derrick wrote on Jan 15^th, 2007 at 3:35pm:

But is Lo-call not a BT trademark?

Dave wrote on Jan 15^th, 2007 at 3:36pm:


Not sure, but it is very close to "local" and I thought now BT had stopped udsing that term!

The offending words have now been removed from ICO's website.

Dave wrote on Jan 15^th, 2007 at 3:45pm:


But not the offending number.

Ofcom did try for a while also displaying the 0845 number for their Contact Centre on their website along with the 020 number with a complicated message explaining that it would be cheaper to use the 0845 for the small number of people on the BT Light User Scheme (about a million lines in all but lines making almost no outgoing phone calls) who are not in the London local phone area but I see they have now abandoned that as being too complicated a message and only list their geographic 01 phone numbers as the correct number to call.

NGMsGhost wrote on Jan 15^th, 2007 at 3:56pm:

Numbers beginning 0845 630 are allocated to Opal Telecom, a part of Carphone Warehouse Group. The change date is 07/2006, so most probably a new block of numbers.

See the Richmond Council thread here for more on Opal's marketing techniques including "0845 Appear local to everyone".

Just received the following e-mail:


Our Reference:

15 January 2007

Dear Sir

I am writing following your recent emails to the Information Commissioner’s Office in which you raise concerns about our use of the term ‘lo-call’ when advertising our Helpline services.  Your complaint has been passed to me as head of ICO customer services in line with our service complaint procedures. 


In responding to your complaint it may help if I briefly explain the rationale behind the way we have chosen to advertise our Helpline services before addressing the specifics of your complaint.


The ICO Helpline Service

For a number of years customers contacting our office by telephone have been asked to ring 01625 545745 to speak to our Helpline staff, or 01625 545700 to speak to our switchboard operator.  We are currently mid-way through a project to improve this service, streamlining the number entry points into our organisation, whilst seeking to provide our customers with as much choice as possible in what we recognise as an ever changing world of telecoms service provision. 


Recognising that for many customers the cheapest option, depending on their telecoms service provider, may well be to call our traditional 01625 number, we chose to retain this service at the heart of our Helpline strategy.  However, we also wanted to provide customers with the choice of calling what have traditionally been termed an 0845 or ‘lo-call’ number.  We have been absolutely clear from the outset that we did not wish to force our customers to incur unnecessary or prohibitive telephone charges when seeking our advice or assistance.  Given that we are unfortunately not in a position to offer a freephone service, it was felt that the choice of the two numbers, as described above, would provide our customers with the ability to choose the number which would see them incur the lowest charges.


The use of the ‘Lo-Call’ tag

When looking to explain to our less technically proficient customers the reason for offering two numbers, I chose to use the term ‘lo-call’ due to its direct association with the 0845 service.  It was never our intention to suggest that this number was necessarily cheaper than the ‘national rate’ and indeed, when we advise our customers to ring our Helpline when we write to hem, we go on to explain that we have a ‘national rate’ number for those who have access to ‘cheaper national rate calls’.  However, I acknowledge that in attempting to keep the description of our service as succinct as possible on our website, I may well have given the impression that our 0845 number was being offered as the cheapest service.  In an attempt to remedy this situation I am now in the process of adding some more detailed guidance to our website to avoid any future unfortunate misunderstandings. 


I would therefore like to conclude by stressing that it certainly isn’t our intention to mislead any of our customers, and if you felt in any way confused or misled by the services we were offering I can only apologise, and hope you are suitably reassured by this explanation.

If you have any further concerns, or wish me to clarify any of the information in this email, please do contact me by replying to this email, or quoting the reference number at the top of this email if you wish to contact us by telephone. 


Yours sincerely


Paul Arnold

Head of Customer Services

The Information Commissioner’s Office


Cc Susan Fox – Director of Communications and External Relations

I think I sent most of those in my original e-mail that where passed to him, I have also replied to him pointing back to that e-mail and giving further pointers to the wrongful use of 0845, and inviting him to look at this thread and also the site.

I am afraid I have no confidence whatsoever in ANY MP to do anything relating to the right thing