There was an hour long phone in today (Tuesday 15th April 2008) on You & Yours at 12pm on BBC Radio 4 about issues customers had with poor customer service in the UK. A long section of this was devoted to calls about bad experiences when telephoning customer service centres and the abusive techniques typically used by many of them to handle calls.
I tried to call the phone in program (an 0870 number with no geographic alternative
) and got through to a researcher who said they might call me back about it and I then also emailed the program but despite that no views complaining about the misuse of 084/7 numbers by call centres and that itself being bad customer service were allowed on air (either from myself or anyone else).
My suspicion is that You & Yours has received instructions from senior BBC management to never discuss the 084/7 call cost issue again.
I sent the following email to express my dissatisfaction with my views not being allowed on air.
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: You & Yours "Customer Service" Phone-In - SayNoTo0870 Campaign View Blocked
Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 13:31:25 +0100
To: peter.white@bbc.co.uk, liz.barclay@bbc.co.uk
CC: katy.johnstone@bbc.co.uk, mark.damazer@bbc.co.uk, mark.thompson@bbc.co.uk, mark.byford@bbc.co.uk, tim.davie@bbc.co.uk, zarin.patel@bbc.co.uk, zzCaroline.zzThomson@bbc.co.uk, david.jordan@bbc.co.uk, john.tate@bbc.co.uk, kerstin.mogull@bbc.co.uk, paul.schlesinger@bbc.co.uk, michael.stock@bbc.co.uk, trust.enquiries@bbc.co.uk, michael.lyons@bbc.co.uk, patricia.hodgson@bbc.co.uk, chitra.bharucha@bbc.co.uk, jeremy.peat@bbc.co.uk, winifred.robinson@bbc.co.uk, john.waite@bbc.co.uk, sheila.mcclennon@bbc.co.uk, will.yates@bbc.co.uk, melanie.abbott@bbc.co.uk, eddie.mair@bbc.co.uk
Dear Mr White and Ms Barclay,
I tried both to phone your so called "phone-in" program about 12.35pm today (Wednesday 15th April) and sent the below email to you as well but my comments about customer's being abused with excessive 084/7 call charges numbers by many UK call centres have not been let on air.
Are you now under strict instructions from senior BBC management to not discuss the 084/7 issue at all on your program? I note that you have not mentioned this issue again for a very long time indeed, despite Ofcom going back on their previous commitments about making 0870 numbers priced on the same basis as 01/02 calls on 1st February 2008.
I suspect that producers and presenters on your program have now been told never to mention this issue again on your show by the BBC's senior management (due to its own extensive and widespread cynical use and abuse of these numbers)?
Of course you also still even absurdly use an abusive 0870 covert premium rate (see the dictionary definition of the word premium) phone number for calls to the phone in line on your supposedly pro consumer show. Clearly this appears to be yet another example of the modern trend for rotten customer service by a large and faceless organisation that does not appear to listen to or at least take action in response to the views expressed by its customers!
I look forward to your comments.
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Call Centres - Hidden Extra 084/7 Calling Cost & Ofcom Not Listening To The Consumer's Unhappiness About This
Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 12:46:57 +0100
To: youandyours@bbc.co.uk
The biggest problem of all most consumers have with call centres and
that you have not yet yet mentioned on today's phone in program is the
fact that these call centres use non standard priced numbers beginning
087 and 084 that are excluded from bundled call packages such as BT
Option 3.
An unlimited calls package for calls of up to 60 minutes at any time,
like BT Option 3, can now be had for as little as £5 per month but
customers then find that huge numbers of customer service centres use
numbers starting 084 and 087 where these so called unlimited call
packages do not cover the cost of these calls to these numbers. To add
insult to injury if you complain about the cost of these 084/7 calls to
call centre staff they always seemed to be trained to lie to customers
that their 084 or 087 number is only "a local rate call" or only a
"national rate call", even though the Advertising Standards Authority
has issued several guidances that it is illegal to make such claims in
advertising and even though making such claims is also an offence under
Part 3 of the Consumer Protection Act 1987 regarding giving misleading
price indications to consumers.
With regards to the regulators Ofcom has consistently proven utterly
useless with respect to consumer concerns about being ripped off over
084/7 numbers and despite over 1,000 consumers having complained about
the extra cost of calling these numbers in response to one of its
consultation exercises over 3 years ago it has still done nothing to
resolve the problem. Ofcom had promised to make 0870 calls the same
price as normal 01/02 calls on 1st February this year but they have now
gone back on that promise due to lobbying by burglar alarm companies who
are ripping off customers by using 0870 numbers to make burglar alarm calls.
As an active member of the
www.saynoto0870.com campaign I can say that
Ofcom do not seem to be in any way on the side of the UK citizen consumer
but instead only on the side of the telecoms companies.
Regards,
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