I run a small business that doesn't make profit as its more of a service. I run this business from home and I have an 0845 number, which I earn no payment or commision from whatsoever, that is routed to my personal home number.  I wouldn't want to give out my home number as a contact for my business. I am also able to route the number to any other number I please on the fly which is very convenient and doesn't cost me.  When I decide to stop my business, I can along with its phone number too.  If I could afford a second line then perhaps, BUT my 0845 number is only used about 3 times a week as its a support number for a website.   The 08 concept works as a deterrent too, which is a good thing.

I am totally in agreeance with what you are doing I wholeheartedly support your cause and having just learned of it will actively recommend it, although just a small note to gently emphasise that some of these choices we make to have a 08 number is genuine for such home businesses like myself. If my home number ever appeared on this site, I would of course request its removal.

However...

Congrats on such a needed site and I hope that the cause continues to work and I shall indeed place a link on my site and mention it in my newsletter which goes out to 70,000 uk subscribers to my site.

Best,

Alex

Oh, and if you aren't sure of the real reasons as to why these 08 numbers suck more money out of us, then may I suggest you download and watch the movie Zeitgeist and its sequel Zeitgest Addendum.

Why don't you get a VoIP telephone? You can pick basic ones up fairly cheaply, and there are some VoIP providers that will give you a free incoming local phone number. You then only pay for outgoing charges, and your callers don't pay for the service.

Yea, I hear you Dave.  I think I'll have a look at the alternatives.

I tried VoIP about three years ago and it just wasn't reliable for a number of reasons and was such a ballache. Maybe the technology has improved since then.  I wil have another a look into it.

Thanks for your thoughts guys, appreciated.

Alex

pobz wrote on Jan 14^th, 2009 at 7:29am:


ok

Quote:


So you sound like a hypocrite to me then by not wanting to pay the 084/7 surcharge on the calls you make but being fully prepared for other people to be surcharged when they call you.  I would certainly hope that if we ever discovered the underlying number for your 0845 number that the management of this website would not agree to its removal from the alternative numbers list.

You can now get all the features you want without your callers paying extra to call you by having an 03 prefixed phone number.  You have to pay a small off fee and about 0.5p per minute for the incoming calls.

Dyw_genes wrote on Jan 18^th, 2009 at 2:51pm:


This 0800 deal was mentioned before by another forum member.  As I recall it the 0800 number can only transfer to a landline free 01/02 number free of charge.  £99 + VAT for calls to a mobile would be too good a deal unless the number of minutes per month was very limited.

The company obviously potentially makes its money by the fact that £114 up front or so is a fair bit of money and landline calls to your home number at 0.5p per minute (perhaps their cost) will take a long time to exceed this.  Perhaps they plan to have liquidated that company or gone out of business before the value of your calls exceeds £114?

A point to obviously consider is that 0800 numbers are still very expensive to call and are excluded from bundled minutes on a mobile phone and 40% of calls are from mobile phones.  Whereas 03 numbers are included in bundled minutes on mobile phones.  So it could be argued that you should have both an 0800 number and an 03 number if you want to make it as cheap as possible for callers to contact you in all possible circumstances.