idb I feel almost as though I could have written your last post myself.  I think you have identified all the key issues involving these abuses.

Interesting item about an incendiary device at the office of Capita today which revealed the full extent of their massive call centre and outsourcing empire.

When one notes the close connection between Capita and the Labour party I feel sure this is precisely why Ofcom are under strict instructions to totally fudge action on NTS revenue share while being quite happy to crack down on junk food advertising to children, encrypted Sky porn channels that dare to show real hard core porn, and needless silent calls that actually cost the incompetent companies that make them extra money.

It's also worth remembering that Matt Peacock, Communications Director for Ofcom (and still in his job) admitted to these numbers being premium rate at the end of 2004 and that something would be done in 2005. Perhaps it's worth including this in a new petition.

Interestingly I see that neither the site owner or definitely Dave and possibly bbb have signed this petition and nor have other site stalwarts like idb, Tanllan or dorf.

How did we come to give star billing to a petition with wording none of us are comfortable signing and that stupidly only mentions 0845 rather than 084x numbers, when 084x are soon going to be an even bigger problem, as they already are with the NEG doctors surgery scam of course.

The petition is at 2,500 or so, although I'm sure we could get it to 200,000 if we paid a spam emailing house to email every email address they have in the UK.  Much though I don't condone spam emailing on the whole at least this would be a topic that many recipients would actually want to hear about.

But the wording in the petition isn't right for me.  Any petition that I sign over 084/7 must also feature the incompetence and negligence of Ofcom in failing to correctly deal with the issues involved.

Keith wrote on Feb 9^th, 2007 at 7:35pm:


Well I have given the current one a plug in a thread on the www.adslguide.org.uk forum where some idiot tried to convince me 0870 was National Rate and on www.tivocommunity.com and their Tivo UK section saying if people don't like Tivo's 0870 number with Sky this is the way to complain.  As a result signatures on the 0870 petition shot up by around 100 in less than an hour.  Promotion elsewhere in forums sympathetic to the subject in question is very important.  I don't know if there is even a thread about the petition yet on the MSE site yet.  If there was I would have thought signatures would have hit more than 3,000.

I would favour a petition next time directly condeming the failure of Ofcom to act to protect the citizen consumer by not ensuring that these numbers could not be called local and national rate and condemning their failure to force mandatory free call price announcements (unless people choose to opt out) and their failure to educate uk consumers about the costs of calling different types of UK number.  I would also express concern about the massive costs of running Ofcom and the high salaries of its senior executives in relation to its total ineffectiveness in serving the interests of the UK citizen consumer who are its principal duty.

Embarassing Ofcom who are at the root cause of the continuation of this scam is the only way to get any action.

Quote:


If they have a team of people constantly posting in every UK car and transport related forum in numerous threads mentioning the petition and where to sign it and if bodies like the national federation of road hauliers etc are encouraging all their truckers to sign in their newsletter and/or any trucker newsletters etc and this is a major talking point in the trucker and company rep fraternities then it is just about credible they could get this number of signatures although it ought to slow down soon.  Suppose if every trucker stop has a sign up saying to sign this petition - then that would get an awful lot of signatures as this proposal threatens all of these people's livelihoods.

5 minutes later and its increased by 9 signatures to 3955.  I wonder if links have been posted on some other campaigning sites somewhere?

Keith wrote on Feb 10^th, 2007 at 11:03pm:


You can be sure Ofcom will notice it if it gets into the top 10 and journalists start commenting on it. Anyhow its especially likely to get noticed at the moment if it gets that high due to all the people looking at the anti road tolls petition.

I believe Ofcom Communication Director, Matt Peacock, still keeps an eye on the site to see what we are up to although he decided to refuse to talk to me any more after I suggested he only stayed on at Ofcom as he couldn't get a job anywhere else with such a high paid salary.  He suggested this was an "ad hominem" (that is "attacking the man" for those of you who do not speak Latin) remark, something that goes on all the time in the world of Politics but is apparently unacceptable towards Ofcom's extremely well paid but far from very effective civil servants.  Or perhaps he has finally realised that as his colleagues completely betrayed the promises he made to us on Radio 4 over two years ago that there is no point in him trying to play Mr Nice Guy with us any more.

I am puzzled by this thread.  Surely the problem that this site feels so strongly about has been FULLY addressed by Ofcom and it just will not exist by this time next year.  OK, a year, but the problem is so serious that industry must be given time to work out what to do about cut revenues etc.  No silly partitioning the government is going to bring the solution forward more quickly than that!

Yogi2

Yes, Yogi2, we SHOULD 'partition' the government - into as many pieces as possible!!!

NGM,  why do these people still keep putting their heads above the wall??  Too easy for you - but I suppose some easy 'target practice' helps the day along!