My neighbour (an old lady in 70s) paid around £45 in charges while contacting the holiday company's customer services operating on 0871 with 10p+ pmin charges.

More deceivingly and cleverly they changed the 0371 number in the letterhead to an 0871 after the initial correspondences (re: installment) and poor her, has been unknowignly paying the premium every time since then.

The evidence is in the itemised bills since Nov 2019
Average time spent on each call is around 15-25mins costing about avg £3 per call.

Disappointed to see this kind of practices, especially affecting unwary, elderly people paying the final price and affecting them financially.

Regulation 41 of the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013 bans the operation of premium rate 084, 087 or 09 numbers for contact by customers.

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2013/3134/regulation/41/made

Regulation 41(2) requires the call charges to be refunded.

The regulations came into effect on 13 June 2014.


Check the phone bill very carefully. Calls to 084, 087, 09 and 118 numbers incur both an Access Charge and a Service Charge.

The Access Charge can be up to 20p per minute from landlines or up to 65p per minute from mobiles, irrespective of which number was called.

The Service Charge for 087 numbers can be up to 13p per call and/or up to 13p per minute. It depends entirely on which number was called.