The anti 084/7 petition now stands at 25,036 signatures and is in sixth place overall, however I fear it will be overtaken soon by the petition to Posthumously Award Bob Paisley A Knighthood which is growing very fast in size ....

So what is to be done about it?

Have you emailed all your friends urging them to sign and to pass the message on to at least 10 of their friends.   A resulting chain letter is probably the best way we can succeed at this.

Good idea.  Will you be contacting Jeremy today then?

I think this site is great and use it a lot.  For a long time I have held the view that it should be compulsory for companies to display the geographic alternatives to their 0870 and 0845 numbers.  However, I do have one little niggling doubt.  

Those of us with inclusive landline phone packages might find that if the law is changed our phone providers may well cease to offer these packages because so many of the calls the public needs to make during the day are to 0870 and 0845 numbers.  We all know that it is frequently these numbers which keep us hanging on for ever and a day so it would very quickly become uneconomic for the phone providers.  I know this might sound very selfish but I do worry that, after all the hard work, if the law is changed the public may still lose out.  I feel we are in a 'catch 22' situation.

I still tell all my friends and acquaintances about this wonderful site, though.

Linda wrote on Mar 2^nd, 2007 at 11:50am:

Hello Linda, and welcome to the forum.

In reality I cannot see that such a law will be passed. The main thing is that it will bring the issue to journalists' attention who will report on it. In the next few weeks, the industry regulator, Ofcom, will start allocating numbers beginning 03 to telephone companies. These numbers will provide the advantages of 0845/0870 numbers such as call routing and statistics but will cost the price of a geographical call. So on an inclusive package, it will be included.

The difference at the receiver's end is that it will, in all probability, charge the receiver for calls. This will be a reversal to the current state of affairs where the receiver is often paid, or at least does not have to pay for the call routing etc.

And come 1 February 2008, the plan is that 0870 will be reduced to this '03' rate. 0844, 0845 and 0871 will be left as is, meaning that they will be more expensive than 0870 and that those companies that opted for the cheapest number, 0845, (which was once local rate for many) are now charging more than those on 0870 who opted to charge more than them in the first place!!!

This petition http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/cheapercalls/ seems to have the terms geographic and non-geographic the wrong way round.  Surely it is the 0870 and 0845 numbers which are non-geographic.

NGMsGhost wrote on Mar 2^nd, 2007 at 12:43pm:

Yes, I know; one telco has asked if they can extend the 'deadline' anf Ofcom has said it will consider.

First the good news -- voting for the Petition is now up to 28718.

Second, the not so good news -- we have been overtaken by the Vote for Bob Paisley's knighthood.   Nothing against this, he was I am sure an admirable football manager and a gentleman.  He probably deserves it.

It just seems surprising that 0870 etc is of so little concern to our fellow citizens.  It seems the vast majority don't mind being ripped off!!!

While chain e-mails have the mathmatical potential to reach very large numbers of people, I personally find them deeply annoying and therefore would not inflict them upon people I know. There is, I think, a general suspicion that any e-mail that asks you to utilise your contact list is somehow gaining access to that contact list, or at least using it to spread something unpleasant. Besides which doesn't such a tactic imply that it is a minority issue? The non-geographic number rip off affects every consumer in the country to some degree and is definitely not a minority issue. perhaps our job is, however,  to bring this to the attention of the wider public. So I was thinkin', could someone who knows the actual details of the charges, the proposed ofcom action etc. draft a letter for us all to send to as many newspapers as we can find e-mail and postal addresses for. Perhaps a sackful of hard copy letters timed to arrive the same day will make some of the financial editors take som notice?