Edited:

Or to cause Lord Sebastian Coe more embarassment perhaps you would prefer to send him your thoughts on his involvement with 0870 Reverse via the London Olympics website - www.london2012.com/en/contactus.htm.  Its a general Contact Us form but just mark it prominently FAO Lord Coe and suggest you think his involvement in 0870 Reverse is an embarassment for him and why that is so given his involvement with the London Olympics project.

Or perhaps send a conventional email to coes@parliament.uk and also copying in say tessa.jowell@culture.gov.uk and whoever the Minister for Sport now is.

bbb_uk I really think this section of the thread now needs to be split off into a new thread called Lord Sebastian Coe's involvement with 0800 Reverse.

gudman wrote on Dec 7^th, 2006 at 2:01am:


If you read 0800 Reverse's Terms and Conditions it still is up to the person called to decide whether to take the call or any voicemail message left if the person was not in when they were called.  However their marketing tactics of not telling callers using the service how much cost they are imposing on those called and perhaps the kind of automated messages 0800 Reverse are giving to those called (and whether those messages are clear enough about the call cost) give rise to concern.

They have made it far too easy for people to try to reverse the call cost and also since the process is now totally automated (unlike the old operator assisted days of reverse charges) and international calls generally cost a few pennies a minute the kind of fees they are asking those called to pay are scandalously high.  Also it is the fact that the charge can end up on your phone bill that leaves a bad taste in the mouth.  If you had to leave your credit card number, Expiry Date and CVV number and an agreement to pay call charges of up to say £25 before starting the call instead of it going cosily on your phone bill I think most people would just hang up.  Also its the old problem of Ofcom providing no way to keep track of expensive phone calls during the course of the call again.

I would have to listen to one of the message played to decide if they are actually misleading or amount to moral blackmail on the person asked to take the call.  After all with modern technology it would be possible for the announcement to play the person's name who is calling and their address although I expect this is not done on the basis this could be used to convey a free message and so the announcement just says someone is calling you and do you want to take the call.

Of most concern is Lord Coe's involvement.  Given his statesmen like role in a public project like the London Olympics he just can't afford to be involved in something like this with its very sleazy connotations.  No government minister would be allowed to remain a director of such a company after they took up public office.

I have a 2nd cousin in Canada who is schizophrenic and in a very bad state financially who is periodically sending my mother begging letters and making phone calls to her in the middle of the night (currently at her own cost) asking for money.   I can just imagine her using this kind of service to take the call and my mother feeling under an obligation to take it.

One also worries that 0800 Reverse may connect calls when people do not say "Yes", although one would hope but not be confident that CISAS would come down on them like a ton of bricks if they received any significant number of such complaints from the public.  Assuming that is the average member of the public ever find out who 0800 Reverse are, where their website is and that belong to the CISAS scheme.

I'm not exactly sure why you hold Seb in such high regard that he can be somehow shamed into fixing this. Good luck, but his personal life is public record (say no more) and the 2012 effort so far is mired in more illrepute with what looks to be deliberate undervaluing of costs to win the bid. He's making good efforts on all our heads to leap into the Olympic comittee board. I would not hold my breath expecting this type of character to zap 0800 reverse.

What should kill 0800rev is if enough people dispute bills and demand evidence of agreement to reverse call costs. I'm the bill payer and have not delgated any right to anyone else present to accept such charges. Do they record the supposed agreement to accept costs?

You can permanently stop such calls to your number by sending an e-mail to customerservice@0800reverse.co.uk.

I used the wording Quote:

after reading this... i will stick to my good old cable phone line

so much less hastle!!!

Seb Coe has provided the following response about 0800 Reverse.

I get the feeling that these issues have been raised with him before though from the positive spin he tries to apply on the issue, although I personally would maintain that 0800 Reverse's activities can only become acceptable if their service charges are vastly reduced and if this service is automatically barred for anyone who has 09 premium rate dialling bareed on their home phone number.  Hopefully having 09 barring set up on your BT line would bar this service, although knowing Ofcom and BT I would be far from confident on either point.

Here is Seb Coe's reply to my email:-

Quote:

Seb's played the "think of the little chill'un" card rather well but that doesn't excuse the high rates, nor the abuse of it we've had with self-same little chill'un calling around via this pest as a joke.

Kill it stone dead by requiring prior opt-in, I say.