"British Gas is mounting an extraordinary attempt to hijack efforts by consumers to contact its rivals.
"A partnership with the 118 118 directory enquiry service means callers asking for the number of any energy company are met with a hard sell for British Gas.
The 118 118 operator is required to highlight one of its fixed energy tariffs and talk up an incentive of a £50 high street shopping voucher. The same operator even offers to connect customers who had originally intended to contact a rival to British Gas sales staff."

Full story here : http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2788782/british-gas-118-118-deal-cheaper-rivals-hard-sell-callers-asking-energy-firm.html

The only way services like this can possibly survive is that people have no idea how much it costs. For a DQ call now you are pretty much looking at a minimum of £5 with most providers. Ask the man in the street how much it costs and he would probably say about 40p. Who are the people that continue to use them and why do they do it?

Probably people only know that number because they have the money from suckers who use their directory numbers to do all that advertising on TV.

I had an elderly neighbour who knew no better than using BT Directory and after getting extra billing of £28 twice but after mentioning his problem on here I was given a choice of 3 numbers that ranged from 32ppmin. to 41p for whole call and a FREE but very busy number that I warned him off.

I duly passed these on to him, resulting in a very happy bunny.  I know that these charges will be altered next year and when I find out I will be Updating him.

Thanks the people who provided those numbers.  ;D