Dave wrote on Jun 3
rd, 2007 at 9:54pm:
Perhaps this is something we should be pushing an investigative programme like Panorama to investigate. It's not just the rip-off 0870, but the fact that the telcos just follow each other. What with the connection charge which was originally a cable thing and whole minute charging all of which have infested the major players and others like 18185 are pushing up the price but people don't seem aware.
I have pushed Panorama and Dispatches and recently Whistleblower (who actually ask for viewers to send them program ideas) but so far no joy.
This is obviously a massive increase in prices because most business call centres are only open 10am to 6pm and 10am to 4pm on Saturday and Sunday, so they will now all be charged at the higher rate.
Clearly Ofcom made a massive error of judgement in de-regulating BT's prices. But then again Ofcom's main agenda doesn't seem to be the protection of the UK citizen consumer does it?
The whole connection fee thing shouldn't even be legal as far as I'm concerned as it totally distorts consumer choice. If supermarkets made you pay a milk purchase fee of £1 flat rate per time but then you could have as many litres of milk as you wanted for 5p each the Office of Fair Trading and the Competition Competition would be down on them like a ton of bricks.
But when it comes to telecoms the Ofcom careerists just snooze quietly in their deckchairs waiting for their next invite to a nice business lunch with one of their old friends. Utterly disgraceful.