dad2711 wrote on Aug 9^th, 2006 at 12:32pm:


The point of the day should actually be to publicise the cost of making 084/7 phone bills on a quarterly and annual basis compared to 01/02 calls being available on fixed price plans for a tenth of the cost (the 3p versus 7.51p per minute does not demonstrate the real nature of the problem, especially not for 0845 numbers).  Realistically not enough people are going to be aware of  our Day to understand it or significantly impact the call centres at one hit.  The impact on the call centres is longer term if more and more people gradually become aware of www.saynoto0870.com and start calling the alternatives.  Also to raise awareness with government ministers and Ofcom about the continuing level of public unhappiness.

To be honest things are only going to change if Mr Stephen Carter's replacement at Ofcom is not someone from a major telco and is a public service oriented type who has a will to actually bring this scam to an end.  People could do worse than start writing to Mr David Cameron and getting him and his team to commit to it being one of the blatant New Labour stealth taxes in the public sector (of which Patientline is the most extreme phone variant) that an incoming Conservative government would make illegal.

ok i say again do not use this site on that day so the call centers do not get any calls via geographical or the non standard numbers  point made ,job done, i rest my case

Wonderful idea to have a whole day to focus activity and raise awareness. How about linking it to the recently increased awareness of junk mail? We could advocate a sort of decluttering at a national level - in other words, eliminating the junk from all our communicative channels (telecoms included) and improving the nation's efficiency.

I've been a bit slow to notice the connection but I wonder if anyone has spotted the same thing as I have?

Can it be a coincidence that there was a surge of publicity for the website beginning on Oct 4?

bbb_uk points out these reports - one on the 4th, three on the 5th and another without a date:

"The newspaper articles about the use of these numbers are available in the following links:-
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/5405620.stm
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2389087,00.html
[url]http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=4086 60&in_page_id=1770[/url]
http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2005300000-2006460369,,00.html
and a BBC news video:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/check/nolavconsole/ukfs_news/hi?redirect=st.s...  "

And here are a few more I found on Google News, all around Oct 4.
http://www.metro.co.uk/home/article.html?in_article_id=20626&in_page_id=1&ct=5&c...
http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/0200wales/tm_headline=---consumers-swarm...
http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2006460311,00.html
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23369673-details/Your+number's+up,+we...

I'd suggest that what happened was the following. Most stories in the media are driven by the newsroom diary. A few are hot news that erupt on the day but most are planned well in advance and put in the diary. Some months ago a few newspapers spotted the suggestion of a SayNoto0870 Day and jotted it down in the diary. Later, the news-editor reviews the diary in advance and assigns staff to each item. But when it came to Oct 4th, this forum hadn't got around to doing anything about it.

(Actually, when the contributor formerly known as Non-Geographical Man suggested setting a date early next year I went back to my first post that set the title of this thread and tried to edit it to change the date to sometime next year. But I didn't succeed so the heading stayed as Oct 4 even though the discussion had moved on to a date in 2007.)

Then on Oct 4, various reporters assigned to the story check what's happening and find the answer is "nothing". So they can either take the day off, or they can try and stay in the news-editor's good books by writing the story anyway. So several stories popped up on Oct 4 or 5.

I wonder how much more coverage there might have been if there had actually been any advance publicity with a press release and someone willing to act as spokesman.

bbb_uk wrote on Oct 12^th, 2006 at 6:28pm:


I have a simpler explanation which is that Daniel produced a press release referrring to the works of this site and his day job and sent it out, especially as the coverage in the various national newspapers is basically very similar.

Of course if this isn't the case perhaps Daniel can tell us how he thinks the story may have got to several of the newspapers at the same time?

The ghost of NGM lives on.......................................................

dad2711 wrote on Oct 12^th, 2006 at 9:10pm:
we're not actually sure if the next best thing has happened with all the publicity that has happened recently

dad2711 wrote on Oct 15^th, 2006 at 4:52pm:
The publicity I hope will have helped inform other consumers who are totally unaware that these numbers are in fact stealth premium rate numbers.

For it to be effective and force companies to reconsider their use then this I would have thought could only be done by writing/emailing companies concerned.  I've explained a bit more about this in this thread.

dad2711 wrote on Oct 16^th, 2006 at 6:27pm:
Thanks.

As I said though, unless people are willing to write/email to these companies and they get enough letters/emails then these companies may rethink about their contact number, otherwise they wont know how much we hate these numbers.