NGMsGhost wrote on May 30^th, 2013 at 12:50pm:

Where has the fair telecoms campaign claimed to be speaking for SayNoTo0870?

Oh yes perhaps I should mention the other point I don't like about the self promoting two man telecoms campaign.

Specifically its choice of a title (FairTelecoms) that clearly attempts to claim that all its views take the moral high ground and therefore implicitly cannot be criticised.  This is as compared to "saynoto0870" that merely accurately describes what it does albeit that 0844, 0845 and 0871 are currently the main foes (although 0870 has never been fully corrected).

Whereas its ridiculous acceptance of the bizarre regime of complication in revealing the multi layered details of 084/7 charges (and even then not revealing all of them) instead of "just banning the whole bl**dy lot" as has been suggested in the past does nothing but to give comfort and succour to Ofcom that their plans to keep the 084/7 merchants in business are succeeding whilst being seen to do something are succeeding.

If SCV and Dave think people won't call 084/7 numbers any more than they won't buy go on buying cigarettes because of the Smoking Kills message on the packets then they are sadly mistaken.

084/7 exploitation is reliant on a regime of slavery where it is the only way of contacting an outfit who you are already a customer of.  For most normal people the supply of pricing information is irrelevant because at that point in time they perceive they do not have any choice but to deal with the organisation they are already a customer of.

I must say I also find it remarkable that the views of Dave are now generally so closely aligned with those of SCV since as I recall it Dave did not originally have many strong opinions of his own on any of these obscure matters of technical legalese and his efforts were always focused simply on the practical matter of relentlessly hunting for alternatives to 084/7 numbers.  It therefore appears to me that in order to become a working colleague of SCV that Dave has unfortunately just uncritically chosen to accept much of his existing dogma even though much of that dogma is not accepted by many other longstanding members of the www.saynoto0870.com discussion forum.

Dave wrote on May 31^st, 2013 at 12:15pm:


I hope you are right about this , Dave.    Of course we have yet to see the precise wording of the legislation so we are not sure which misuses will be kicked into touch and which will be allowed to continue.

Ofcom said this about the CRD in their recent consultation Part B Annexes A19 para 116 :---

"With respect to the impact of the Consumer Rights Directive, we note this is not directly relevant to our assessment under this criterion given that its requirements will be implemented in the UK regardless of whether or not we implement the unbundled tariff. Nevertheless, we acknowledge that there may be a particular impact on SPs as a result of the requirements in the Directive, with some SPs potentially needing to migrate, or use alternative number ranges for particular aspects of their service. In particular this Directive contains a requirement that where a customer telephone helpline is offered to deal with contracts that have been concluded (with some exceptions for specific services) the call must be charged at no more than a basic rate.86 The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (‘BIS’) issued a consultation on the implementation of this Directive in the UK in August this year.87 Its position in that consultation was that the definition of ‘basic rate’ would exclude any revenue sharing arrangements, even on the lower rated ranges where that revenue sharing was used to cover costs rather than passed through directly to the SP. The Directive is required to be transposed into UK law by 13 December 2013 and it will apply to all contracts concluded after June 2014.88 However, as indicated, this requirement only applies to communication after contracts have been concluded. Therefore this may not necessarily mean that SPs which have numbers that do not meet the ‘basic rate’ requirement have to migrate away from that number range, but instead they will need to ensure that they have at least one number range which meets that requirement for after-sales queries."

What do you think Ofcom meant by this? :---
" .... with some SPs potentially needing to migrate, or use alternative number ranges for particular aspects of their service" 

Do you know what these exceptions are? :---
" .... with contracts that have been concluded with some exceptions for specific services the call must be charged at no more than a basic rate"

What does Ofcom mean by this? :---
"Therefore this may not necessarily mean that SPs which have numbers that do not meet the ‘basic rate’ requirement have to migrate away from that number range, but instead they will need to ensure that they have at least one number range which meets that requirement for after-sales queries."

This does give the impression that Ofcom are seeking every possible way to wriggle around the CRD; what do you think?

I will only say this on the likely effectiveness or otherwise of the EU Directive.

Appeals to the Competition Appeals Tribunal probably take a year or so, the subsequent appeal to the Upper Tribunal may take another year or two.  The appeal to the Court of Appeal will probably take 18 months after that and the one to the Supreme Court another couple of years.

After that the European Court of Human Rights case perhaps brought by members of this campaign (if the Supreme Court backs business and its profits as it usually does in commercial matters as businesses cannot appeal to Europe) may take another three years or so.

As profits from 084/7 numbers are worth a lot it may be 10 years or more before this Directive has any impact on the use of ripoff customer service numbers in the UK.  By then I doubt the average large corporation in the UK will any longer be offering voice based customer service and will instead insist you message them online so that they can then take as many weeks or months or years as they want to bother to reply (if ever), especially if they cannot charge the customer for the privilege of doing so.

Meanwhile the "Engage With The Scammers and their Scamming Regulators Telecoms Campaign" (aka FairTelecoms) will continue to cosy up to Ofcom and telecoms businesses perhaps in the hope of another paid directorship or consultancy or two from the industry to work on a research or focus group or whatever in return for continuing to engage with it.

loddon wrote on Jun 4^th, 2013 at 6:43pm:

I think that the usage of 084 numbers, and to a lesser degree 087 numbers, has been companies jumping on the bandwagon. That is, as others are doing it it is seen as the in thing.

In a similar manner, hopefully as companies that have to move away from these numbers by law do so, others will follow suit.


Where a company has to give up imposing a Service Charge for existing business calls, I can't see that it is likely to retain it for new business calls.