-----Original Message-----
Sent: 22 December 2006 11:50
To: John Mobley
Subject: Why Claiming 0845 is Local Rate Is Misleading & Inaccurate

As a longstanding supporter of the www.saynot0870.com campaign unfortunately I cannot accept your assertions that 0845 and 0870 are lo-call/local rate and national rate and I find it disappointing that a managing director of a company would be using such terms when there have been clear guidances from Ofcom, the Advertising Standards Authority, Ofcom and Trading Standards officers that to claim an 0845 number is lo-call or local rate is misleading customers over the true call costs.  Also since NewNet constantly tries to push a very expensive phone deal to get customers to sign up to its own expensive CPS phone calls plan (with prices little better than BT) on the basis they will save money off their broadband connection I imagine that your telecoms supplier knows full well that 0845 is not "local rate" but enjoys earning 2p or more per minute or £1.20 per hour revenue share on every call to your technical support line based on misleading people that it is "local rate" when it is not.  There is no such thing as "local rate" any more as that rate was abolished on 1st July 2004 even for BT customers when BT made Option 1 their minimum line rental deal (when they abolished BT Standard Line Rental as an available option) and along with BT Options 2 and 3 all 01/02 prefixed calls began to be charged on the same basis regardless of distance.

0845 and 0870 calls are examples of what BT has at various times called Special Rate Services.  That is they are in fact lower cost premium rate revenue share services (but not regulated currently in their marketing by ICSTIS although 0871 numbers soon will be) where the recipient of the call or their telecoms supplier receives a revenue stream on each call.  A 1 hour daytime call to a number starting 01 or 02 costs me 4p in total using www.18185.co.uk but a 1 hour call to an 0845 number costs me £1.98 using my WLR phone provider the Post Office on a BT Wholesale phone line (the Post Office charge 3.3p per minute to an 0845 number compared to BT who charge 3p per minute).  I think you can see that is a rather dramatic difference for a number you somewhat glibly and inaccurately depict as being "local rate".

I do hope therefore that both you and your customer service and technical support staff will not continue to labour under the misapprehension that 0845 is lo-call/Local Call and must point out the recent actions of one of your competitors Ace Internet who issued a press release publishing a geographic 0161 alternative to their 0845 number because of the number of complaints from customers about their 0845 phone number.  Also can I point out that a near competitor of yours with a similar market positioning - www.idnet.co.uk - uses 0800 phone numbers for all their customer calls.  Perhaps you can tell me if you will be getting an 0345 equivalent to your 0845 number as and when these are made available by Ofcom shortly as these 0345 numbers will only be charged to callers on the same basis as an 01/02 call and will be included in fixed price calling plans like BT Option 3.  By the way I find it bizarrely inconsistent that NewNet uses an offputting 0845 number for Sales and a welcoming 01 geographic prefixed number for its accounts and general enquiries number.

Also with respect to your claim that 0845 is "local rate" can I point you to the following:-

The view of a county council trading standards department

Para 1.3 Page 1 of www.ofcom.org.uk/consult/condocs/oftel_0845/responses/leicester_cc.pdf

and

the view of the CEO of BT Retail, Ian Livingston

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

and

two guidances from the Advertising Standards Authority

www.asa.org.uk/cap/news_events/news/2005/Hanging+on+the+telephone+on+and+on+and+...

www.asa.org.uk/cap/news_events/news/2005/Stop+the+call+confusion.htm

and

the Parliamentary Early Day motion deploring the use of 0870 telephone numbers by government departments (which by implication also makes the same point to a lesser extent for 0845 numbers such as local Job Centres of which there has been widespread recent Parliamentary criticism)

http://edmi.parliament.uk/EDMi/EDMDetails.aspx?EDMID=28872%09%09%09%09%09%09%09&...

and

Another guidance from the Committee of Advertising Practice of the Advertising Standards Authority

www.cap.org.uk/cap/news_events/news/2005/CAP+rings+the+changes+for+telecoms+prov...

I look forward to your further comments on this matter.

Regards,