Hiswasp wrote on Jan 21
st, 2007 at 1:19pm:
Having months ago booked a holiday thru Portland Direct I got my tickets on 4th January 2007 & I tried their 0870 1900 737 number to use their 'Select-a-Seat' option. For all I tried thru the day & the evening I always ended up listening to music for 30 mins or so.
With the greatest of respect was there no alternative to the 0870 telephone based "Select A Seat" option such as an online "Select A Seat" option or a request a seat by email option? If not and an 0870 number was used and the call queue was long I would have just hung up after 3 minutes and decided to put up with whatever seat I was given at the airport. I certainly wouldn't have called back repeatedly time after time and queued for 30 minutes at a time.
I would however have emailed the managing director and board directors of the company and copied it to all board members at Ofcom, members of the Ofcom Consumer Panel and leading travel journalists on major daily and Sunday newspapers.
Succumbing to using an 0870 ripoff service that it is not essential to interact with and that is clearly designed as a ripoff is not something I would have done. Apart from the con that 0870 is National Rate when it is not the other utterly unbelievable con Ofcom allows is queues lasting up to an hour at up to £6.00 an hour to call 0870 numbers when the caller has no idea at the outset how long they are waiting.
While you are at it tell your MP and MEP how unhappy you are at Ofcom's failure to stop this scam using
www.writetothem.com Ofcom is almost certainly in breach of its duties under EU competition legislation and the misleading advertising directive in failing to stop the 084/7 calls scam.