the truth about unlimited call packages

[cheeky2004]

just a note and advice on unlimited calls packages

Many unlimited call packages may offer unlimited calls but cost you far more than you would ever make in calls at for eg 2p/min. For example One tel do an unlimited package at about £15.99. Imagine how many minutes you would have to spend on the phone at 2p/min to accumulate £15.99 of calls. You be better of with a company who offer cheap calls all the time, and only pay for what you use. Imagine being on a £15.99 tarrif and then you happened to be on holiday for 2 weeks one month!!!

Call4u offer a great service from telco at www.************. Go to the Telco section, I read the truths about BT. A very interesting read that reveals some of the real truths behind what BT say.
Telco, however only charges you for the calls you make, without any extra monthly costs. They also promise to save you money against BT standard prices - and their Price Promise guarantees it.

The calls are clear and they can be made from mobiles too. I use everyday 50 orange, and make my daytime calls through telco at 5p a min, then use my free minutes through orange in the evening. GREAT!

[DaveL]

I cannot believe that people fall for the unlimited calls tariffs without first deciding whether it will, overall, be cheaper than paying per min. There is no such thing as a free lunch, and some simple mathematics will tell you the truth. Use a spreadsheet (eg, Excel) to play with figures if it makes it easier, but don't change tariff just because there's a nice advert that you've seen or heard.

The fact is that as more and more people move to unlimited tariffs without thinking, companies will latch onto this, and prices will rise for everyone, just as they are doing with the abolishion of the BT Standard tariff. If people aren't aware that they have this choice, they won't go for it, instead they prefer to go for what they see.

I would prefer to pay per minute, including a line rental. We're seeing a dumbing down of people's attitudes. The glossy leaflets are not telling the whole truth, and this is what people go on. The fact is that there's pros and cons in making these sorts of decisions, and it is up to the public to way them up before acting.

[cheeky2004]

well said dave. i research alot into the telephone market and im also a designer for an agency. there is some very very clever advertising going on out there, particularly with some of the companies we come to trust. as you say, best thing is to go with s company who offer cheap rates ALL the time, not the packages.

[DaveL]

This is a business rather than a public utility, and business operates to make the most profit. BT was formally a public utility and I think that what we're seeing is the result of accountants and business analysts which is trying to shake off the 'public utility' image and turn it into business. These sorts of people wouldn't know the first thing about the engineering behind the telephone network, but they are [supposedly] qualified to run it!

[Nongeographical Man]

The biggest reason these so called All Inclusive Calls Packages are a scam is because they do not include 0870 non geographic calls which BT still has the cheek to suggest are charged at the "Standard BT National Rate".

Yet this is the same standard BT National Rate that will no longer be charged by BT for any other UK geographic calls if BT get their way by making it compulsory to belong to BT Together. Yes BT Together does not cover non geographic calls to 0870 which will still be charged at 7.9p per minute in the daytime!!!!!!!!!!!

Please make sure you all register a formal complaint with OFCOM in response to their latest consultation on this BT proposal.

Tell them that BT should not be allowed to make it compulsory to join BT Together and that if BT want to give us cheaper prices they must cut the BT National Rate (which includes 0870 calls) to 3p per minute in the day time.

You can find the email address to make your comments to here:-
http://www.ofcom.org.uk/bulletins/co...cw007/?a=87101

[deniseh]

Ofcom are actually conducting an investigation into this. I work for a Carrier Pre Selection company and am on Ofcom's mailing list

Its free to join and quite often sends you good info

[Nongeographical Man]

Originally posted by deniseh
Ofcom are actually conducting an investigation into this. I work for a Carrier Pre Selection company and am on Ofcom's mailing list

Its free to join and quite often sends you good info

Which CPS company do you work with?

I used to use Tiscali Daytime Extra and Eurobell on indirect access to get cheapest peak and off peak call prices.

However lately I have switched to TalkTalk's free Talk 70 plan, which a relation is also on, and then make all my daytime peak calls (I work at home quite a bit) using call18866.com Call 18866 is only 1p per minute in the day for a national call (plus one off 1p per connection) and unlike some companies they dont scam you on the billing by charging for calls that never get answered at the other end (it seems like TalkTalk may do that sometimes).

But I can't cut down the cost of calling those 0870 numbers as nobody discounts them. Can you explain why nobody who runs a CPS service can cut 0870 call prices down even a little bit - say to 5p per minute? I do understand that the companies running the numbers get a rake off so they can't be cut as low as ordinary UK geographic number calls.

[DaveL]

It's good to see BT being investigated about tariffs. It (hopefully) might have to make an embaressing U-turn on the abolition of the BT Standard tariff!!

On the subject of unlimited call packages, if you are comparing packages, BT Standard (at the moment) includes £2.15 worth of calls a month and costs £9.50 per month. In effect the line rental is £7.35 (assuming you use all the inclusive call allowance).

The following is based on what I have read on TalkTalk's website, so feel free to correct me if you know different. To get TalkTalk you pay your line rental to BT, currently BT Standard at £9.50 per month. You also pay TalkTalk (or whoever your provider is) for the calls and their monthly fee (if applicable). TalkTalk's Talk1 plan is 'free', but if you take into account the loss of BT's inclusive call time it will, in effect, cost you £2.15 extra to go onto TalkTalk Talk1. This is the real cost to you to take the next step up, as it were.

Another example would be BT's Together tariff, currently £11.50 per month. At a glance (and IMHO how BT want you to see it) you might think that it's £2 more a month to go from BT Standard (£9.50) to BT Together Option 1 (£11.50). As I have shown, in reality, this is not the case!

More on details on BT Standard can be found on BT Standard tariff to be abolished.

[Nongeographical Man]

Originally posted by DaveL
TalkTalk's Talk1 plan is 'free', but if you take into account the loss of BT's inclusive call time it will, in effect, cost you £2.15 extra to go onto TalkTalk Talk1. This is the real cost to you to take the next step up, as it were.

But on Talk Talk you can use up your BT standard line rental's free call allowance at any time by simply dialling 1280 in front of a number.

As TalkTalk is no cheaper for 0870 calls than BT and a little more expensive for 0845 calls at certain times of day all you have to do is dial 1280 when calling one of those nasty 0870 numbers.

As 0870 numbers cost 7.8p per minute in the weekday daytime you only need to make 32 minutes of calls to these 0870 numbers in the quarter (hardly difficult as I seem to make that much calls to these numbers in just a week) using the 1280 prefix to use up the BT free calls allowance.

I do hope that BT really loses out on the compulsory BT Together plan and that OFCOM forces them to reduce their actual standard national daytime rate to 3p per minute, incluing 0870 non geographic numbers i.e. that OFCOM will see the enforced compulsory membership of a supposedly voluntary customer scheme (BT Together) for the scam that this is.

IF OFCOM don't get BT for this one then I feel quite sure that the Office of Fair Trading or the European Commission will instead.

This is such an arrogant move on BT's part that one can only attribute it to the arrogance of a Frenchman - i.e. their retail Chief Exec Pierre Danon!

[DaveL]

Originally posted by Nongeographical Man
But on Talk Talk you can use up your BT standard line rental's free call allowance at any time by simply dialling 1280 in front of a number.

Thanks for that info Nongeo Man, I wasn't aware of that.

I've just checked my bill, and from what I can see 0845 numbers are included in the call allowance, but 0870 and mobiles aren't. This ties in with the way I understand it, but there seems to be no easy to understand guide from BT. All BT's pricing information is on The BT Price List, but it can hardly be described as user friendly.

If you check your BT bill you should find a section entitled 'Discount/benefit'. Under this is 'Call Allowance' which gives the amount of calls on your bill which have 100% discount. Total up the calls under 'Call Allowance' (ie add the amount with 0% discount to those with 100% discount). You now know the total calls on that bill that were covered by your call allowance. Now look at the calls section, and try to get this figure exactly. I did this by leaving out the mobiles and 0870s. This should be proof of what's going on! I hope you understood that!

Info on residential inclusive call time can be found here.
BT Standard pricing is here.

[thefirs]

18866 does actually offer peak 0845 and 0870 a bit cheaper than other phone service suppliers at 3p and 7p per minute respectively, but to make worthwhile savings on a lot of these non-geographical (or should we really call them "premium rate"?) calls visit the following site:

http://www.saynoto0870.com/

[Nongeographical Man]

Originally posted by thefirs
18866 does actually offer peak 0845 and 0870 a bit cheaper than other phone service suppliers at 3p and 7p per minute respectively, but to make worthwhile savings on a lot of these non-geographical (or should we really call them "premium rate"?) calls visit the following site:

http://www.saynoto0870.com/

Yes I know about call18866.co.uk - I am also a customer.

But don't forget that they do charge a 1p connection fee so they are only a little bit cheaper than BT's peak rate. However more importantly don't forget that call18866 don't drop these prices for 0870 and 0845 in the evenings or the offpeak so using 18866 for these numbers is a slightly dangerous habit to get into. You could end up paying 7p per minute to a call an 0870 at the weekend.

Thanks for the info on www.saynoto0870.com - its about time someone set up such a site as I had been thinking of doing it myself. But they still dont expose how much BT is increasing its revenue stream year on year from 0870 growth. BT make mega bucks from 0870 I'm quite sure - why else would they be pushing their growth at such an alarming rate.

And don't start me on 0871's. Those ******** are 10p per minute at all times but the companies running them aren't forced to disclose the calling price in their literature.

0871s were supposed to be used for reduced price (compared to BT) international call access which is not so bad but those little ******** at www.topuptv.com are using it as their main post sales customer service number. And the little yellow hatted gnomes have trained their staff to say that 0871 is the BT national rate. OFCOM have ignored my complaint and not responded.

Does anyone have a geographic phone number for TopupTV?

[drrdf]

Yes I agree with all of this; it is a scandal how we are being ripped-off. The main difficulty is that more and more companies, organisations and government departments are changing over to use non-geographic numbers (particularly 0870) solely to get the revenue which may be achieved, particularly with call centres; this is because they use all of sorts of tricks originally encouraged by BT to extrapolate the queuing time on line and the length of a call, such as having many more lines in than operators, requests to press particular keys without any real functionality and enter customer references which they then ask you again to give them audibly, multi-level menu systems with lots of useless options and the last always being the only useable one, etc.

The root of all of these problems is the failure of the regulators to take the necessary action to enforce the new numbering system and structure. NGNs except 09 were never supposed to be used for Revenue Sharing (in other words as Premium lines) and their use in this way is distorting the UK domestic telecommunications market. As more and more companies change to the use of NGNs to get the revenue so-called inclusive call packages become more and more of a rip-off because they do not include any NGN calls.

There is a lot more discussion about these abuses on http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/cgi...4647;start=315
and a campaign is underway to bring more pressure on Ofcom to consider consumers' interests. We need everyone who is incensed by this abuse and trickery to complain to Ofcom and a new site has been set-up to make it easy by giving template responses and text which may be used to do it quickly and easily. The current Ofcom consultation ends on 31st May 2004 and anyone who is going to complain must do it NOW!! Please go to this site and DO IT:*** removed ***

[Nongeographical Man]

Originally posted by drrdf
The current Ofcom consultation ends on 31st May 2004 and anyone who is going to complain must do it NOW!! Please go to this site and DO IT: http://0870abuse.tripod.com

Hi drdf,

Yes it is a scandal but as I read the decision issued by Ofcom on their web site at:-

http://www.ofcom.org.uk/consultation...art1/section5/

They have already decided to allow the scandalous claim that 0870 and 0845 numbers are charged at the standard BT national and local rates to carry on unchallenged as they think this is the best deal for customers?!!!!!! They even have the cheek to say that they don't think paying 7.8p per minute for an 0870 number in the peak and 10p per minute for an 0871 number at all times of day is a lot to pay and is not much to worry about. This is at precislely the same time that they are looking into BT's plan to make the 3p per minute BT Together rate plan compulsory to belong to and the most that all BT line customers will pay for ordinary national calls, except where they are to 0870, 0871 and 0845 national and local but non geographic numbers.

The current remaining issues that OFCOM are supposedly still consulting on are some very boring and obscure issues to do with application forms for companies wanting to run an 0844, 0845, 0870 and 0871 number. I can't see how there is any opportunity here to alter Ofcom's mind as it is already made up that once again they have caved in to everything that BT wanted on on non geographic NTS numbering call charges.

You can send an email on all this to tessa.jowell@culture.gov.uk but that is in my experience a complete waste of time as they do not respond despite an auto responder email saying they they will do so.

More productive would be to write a letter to your MP who might be able to get a proper response from Tessa Jowell.

By the way those of you looking for cheap deals for ordinary geographic calls should also look at www.1899.com which is clearly a new package from the same people that are behind www.call18866.com Its obvious this is the case from the way the web site is styled and the 7p per minute rate for 0870 calls.

1899.com offers a national rate of only 0.5p per minute but the big down side is a 5p call connection charge so that in practice I suspect it will cost you more than www.18866.com? In theory you could subscribe to both services and then pick carefully which to use before each call?

[DaveL]

the current link on the BT network between BT's standard (pre-discount and call package scheme) retail price for 0845 and 0870 calls and geographic local and national calls respectively will remain in place
From: http://www.ofcom.org.uk/consultation...art1/section5/

I presume that in addition to the removal of BT Standard, BT will still be allowed to charge the 'Standard' rates, even for those of us who are being forced onto BT Together, a package which BT laughingly calls a 'discount package'.

[Nongeographical Man]

Originally posted by DaveL
I presume that in addition to the removal of BT Standard, BT will still be allowed to charge the 'Standard' rates, even for those of us who are being forced onto BT Together, a package which BT laughingly calls a 'discount package'.

BT will still be allowed to charge the "Standard"?! national rate for NTS calls to 0870 numbers even when they have increased your quarterly line rental from £22.05 (the current £28.50 on dd minus £6.45 quarterly call allowance for BT Standard) to £31.50 or by a whopping 43% a quarter. If you start allowing for the fact that most of us also need their up to 4 select services a quarter package then the quarterly line rental will be more like £41.50. This compares to about £5 per quarter from my local water company! In other words as much as a mobile contract phone for years old technology and no inclusive handset.

I presume at the moment BT are being allowed to do exactly whatever they want on line rental and charges by Tessa Jowell and by her lackies at Ofcom so long as they promise to roll out their measly low bandwidth broadband to the rest of the country by end 2005. So in other words you get to pay the cost of the broadband upgrade via your line rental even if you don't subscribe to the service.

[DaveL]

It also highlights the fact that Ofcom seem only to act on the views of consumers. Those reports or consultations are long, and therefore it is obvious that not many people [that the issues concern] will read them.

The fact seems to be that this is all part of a bigger picture that BT has, whereby we will all be forced onto its 'discount packages', but they (and other providers) will push these non-geographic numbers to businesses as they give a financial gain. That means that an 'unlimited' call package is nothing of the sort, and it's BT's job to invent as many ways to generate extra revenue.

They say that there's no such thing as a free lunch, but it seems we will all be fed it, and still have to pay for it!!!!

I think that basically, no-one sees the bigger long term price-hike plan, apart from BT. I doubt, however, that they have a long term plan for keeping the telephone network up to scratch, that will be patched, as it is today. You only have to walk down the street to see this.

[Nongeographical Man]

Originally posted by DaveL
It also highlights the fact that Ofcom seem only to act on the views of consumers.

Au contraire my dear Dave. I hate to introduce you to the reality of life but mere consumers can make submissions until they are absolutely blue in the face and BT, Ofcom and Tessa Jowell at the Dept of Culture will simply ignore it and stick to the original game plan agreed at the outset. If too many real opinions against something BT want to do come in then BT are tipped off by Ofcom and BT then set their dirty tricks department to work to put in lots of fake views from alleged BT real consumers (in practice these people are telephone line customers who are ordinary BT employees) saying what a great move by BT this will be. They are doing this now on the Ofcom consulation on BT abolishing the BT Standard Tariff.

Originally posted by DaveL
I doubt, however, that they have a long term plan for keeping the telephone network up to scratch, that will be patched, as it is today. You only have to walk down the street to see this.

Their long term plan is to spend as little as they can possibly get away with on improving the fixed line network as they know perfectly well that 10 to 15 years down the road the fixed line network will be killed by the availability of near universal cheap wireless/wifi broadband networks at 100MBps. Telephone calls to the home will also start to be routed this way using Voice over IP. It has taken BT 4 years to install Broadband on a large country exchange south of Dorking only 15 miles south of the M25. Yet when you look at the work involved its absolutely trivial in cost terms to what the GPO spent to build the current exchange when there was big housing expansion here in the 1960s/70s.

BT are only interested in profit. They have absolutely no commitment to delivering quality telephone services or to treating their customers well.

[drrdf]

Hi Nongeographical Man,

Yes I think you have got it right. The complete consultation process is totally corrupt and basically Ofcom like Oftel before them are in effect just BT's lap dog.

However, I still think it is worth entering a response to the current Ofcom consultation; and despite what you said in your earlier post the new consultation is particularly about the NTS, so because of the additional distortions caused by BT's planned forcing of all their current Line Rental only customers to their Option 1 it becomes another opportunity to complain about the price fixing, since that will no longer be based on BT's rates so it becomes complete fiction. The proposal to use the new terms "Low-call" and "Midi-call" is just completely ludicrous and should be deprecated vigorously. The consultation is entitled "Calls to 0845 and 0870 numbers: review of retail price and numbering arrangements" and in the document they do acknowledge that there have been changing factors since the original Oftel consultation and decisions which have caused a need to reconsider, so it does offer an opportunity to express the consumers' point of view.

The principal point arising in this consultation is that any Revenue Sharing on any number other then an 09 number actually contravenes the NTS. Since Ofcom and Oftel before them claimed that "hardly any customers have complained to them" it is hardly surprising if they ignore the interests of consumers.

Therefore I suggest that everyone should complain to Ofcom about the distortion to free competition in the domestic market which BT's Option 1 gambit will cause; and also that everyone should make a submission for the new consultation, particularly stating these aspects together.

If you don't complain at every opportunity you can hardly expect any action, although even if we do it probably will not happen yet. However, don't give up.

One other thing I suggest is that we all also complain to Michael Howard in Parliament, particularly emphasising the government's gradual changeover to using these NGNs for Welfare Benefits offices, Tax Credit offices and Pension Centres. This deliberately targets the poorest in our society and is downright amoral. Howard could probably make embarrasing political capital out of this and the complaints, on the basis that complaints to the government-appointed regulators have been ignored and for a claimed Socialist government to target the poor like this is political suicide; this might prompt the government to look at the abuse more objectively to avoid the political embarrasment?

Complain now or stop moaning about the abuse I say! If enough people do not complain nothing will ever change.

[Nongeographical Man]

Originally posted by drrdf

Therefore I suggest that everyone should complain to Ofcom about the distortion to free competition in the domestic market which BT's Option 1 gambit will cause; and also that everyone should make a submission for the new consultation, particularly stating these aspects together.

If you don't complain at every opportunity you can hardly expect any action, although even if we do it probably will not happen yet. However, don't give up.

Hi drdf I think my slight confusion on this issue arises from the fact that there appear to be two open Ofcom issues to which the issue of 0845, 0870 and 0871 NTS number abuse are relevant?

These are as follows:-

1. http://www.ofcom.org.uk/consultation.../0845/?a=87101

This is the so called further consultation on 0845 and 0870 call pricing issues that then seems to announce it has already made up its mind on most of the issues involved?!

I see what you are saying about it being a further opportunity to complain but the fact is that I and well over 100 viewers of digital terrestrial tv in the www.digitalspy.co.uk forum complained individually to Ofcom about it allowing Crown Castle to launch a shopping channel on a Freeview multiplex but they simply ignored our points and sent out a standard letter claiming they had no option but to let Crown Castle do this. Furthermore Tessa Jowell at the DCMS doesn't even bother to get her civil servants to respond to emails sent in by the general public. They merely go down an electronic black hole.

2. http://www.ofcom.org.uk/bulletins/co...cw007/?a=87101

This is Ofcom's own initiative investigation into BT's proposal to abolish Standard line rental (real current cost including discounts -£22.05 per quarter) and replace it with a compulsory minimum of BT Option 1 at £31.50 a quarter, even if you have CPS.

However I have already had a phone discussion with Richard Thompson who is leading this investigation and he says that any of my wider comments about the fact that 0845 and 0870 numbers will still be charged above the BT Together rate at BT Standard National Rate, or my suggestion that if BT actually want a 3p per minute tariff then they must lower the standard BT national rate (including 0870 NTS calls) to 3p per minute, are outside the scope of his investigation. He will look only at whether it is reasonable for BT to make people join BT Together (presumably especially if they are CPS customers) and will not look at whether this is not in fact an attempt by BT to pretend they have one daytime standard national call rate while in fact charging another for many of their customers' calls.

So in summary complain away but I am becoming increasingly cynical that Ofcom bother taking no notice at all of what the public tell them?

For instance they say that they have only had 30 members of the public complain on 0845/0870 numbering so that is not a lot when in regulator terms that is actually a huge number to respond to a consulation for which there is no publicity. I did not manage to respond in time to that consultation myself because of the very poor notification of its existence!

[DaveL]

This makes interesting reading. I am wondering myself what will happen to my letter regarding the removal of Standard, although I think that NGM has answered that one. The reply I got says "A formal record of your concerns have been logged here". What does that mean exactly? Does it mean that it will be read again should there be an investigation into the removal of Standard? Or does it get filed away under B1N?

I was thinking of contacting Richard Thompson to draw his attention to my letter, but I would imagine that the 43% increase has already been worked out, and my opinions and gripes about evening and weekend calls being more expensive than daytime ones will just fall on deaf ears.

I am still waiting for a reply from BT, I sent my letter again (for the second time) last week.

The fact that people don't submit responses to Ofcom doesn't mean that they don't have an opinion or interest in the issues. It's not interesting to people, people are more interested in the output of the BT marketing department. It's rather like watching paint dry versus actually seeing the newly decorated room as a whole.

It does seem that the telephone network is going the same way as the rail network where maintenance is stripped to the bone. The only difference being that it's not safety that's being compromised, but quality of service. In years to come when it's all falling to bits no-one will accept any responsibility, but the fact is that it's happening before our very eyes and there's nothing we can do about it.

Privatisation does not drive down prices. This is a false prophecy. A privatised public utility will milk the infrastructure all it can. As Nongeographical Man says, the amount it cost to create the network in the first place was huge, so much so that I doubt any private company would be rubbing its hands at the thought of undertaking any such similar task today.

[drrdf]

Hi Nongeographical Man,

As I said I agree with your points, but if we don't continue to complain we will never get any action.

The second Ofcom reference which you give a url for does not seem to be a "consultation". It is purely an investigation by Ofcom. So it appears if you want to complain about this issue you must submit it as a normal complaint, not a resonse to a consultation. (Ofcom make a clear distinction between the two.) I still sugest that everyone incensed by this dirty trick yet again by BT sends in a complaint to Ofcom.

[voxmagna]

Mentioned earlier, I still think this is the dirty trick. BT are actively getting businesses to hook up to these numbers, whilst excluding them from their packages to consumers. Personally I've stopped calling places like B&Q and other companies using them, and either email over ADSL, or just spend my money elsewhere!

Some companies like credit card companies and banks actually still keep their old long distance numbers (for customers overseas) I find these out and use them for my regular account queries on those packages which excluding 0870's.

[Nongeographical Man]

Originally posted by drrdf

The second Ofcom reference which you give a url for does not seem to be a "consultation". It is purely an investigation by Ofcom. So it appears if you want to complain about this issue you must submit it as a normal complaint, not a resonse to a consultation.

This is not a consultation is is an "own initiative investigation" prompted by the massive fury and nashing of teeth from all corners of the CPS and telecoms industry other than BT.

If Ofcom decides BT has behaved anticompetitively its powers to instruct BT to desist and change its ways are quite substantial.

Also because it is not a defined consultation there is the chance to hook in the point that BT is trying to pretend that 3p a minute is now its standard national rate when a large number of weekday daytime calls that consumers have to make are in fact to 0870 numbers - still at 7.8p per minute even though they are BT Standard National Rate.

The list grows ever longer each day as it now also includes BAA, including even their switchboard at Gatwick. Only a year or two ago these were all geograhic numbers.

There is no need to make an ordinary Complaint on this as one can simply email Richard Thompson whose contact email address is quoted in the Ofcom Competition consultation web post. I hope you will all telephone Richard to impress on him that I am not the only ordinary member of the public who thinks this way. He is a reasonable guy and is prepared to get into a discussion of sorts.

[Nongeographical Man]

Originally posted by drrdf
Hi Nongeographical Man,

As I said I agree with your points, but if we don't continue to complain we will never get any action.

The second Ofcom reference which you give a url for does not seem to be a "consultation". It is purely an investigation by Ofcom. So it appears if you want to complain about this issue you must submit it as a normal complaint, not a resonse to a consultation. (Ofcom make a clear distinction between the two.) I still sugest that everyone incensed by this dirty trick yet again by BT sends in a complaint to Ofcom.

Yes we must complain and I am making my own responses on both these issues.

However I don't think we will get any action unless we get a powerful friend like Panorama or somebody similar to do a major tv program exposing this scam industry and the way it has grown like topsy. The problem is that BT is a very powerful company so people like Panorama are afraid of upsetting them for fear of writs etc, etc from all quarters. Also the BBC are one of the leading abusers of 0870 call numbers for pratically all their main points of public access.

[DaveL]

Ive started a new thread on non-geographic numbers here <thread>:Non-geographic (0845/087x) numbers rip-off.

[drrdf]

Hi DaveL,

Don't forget that ****removed **** has more about this racket and makes its less time-consuming to complain about it.

[drrdf]

Sorry,

Scoobs has changed my mind. I think now that the scam of 0870 and other NGNs being used as Premium lines should be allowed to continue. I think in fact that more companies and organisations should be encouraged to change to use them.

I think no one should protest about this. Actually I think all references on this forum to the site saynoto0870 should be removed because they encourage consumers to avoid paying the premiums and that is not good. Rip them off as much as possible I say now, at least those who use this forum anyway!

[crashuk]

hi iam new too this but ive been reading your post and i do agree

well i plan to take option 1 from bt and use ontel option 3 free daytime calls week end calls eveing calls 10.99 , 10.50 +10.99 21.49 then use the onetel aution to by credit to pay for my monthly option 3 on onetel buy 10 pounds of credit for 5.50 thus 21.49 - 4.50=16.99 for my monthly line rental, use non geo alternative numbers posted in a few web sites not going to use 0870 or 0845 numbers. thus my bill will be 47.97 every 3 months going to try this out.. thus i get free land line calls 24/7 thats the only reason i join onetel for there credit autions

Well before they did these packages i was having bills of over £100 a month from Telewest. Now its a set £50 a month with fast internet so i dont think in all cases its a rip off in my case it was a God send.