gt94sss2 wrote on Mar 1
st, 2008 at 11:36am:
He also gave a “cast iron guarantee” that the government will not allow NHS Direct to use an 0845 number when the NHS Direct contract comes to an end.
And when does it come to an end then? 2015?
This contract is with BT Global. If BT believes ripping the public off with 084/7 numbers is such a bad thing as the CEO of BT Retail is on record as saying then why does it not just immediately renegotiate the contract with NHS Direct free of penalty in order to start offering an 03 4647 number?
Me thinks the end of the contract stuff is just the same old lies as the "no new contracts to be entered into" with 0844 doctors surgeries. If the arrangement is wrong then it needs to be changed now pronto and the NHS needs to pick up the cost of any such renegotiation, given that it is own ineptness that led to 084 numbers being used in the first place. Meanwhile your cynical BT NTS and BT Retail division colleagues are deliberately trying to muddy the NTS waters by cutting the per minute cost of 0845 calls in the weekday daytime and also abolishing 5.5p per hour to geographic numbers in the weekday evening whilst raising the price of geographic 01/02 calls to 4p per minute on BT Option 1. All part of a carefully rehearsed strategy to hang on to the 084 status quo.
Ofcom has been pretending to consult on 084/7 numbers for the last 4 years only to use the implausible get out that it did know about problems with price announcements on calls to burglar alarms at the last moment to indefinitely postpone returning 0870 calls to geographic rates.
What all these shysters are actually trying to do is to delay forever whilst giving the impression that they want to change to using normal geographic priced phone numbers.