Quote:

Remember that non-geographic numbers (or non-geographical numbers as I prefer to call them) are all numbers except geographical ones. That is by definition.

So 07, 08 and 09 are all non-geographical.

I notice that on the commercial for Vodafone's Stop the Clock service they say that it applies to UK landlines and mobile networks and then go on to say that it excludes non-geographical numbers. 

I'm afraid Vodafone, like most other telco's (landline and mobile), go out of their way to avoid you knowing how much it costs to calls these type of NGNs.

It's useless complaining to useless Ofcon as all they'll say is that they have already modified General Condition 14 that requires communications providers to give equal prominence to their charges for ordinary geographic calls and NTS calls.  These new rules come into effect on 19th August.

I heard a radio commercial this morning promoting one of Vodafone's services (can't remember which one) and at the end 'small print' it said "Excludes calls to 08 and 09 numbers." I presume any offer would also exclude 070 numbers aswell, but there was no mention.

Quote:
If their own customer services doesn't know the cost of these calls then how on earth are we to know!

Quote:
freephone numbers do cost a lot but I'm not sure of the exact cost but I believe that if you try to dial a freephone number it will inform you that you will pay for the cost and I believe the cost as well (well it did when I was on Voda).  Now despite them able to do this for freephone numbers, the mobile networks tell Ofcom it's way too expensive to be done on other NGNs as well.

Surely this existing system can just be adapted/amended to include announcements for the other NGNs but as usual Ofcom believes (and sides) with that of the Teleco's.

Vodafone are the most disgraceful and pathologically dishonest mobile company about NGN call charges in the UK, especially for their Pay as You Go customers where you won't get the call cost disclosed at all as Vodafone do not provide even online billing for their PAYG customers.

I emailed as high as the European CEO of Vodafone Arun Sarun last year and got a reply back from some numpty female customer care adviser by paper letter telling me that 084 and 087 calls cost the same as other uk national calls.  I then called back and created hell and eventually discovered that there is a hidden technical information call centre at Vodafone that employs intelligent life forms who did know all the prices.  But they only provided them verbally - no question of them sending me an email or it being on a web page somewhere.

From memory they told me that 0870 and 0845 cost 30p weekday peak and 10p per minute off peak while 0800 was cheaper and was either 10p or 30p per minute peak (forget which) and 5p per minute offpeak on Vodafone SmartPlus and Vodafone SmartStep PAYG.  I also had cause to challenge some docking of my call credit with them on incoming roaming calls in Greece in Oct 2003 and after much tooing and froing at high level they sent me a meaningless durge of control character based output from their systems (which they normally have the cheek to charge 10 quid for although didn't in this case) that looked like some form of programming language and which definitely only included the numbers called or calling and the call length but not what they had docked my credit for.

Basically organised uncompetitive cartels like the mobile phone industry will not provide proper information unless they are sat heavily on by the regalator.  In other industries the regulator, the Office of Fair Trading, seems to be doing quite a good job and has stopped some quite trivial cartels for instance on the cost of sunglasses.  Unfortunately the OFT's powers on telecoms and broadcasting are delegated to Ofcom and Ofcom is totally infiltrated by senior people from the telecoms industry and those industies seem to have some very powerful New Labour friends indeed.

For instance Capita run the BBC's 0870 call centres and one of the directors of Capita is one of the largest secret loan givers to New Labour.  So despite thousands of complaints a year to the BBC about its 0870 BBC Information call centre con nothing is done.

MPs repeatedly ask questions in Parliament and yet still OfCon allows most of these scams to continue and pretends it is doing something while allowing new scams to develop that it then takes years to act against.  If you regard large European mobile phone operators and large European fixed line telcos as latterday versions of the Mafia then you will learn to expect them to behave as unethically as they can possibly get away with.  And that in a nutshell I am afraid is it.

After today's announcement on the air fare hidden charges con being stopped by the EU Commission I am beginning to wonder if a reference to that body on this whole lack of transparency and information on uk call pricing might be the way to go given that OfCoN have so dismally failed the best interests of the uk general public.  But then again do I have time for all the endless legal paperwork to make that happen..........................................................................
..