NGMsGhost wrote on Sep 15
th, 2008 at 12:04am:
Large John Lewis stores like John Lewis Oxford St seem to have no trouble running the whole thing off a switchboard with a geographic phone number.
So your saying John Lewis store would receive more calls at same time than the CAA/Atol will over this? Last I checked it was more than a couple of thousands people affected by this which means most likely they all tried ringing as soon as they heard.
Quote:Also voip telephony can be offered using geographic phone numbers.
Yes, they can but do they have a VoIP now because they obviously needed, I presume, a new number purely to take the number of calls they are going to get.
A GN number can really only cope with a certain amount of calls before one gets an engaged tone, or being able to be put through to one of multiple call centres. How much this is really depends on how good their switchboard is. I have assumed that due to the volume of calls they were expecting, the CAA/Atol asked expensive BT for a number that is more likely to cope with the demand.
I did notice that Atol didn't routinely use NGNs for normal everyday enquiries so the unexpected collapse of the UK's third biggest operator took it by complete surprise and hence they needed a new number quickly setup.
Quote:No it wouldn't. If one shops around the incoming call charges can be very low indeed and much lower than 0800, especially if a large number of incoming minutes per month are purchased in bulk on an annual contract.
An 03x number would be expensive and as they needed a number asap and only for a certain amount of time and I presume didnt anticipate such a large company going out of business then they never had time to shop around.
Quote:I can't imagine why you seem to have suddenly changed sides to that of the 084/7 apologists bbb_uk? Have you received a brown envelope in the post containing a large cheque or something?
Yes, same as certain other organisations of the government lol
I was trying to think of it logically from both sides and that is that the CAA/atol now have to pay for nearly everyone abroad to get home and refund the many, many, many thousands of people who had booked but not travelled with XL or one of their other sister companies. Logic would dictate that this is going to cost hundreds of millions and I assume the £1/£2 we each all paid Atol wouldn't cover it on its own so to cut their own costs, having a number where they got charged for incoming calls received would just add to their already large bill.
Does the CAA/Atol come under FoI act?