Just to further update the mobile phone calls with Finarea's UK call brands routing to the barking dogs scenario as follows:-

1. Tanya Rofani at Ofcom UK (who is conducting the current investigation in to telcos operating without belonging to an Alternate Dispute Resolution Scheme) and her boss Neil Buckley (Ofcom's Director of Investigations) have now emailed be me back to say that as this company is based in Switzerland and as they have not had many complaints about Finarea from UK based customers it is still not a priority for them to investigate Finarea.  They say they may review the matter if they receive more complaints from customers of Finarea based in the UK.  This is the same fob off response I also got from Ofcom's previous Director of Investigations, David Stewart, three years ago.  Translation - Ofcom only ever bothers investigating complaints made by big and powerful UK based telcos who also provide most of Ofcom's fee income.  In other words Parliament and the Uk citizen consumer unfortunately continues to be treated with contempt by OfCoN.

2. I emailed copies of my correspondence with Ofcom about Finarea's lack of an ADR scheme to the one person named as a Finarea member of staff in the current domain name registration for www.18185.co.uk to be found via www.whois.co.uk ; That person is igor.tracchia@finarea.ch and I received auto responders to my emails saying he was out of the office for a few days but would reply to the emails on his return.  I also complained to Mr Tracchia about Finarea very recently sending me an email saying they were going to take 20GBP from my credit card when I owed them less than 3GBP.   As a result of this I have cancelled my credit card payment mandate for 18185 and replaced it with a direct debit payment mandate (as incorrect direct debit payments are much easier to get refunded).

3. To my surprise I have now received the following emails in response from Finarea:-

Firstly a read receipt from info@finarea.ch on 16th May 2008 at 13.35 and then the below email sent shortly afterwards from service@finarea.ch promising me a 20GBP credit to my account (not sure if this was the 20GBP petrol money and wear and tear for the barking dogs incident or a 20GBP refund for the 20GBP they have said they are going to shortly debit from my credit card incorrectly).

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So it would seem that threatened with mention of their lack of a UK ADR scheme and/or possible reference to the Swiss telecoms regulator (also called Ofcom) and following an email sent to the personal email address of their one known employed corporate executive (with an email account that does work) that Finarea can be beaten in to responding, albeit extremely grudgingly.

So for anyone else the two relevant email addresses again are igor.tracchia@finarea.ch, service@finarea.ch and info@finarea.ch

Make sure to mention their failure to comply with Ofcom requirements to belong to an Alternate Dispute Resolution scheme (ADR)

Also mention that you have the contact details for the Swiss telecoms regulator - OFCOM

These are to be found at:-  www.bakom.admin.ch/index.html?lang=en

service@finarea.ch have emailed me that they will refund on my next invoice the charges for 3 calls that were misrouted to the dogs. And Len Martin, OCCtelecoms@ofcom.org.uk has emailed me that "It would appear that Finarea 18185 has not joined an Alternative Dispute Resolution Scheme.  Ofcom will take this up with them directly.  Unfortunately, this does not mean that we will be able to make Finarea 18185, take any action in relation to your particular problem. 

In instances such as this, if you are unable to pursue your dispute with Finarea 18185, we would have to suggest that you consider seeking independent legal advice."

"Legal advice" about suing a company based in Switzerland to recover a few pounds would of course be daft.

Morning,

NGMs Ghost, I appreciate this is unlikely but was just wondered if Finarea ever came back to you with an explanation for the “Barking Dog” calls? As I understand it Finarea, based in Switzerland are the company who manage the 18185 service, which you used when first encountering this annoying miss routing scenario.

I have also experienced this problem when calling from the US, both direct from the office or using my mobile (without using the 18185 service). This happened when I’ve attempted to call a number of UK friends & colleagues, connected with a range of different service providers including; Vodafone, Orange and even a BT Landline.

With this in mind I expect the calls are being miss-routed at some point by an International Carrier used by the company where the calls are originating from (in my case Verizon). However I believe a number of international carriers could be used in these types of calls, but hoping Verizon, using my call records will be able to assist and investigate this for me with the aim of identifying at what point and WHERE my calls are being routed to!

Unfortunately as the calls are being miss-routed before hitting the UK Service Providers such as Vodafone, Orange and BT, They are unable to assist as no records are ever generated on there UK network.

So my question is has anyone else already logged a complaint with the originating service provider like NGMs Ghost did with Finarea and have they received a positive response indicating an investigation of some sort is being conducted to bring the scam to an end???

Anyone still needing to make a complaint about misbilling by 18866, 1899 or 18185 may be interested in the following information that has just come to light.

1. The three indirect access codes of 1899, 18185 and 18866 are all listed by Ofcom in their current list of indirect access codes as belonging to Connect Telecom UK.

2. In a recent list of network operators PhonePayPlus (formerly ICSTIS) showed the following contact details for Connect Telecom UK including phone number and email address.

See www.phonepayplus.org.uk/business/NetworkOperators.asp :-

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So anyone who feels that Finarea may still owe them a refund on any product in the 1899, 18185 or 18866 stables may therefore care to get in touch with this lady.  Some of you may also want to complain to Ofcom about the failure of Connect Telecom UK to belong to an Alternate Dispute Resolution Service (either www.otelo.org.uk or www.cisas.org.uk) as they are required to do under the terms of the Communciations Act 2003.