Why are you still looking back at the past? Things are different now. The arguments are won and action is being taken.

This was never directly a matter for Ofcom, but their recent work is useful in many ways.

BIS rules ban customer service lines from 084, 087 and 09 numbers. That immediately fixes much of the problem. Ofcom rules force users of 084, 087 and 09 numbers to state their Service Charge. This will highlight the reality of the situation and make many other users think again.

We're now in a very different place compared to even a few months ago.

As usual you throw unfounded accusations around. Why can't you celebrate success?

Once DWP have made the change, joining HMRC in their use of 03 numbers, more than 90% of all calls to government departments will be on 03 numbers. A year ago, it was probably less than 2%. Numerous other departments will be making the switch in the coming months. The figure may not ever reach 100%, but it won't be far off.

No doubt you'll be scouring government websites just so you can come on here in a couple of years time to rant that the "Hindi language version of the sheep-dip advice line for Welsh hill farmers" is obviously run by evil, corrupt people on the take from the telecoms industry because they are the only government phone line still using 0844 telephone numbers. In your mind, they'll obviously have a clear and corrupt motive for not making the change and you'll bang on and on about it as usual.

John Lewis obviously made a mistake. However, in the end, the result looks like not just the John Lewis stores dropping 084 numbers but the whole group including their telecoms business, their insurance arm and Waitrose stores. That will be a strong signal to others in those sectors. Large scale promotion of the change to 03 is still months away. Once that gets going the snowball is going to be unstoppable.

However, now you have moved to Spain, I don't see why any of this should be of interest to you any more. Shouldn't you be tackling all those evil Spanish corporations that are out to get you? We've got the situation covered over here.

Ian G wrote on Dec 24^th, 2013 at 11:33am:


Where do you get your figures from.  I don't believe any of the figures above. Please quote your sources and please provide an encyclopaedic data set.

Where were you in the many previous years that we were responding to Ofcom and ICSTIS and other consulations and being ignored.  Probably working in some cosy well paid governmental job not worrying at all about telecoms costs I would suspect.

You strongly sound to me like some government civil servant tasked with working on this project to change to 03 who are now afraid that we may rain on your parade in claiming near 100% success by government in sweeping aside this menace to the public whilst ignoring the fact that it was the government and its cronies that introduced the whole rotten system of 084/7 call centres to begin with.  Your assertion this was not Ofcom's issue to deal with is also ridiculous in view of the numerous previous consultations they launched on the issue and then failed to act on.

Why do you not expect me to be cynical when Ofcom firmly announced the 070 number range would move to 06 and then changed their minds at the last minute when a few powerful govrnment interested connected with expensive hospital bedside telephone services got at them.

Why do you have so much faith in BIS when all that is happening is that government is trying to take credit for being forced in to doing something it should have done 10 years ago that it is only bothering to act on now due to an EU Directive.

03 numbers were more or less my personal suggestion to Ofcom and the only personal success I have had with this body.  But they destroyed the purity of the idea by allowing underlying wholesale charges to 03 numbers that were different from geographic numbers making most of the industry reluctant to take them up.

Quote:


How do you know?  Are you a senior government civil servant tasked with dealing with the matter?  Either way goverment and its regulatory agencies OFTEL and then Ofcom should never have allowed 084/7 numbers to exist and spread like a cancer in the first place.  And the lousy British Government would never have done anything about this European wide plague (also at work everywhere in Spain) had it not been forced on them by the EU.

And why do you think the problem is now at an end?  Surely you must realise  that an already disturbing tendency for many organisations to only offer contact via online web forms that are not responded to for days or weeks will now simply spread ever wider, with no restriction on it doing so.  And surely you must realise that there are numerous activities the public need to call organisations for not deemed as customer services that will still have 084/7 numbers.

But you seem desperate to force us to declare that the war has been won and so to take our eye off the many dodgy conscience less people in positions of power in large organisations who all agreed to these numbers in the first place.

Quote:


Please don't give me the old "poor old John Lewis" must not have realised what they were doing baloney when the adverse consequences of using 0844 numbers were known perfectly well and had already received massive and extensive publicity at the time they chose to move to them (they had also already had many years of customers writing to them complaining about the 084 numbers used for johnlewis.com).  The truth is that they just thought it would be profitable to change to 0844 and that their poor old customers would not have a choice as they were already captive.  These things happen time and again because people without a conscience, who only care about their own bonuses, are now in charge of most organisations.  The authority on which I was a councillor were never able to bring in 084/7 numbers as I passed a resolution preventing them doing so back in 2004.  Subsequently they introduced a large and extremely faceless centralised customer services department with long call queues but they had to keep it on the original geograpic number due to my proactive resolution before I left the Council.

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What planet do you live on exactly?  The BBC and several Police forces and councils changed to 03 numbers several years ago but other organisations and government agencies simply ignored this.

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I haven't moved to Spain.  I merely spend a number of weeks a year there.  However the Europe wide telco ripoff movement in the form of 902 numbers is very much alive and well in that country.

At least people know who I am as I have been posting on this forum for nearly 10 years.  You on the other have just sprung up from nowhere, have not explained who you are or what you do and yet constantly declare yourself an expert with your own unique insight in to what the future holds.  Tell us who you are + why you see yourself as qualified to lecture on this subject and we might take you a little more seriously.

bbb_uk wrote on Dec 24^th, 2013 at 1:49pm:


I think you will find the bickering is actually mainly OnTopic and relates to IanG's contentions that our worries are now at end regarding the misuse of 084/7 or other Non Geographic numbers and my contention that the current legislation will most definitely not succeed in fully achieving that goal.

The other main problem stems from the fact that IanG has only very recently joined the forum and has none of our history in this struggle (he has not explained why he has not participated in any of these discussions over the previous nearly 10 years) and yet seems to declare himself as unequivocally an expert on this matter whom nobody else is entitled to challenge (rather reminding me in style and approach of another more recent forum joinee known as SilentCallsVictim)

He also seems to go out of his way to be confrontational with longstanding forum members e.g. in his mistaken comments that I now live in Spain so he does not think I am any longer entitled to express a view on these matters.

IanG strongly smacks to me of possibly being a government civil servant tasked with declaring all public worries about 084/7 misuse by the government now at an end.  If however that is not who he is and he has joined the forum for some other reason then perhaps he can set out the basis on which he now has such a strong interest in these matters having never previously participated in any of the relevant discussions over the large number of preceding years.

Oh dear.  As others have said, we all have our own views about particular aspects but this is the season of goodwill & we are all supposed to be on the same side I thought with (at least) some shared aims?   Some recent posts do no credit to our campaigns & may even give satisfaction to "the enemy".

So.........Happy Christmas everyone & may 2014 bring us success in ending the exploitation of callers to all organisations which use other than 01,02 & 03 numbers for all contact (& 080 for those who can benefit from them) - hope I've included everything!

There you go again. More accusations. Pathetic.

You have no idea where I have been campaigning nor the many successes I have had, but I certainly won't be sharing any of my history with you.

Those that need to know; they know.

The regulation does not ban any use of 084 etc numbers. It says that if a company only offers an 084 etc number for after-sales service, a consumer can claim from the company the additional cost to that consumer of calling 084 etc, compared with that consumer's "basic rate". The regulation does not define "basic rate". The government's announcement of the regulation
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-cuts-off-costly-calls
explained that
Quote:

For many people, the marginal cost of phoning a friend is zero.
Therefore, from June 2014, if you have to phone an 084 etc number for after-sales service, and you have unlimited calls to geographic numbers, you will be able to demand that the company reimburses you for the cost of your phone call. If a lot of people do this, most companies will stop using 084 etc numbers for after-sales enquiries.
There will, alas, be no redress for the use of 084 etc numbers as a means of charging (for example) an additional "booking fee" for the purchase of a theatre ticket.