9^th, 2006 at 4:33pm:

Indeed! The main issue is that the price of a telephone call should be just that. The call charges cover the communications channel from A to B.

Ofcom doesn't appear to (want to) get it's head around the fact that any call which benefits the service provider (that's the party being called) is, by definition, premium rate. Thus, in such circumstances, it is effectively the service provider who sets the call rate and not the telco.

gdh82 wrote on Mar 9^th, 2006 at 4:33pm:


No Ofcom argued to leave 0845 untouched to protect the dialup ISPs still ripping off their customers too lazy or ignorant to move to cheaper 0844 1p per minute at all times dialup or 0808 subscription dialup or broadband.  This despite the endless charity and government voice based help lines that are on 0845 precisely because it was originally meant to be the cheapest way to make a call at "local" call rates.

Ofcom's argument for leaving 0844 revenue share scamming totally untouched and outside ICSTIS control (so call costs still won't have to be actively disclosed) was that they thought that up to 5p per minute (up to £3.00 per hour) wasn't much to pay to make a phone call