I thought the next London code list began 020-3 after the old two, but I just saw this:

Community Focus   
    
  Avenue House
East End Road
Finchley
London N3 3QE
020 8346 9789
Phone 020 0200 8353

Besides not being told London have started a fourth series of numbers (already?) plus of course everyone in London calling anything starting with zero would get a different exchange anyway.
Can anyone sort this one out as it's not the first 0200 exchange I've seen so not advertised in error.

I understand some of that (not the tech-speak though, you'd need to spell that one out).
But what is the actual point of adding spare exchanges where you need to dial the whole number where there are millions of free normal numbers left over? Do they have a special function only national dialling can perform?

Not to worry, it is more a general reason for their existence needed than more technical details. I also found a psychic reader using the number 020 0200 8901. Now why would they request a weird one like that especially as nearly all callers from London would try the short version and get the unobtainable noise? And why would the telco provide it if these are normally reserved for automated calls
(I understood that bit)?

jgxenite wrote on Dec 6^th, 2008 at 4:40pm:


Sorry to be pedantic but you seem to have missed out the crucial world not in the above sentence.

Where did you find these 020 0 numbers? Normally they would not be used as public-facing numbers. Are they geographical alternatives that you or someone else has found? Perhaps "Community Focus" were using 0845 and decided to publicise the geographical number to avoid ripping people off. And the only thing "psychic readers" can usually predict correctly is that the customer is about to lose a great deal of money through calling an 09 number, so perhaps someone has found the underlying 020 numbers and publicised it.

When you dial a number starting with 0, it indicates that you are going to dial an area code, such as 20 for London. If a local number were to start with 0, you couldn't dial it directly because as soon as you press 0, the exchange is expecting a full national number. The number you tried is unobtainable if you omit the dialling code because it's expecting another four digits.

The same is true for local numbers starting with a 1, as this is reserved for special services (118 directory enquiries, 100 operator, etc.)

My own opinion is that we should go over to whole-number dialling anyway. With so many people using mobiles or VoIP now, and so many organisations using non-geographical numbers, the idea of a local number is largely dead. In fact, I bet many people don't even know you can dial just the local number from a landline. Removing local dialling would free up many new numbers, and delay the day we need a new range of numbers to satisfy demand. It would also mean all numbers would have to be obtainable, which would stop companies using "national dialling only" numbers as the backend number for rip-off numbers to prevent them from being dialled.

jrawle wrote on Dec 6^th, 2008 at 6:51pm:


You should have escalated this through their formal complaints procedure and/or by emails to their top board members.

When you became deadlocked with BT you should have then taken the complaint on Otelo.

Dave wrote on Dec 6^th, 2008 at 11:21pm:


Yes but wouldn't TelXl always expect their customers to provide the associated 084 or 087 prefixed non geographic number they had no doubt also also provided to their clients for any calls that they receive from end users.

Surely that is the whole point.  Namely that National Dialling Only Numbers are normally owned by people or organisations who are usually complicit in the whole 084/7 ripoff and who want their customers to have to call the 084/7 number and for the geographic number to not be known or easily guessable.

However every so often someone has an 084/7 number due to naivety and hard selling of the number and then learns customers do not like calling 084/7 numbers and this is where the National Dialling Only number ends up being disclosed to ordinary retails telecoms subscribers.  Similarly in large call centres while the official policy is that the National Dialling Only numbers are not given out to customers some of their staff may oppose the whole 084/7 scam and also happen to know what the National Dialling Only number is and so decide to list the National Dialling Only Number on this site.

As the convention that National Dialling Numbers are not disclosed to end users is only a gentleman's agreement between fellow telecoms scammers that they will not allow their profits to be eroded by letting customers know they have a geographic alternative they can ring Ofcom clearly did not seem to expect anyone to circumvent it.  However as there seem to be no actual penalties for giving these numbers out and as the rules in the NTNP only exist in order to allow end users to be scammed by having to call NGNs as much as possible then clearly this element of the NTNP can be safely ignored by individual telephone users who are in possession of National Dialling Only numbers.

See also Page 7 (Page 8 of the PDF) at www.ofcom.org.uk/telecoms/ioi/numbers/lonareacod/slides.pdf