this american company is tele canvassing currently in the uk. their call charges look very cheap but if you look closely they show the call as a "ppcu" (pence per call unit). this is not the length of time we are used to here in the uk!! we generally use "per minute". Blueridges call unit is much less than a minute and threfore quite a good deal more for a minutes conversation than LCR routers in the UK. :o :o

Don't tell me... Ofcom are perfectly happy with this!

I found their US site which is a b***er to load as it's Flash, but they have server problems. It crashed my systems (4 different) every time I attempted to load it, and I'm not on a slow connection.  >:(

The UK 0800 number (0800 0321890) redirects to their overseas switchboard during their day (1600 - 0000) & voicemail other times. Not that they call you back. The Sales team couldn't be bothered to reply to my voicemail, and even when the switchboard passed on a message (24th), they still haven't called me (29th).
Both the Sales team & the web team were busy today, so I just gave up (even if it is freephone) !   :(

Here's the direct link to the UK info if anyone is interested in trying.

But as Tony suggests and I totally agree, steer clear of them.

Yes they are just starting their push into AUS and are quoting their pricing in the same manner. Thanks for the tip Well spotted

I have cut the following from their T&Cs:


TOTAL CHARGES PER CALL ARE CALCULATED BY USING THE INFORMATION PROVIDED IN THE FOLLOWING TABLE TO DETERMINE THE TOTAL CALL UNITS (TCU’S) IN EACH CALL AND BY MULTIPLYING THETCU’S BY THE RATES APPLICABLE TO THE SERVICE PROVIDED. THE FOLLOWING TABLE MAY BE USED TO DETERMINE THE TCU’S IN ANY CALL OF A SPECIFIED DURATION AS SHOWN FOLLOWING:


CALLS IN MINUTES


DURATION                          FORMULA CALCULATIONS
(IN MINUTES)

1 - 19.9  TCU'S = [CALL DURATION (IN MINUTES) X 2 + 2.5]

20 +  TCU'S = [CALL DURATION (IN MINUTES) + 22.5]

Therefore a 2 minute mobile call costs

9p x [2 minutes x 2 + 2.5]

= 9p x [6.5 CU’s]

= 58.5p

which makes a 1 minute call 29.25p per minute
most business to business providers charge in the reason of 15-16 pence
more their sales team have been know to quote as saying that it is "per minute"

That is what we call daylight robbery.

Just wanted to say thanks for this thread - as I got phoned by a sales chap from Blueridge just recently.

On the phone, he did indeed quote their rates as being pence per minute - and today's call died very quickly when I mentioned I'd read their T's and C's on their website, and gave the calculation that a 1 minute call takes (1 x 2) + 2.5 = 4.5 call units = 9p, which as a rate frankly sucks the big one.

No bloody wonder they can afford to give 'every fourth bill free'!

Surely something should be done about this deceptive selling?

me too
the sales guy said 9p per minute and of course its over 20p
the good news being that i wrote it down on the agreement form

I think if a few people who post to this forum actually go thru the complaints process then ofcom might actually do something

I'm glad I read these comments.  I have had a call from  Blueridge salesman as well.  He was quoting his rates as being in pence per minute, even when I asked him to confirm the prices he quoted ppm!

Trying to find the formula calculations on their website is an artform!  

My recommendation is not to use them, even with the free bill every qtr.

Great advice here. I'm now looking forward to my next call - this info should finally shut them up!

I did get a free £50.00 calling card faxed to me, but now I know why it ran out so quick.

Thanks for this forum, i thought they sounded too good to be true!

luckily i found this before my partner sent of the BT  letter which lets these blighters take over your phones!

thanks again peeps

Well spotted, you guys, You are all correct. These guys are con merchants.

One or two other things that I have noticed in various communications I have had with these people are :

-Ask them for an faxed copy of their International Tarriff sheet - They'll send you a sheet headed "PPCU International Rate Summary" which I assumed to be "Pence Per Call Unit". It is in fact POUNDS Per Call Unit, as indicated on their rates PDF on their website.

- Their "Every fourth bill free" promotion used to be an "every third bill free" promotion, but was discontinued, as indicated deep within one of their PDFs, guess why? :-

- You sign up to a 3 month deal, which is virtually impossible to get out of (I have been advised by our legal department) and you're stuck with paying through the nose for this period. Are you going to hang around for the Fourth month for a credit? NO WAY. As soon as you realise your costs have rocketed, you're going to cancel, finally managing to escape after the 3 months and hence you miss out on "your fourth bill free". Very clever eh?

- You can only cancel your deal within the final month and if you forget, god help you, you're in for another 3 months!

- I phoned OFCom to seek their guidance/Advice on dealing with these guys, They have not heard of the company. should one of us register a complaint?

My advice - Avoid them like the Plague, do not be drawn in by their duality and pass the word around. I'm sure we'll be hearing more of these people

Actually Peter, that entry at the top of their Rates.pdf showing prices for UK local calls @ 2ppcu is pence /CU; the listing below is in £pcu (pounds/CU) for the International calls.

Not that I'm sticking up for them. I rang them & actually managed to get thru to Sales at last. I had an arguement about his UK sales team misrepresenting and misselling as pence/min and not pence/CU.
He wanted to know what my interest in this was and when I explained, he claimed that I must be getting paid. I said I wasn't and he said I should get another hobby !!
He wasn't in the least bit interested in the fact that the salesmen were misselling the product, more in getting at my intentions. Maybe we should push this onto the other Forums and expose them as sharks, and hopefully show how much clout the paying public can have.

Kick out the jams brothers & sisters - Spread the word !!

Sorry Dave.

The fax I received was a manually created effort and not a direct copy of the T's and C's so you are probably correct, but there-again, we all are !!

Cheers.

Pete

Thats weird that Ofcom say they have never heard of Blue Ridge as they're on Ofcom's web page for Communication providers which have passed their "Codes of Practice" very odd!!  ???

I agree we should spread the word about this company, i've posted a link to this forum on another and e-mailed alot of associate companies so hopefully more and more people will realise and not fall into their snare.

wrote on Sep 10^th, 2004 at 4:57pm:

Thats weird that Ofcom say they have never heard of Blue Ridge as they're on Ofcom's web page for Communication providers which have passed their "Codes of Practice" very odd!!  ??? I agree we should spread the word about this company, i've posted a link to this forum on another and e-mailed alot of associate companies so hopefully more and more people will realise and not fall into their snare.

Interesting - can you post the other forums where this is?

I nearly got sucked in by these guys too, I have compiled an excel spreadsheet of realworld costs of BR's tarriffs, if anyone is interested mail me benlcurrie@yahoo.co.uk

Some rates.....
                             COST (in pounds)
AFGHANISTAN
1min                        7.0605
2min                      10.1985
5min                      19.6125
10min                     35.3025
19min ;)                 63.5445
25                          74.5275
60                         129.4425

Ok Afgan is a high cost but the LCR company we are gonna use are charging 67.56 pence per min, for a 1hr call that works out at...40.53 compared with blueridges 129.44 that is a factor of 4 times....

Australia for 1 min is 17.55 compared to our provider which is 3.30 that is a factor of 5.31 times as expensive.

US mobile 1min 1.34 (pounds!) compared to 0.0251 promised to us (a good rate admitedly) but is a ratio of over 53 times!!!! Go figure!!;-)

wrote on Oct 20^th, 2004 at 4:43pm:

I nearly got sucked in by these guys too, I have compiled an excel spreadsheet of realworld costs of BR's tarriffs, if anyone is interested mail me benlcurrie@yahoo.co.uk Some rates.....                              COST (in pounds) AFGHANISTAN 1min                        7.0605 2min                      10.1985 5min                      19.6125 10min                     35.3025 19min                     63.5445 25                          74.5275 60                         129.4425 Ok Afgan is a high cost but the LCR company we are gonna use are charging 67.56 pence per min, for a 1hr call that works out at...40.53 compared with blueridges 129.44 that is a factor of 4 times.... Australia for 1 min is 17.55 compared to our provider which is 3.30 that is a factor of 5.31 times as expensive. US mobile 1min 1.34 (pounds!) compared to 0.0251 promised to us (a good rate admitedly) but is a ratio of over 53 times!!!! Go figure!!

Even assuming that the call charges to Afghanistan above have the decimal point in the wrong place (i.e. the 1 minute call charge is 70.605p and not £7.0605), anybody considering calls to there or the other countries mentioned would do well to store http://niftylist.co.uk/ in their favourites list and find far cheaper alternatives - 25p (not 70.6p or 67p) per minute to Afghanistan, 1p (not 17.55p or 3.3p) per minute to Australia and ½p (not 13.4p or 2.51p) per minute to a USA mobile.

Afgan rate was correct, and in pounds as the 'Price Per Call Unit' is 1.569 pounds.

Aus rate was in pence though, sorry didn't make that clear.....

pls pay attention to this, read and it might have something in there for u!

i used to be a blue-ridge sales rep. until just a few weeks ago.
more facts will be revealed to ya, as i tell u all about it

first of all, the calls u get from sales reps about blue-ridge are from the US or,...cairo,egypt!

im an egyptian who works at their call center, cairo, egypt.
they use very cheap IP telephony here and sometimes the lines get really bad.
imagine how ashamed i can get when someone goes on the fone "its a really bad line", i forget about telling them im calling from a telecoms co. !!

all of the sales reps here, when we get our training n the scripts we use on calls, they tell us to stop askin about the call unit thing its complicated for us.
and then tell us we must literally EAT the word "per call unit" on the fone call.

we go something like "ALL OUR RATES ARE FLAT, per-call-unit , 24 HOURS A DAY, 7 DAYS A WEEK"
get the picture?
and of course all customers hear it as "per call minute"
so thats really the catch about it
until reps around the co. started debating about the "call unit" issue, and when i came to think about it....
its really just "legal robbery"

i was grateful i never closed a deal b4, and prayed that i never do.

but who really are blue-ridge????
its originally a big co. called NOS communications
they have different co. opening one after another.

the point is, as blue-ridge started to really smell!
they open a new co. but used the same infra-structure, and same dirty ppcu game.

after blueridge sales dropped to the floor,
they opened a new co. called V.O.I.P communications
check it out @ www.voiptelecomuk.co.uk

focusing on 2 facts as their campaign:
1-that use Voice-over-internet-protocol to make better, but cheaper calls, that's why the rates are cheap

2-that they are unlike other fone co.s who get so fat just cozz they never pass the saving along to the customers

so there's really no such thing as , blue-ridge , voip ..now, and previously....quantam-link

its all just NOS communications, and one dirty game

i decided to quit this job coz its so immoral, unethical
and just legal robbery, i dont wanna be a part of this.

but untill i quit, if i ever-by chance- call u in the uk,...
as soon as u hear "voip communications" ,
pls hang up on me, ill be glad u did

although its almost a miracle to get a decent job for good pay checks down here,
im not letting that get in my way of being a part of customers deception.

if u pitty me, hire me as ur integrity-consultant...lol...j/k

anyways. im glad i helped awaken some business ppl out there for the dirty game, i feel much better now.
speard the word!

pls contact me @
complain_about_nos@yahoo.com
for any comments, questions, or just about anything!

thanks for ur time and attention!
  with kind regards,
                              the jobless-NOS-rep.

...Hey Must be hard having a conscience and tying to sell that product, good on you.....

I had a rep call me back after I found out about PPCU pricing and I asked about it he said he could not explain it and said he'd get a 'rates specialist' to call me back, guess what, no phone call!!! lol

Now that there is a web site gving their terms and conditions, is it worth complaining to  whoever it is that nowhere on their web site do they define what the call unit is - the best I could find was that the TCU was the total of all call units. Wow.

bgezine, BlueRidge have sent me a MS Word document outlining exactly how the TCU formula is calculated.

- Call length is measured to the nearest 6 seconds
- Calls less than 20 minutes long: 2 TCUs per minute + 2.5 TCUs.
- Calls greater than 20 minutes: 1 TCU per minute + 22.5 TCUs.

The document included these examples for different call lengths:
1 minute                 4.5 TCUs
5 minutes         12.5 TCUs
10 minutes       22.5 TCUs
20 minutes       42.5 TCUs
40 minutes       62.5 TCUs
60 minutes       82.5 TCUs.

Once you have worked out the number of TCUs (to the nearest tenth of TCU) for a particular call, this is multiplied by the prevailing TCU rate for that destination.
Therefore for a 1 minute call you would pay 4.5 times the applicable TCU rate (e.g. 9p for a call to UK landline at current prices, or 2p x 4.5TCUs).

However with this does not include their '4th bill free', which discounts effectively by 25%, or  their promotional calling cards.

Their Rate Information Specialist Team can be contacted at 0800 032 3746

i hadnt realised how widespread the scam was when i first posted it!
i have today complained to ofcom. lets see what happens. probably nothing!!
if blue ridge were however doin 34mph in a 30mph zone then as sure as eggs are eggs they would be jumped on!!

I called Offcom last week to complain and they advised me to complain to my local Trading Standards & ICSTIS.

Called local TS & the guy I talked to was very helpful. Gave him all the details, website, our site info, CU explanation (honest - he didn't yawn !!). He said it will all be passed on to the Trading Standards where the Blue Ridge offices are registered -

1 SEKFORDE STREET
CLERKENWELL
LONDON EC1R 0BE

Let's see if that gets us anywhere.

How about trying the BBC Watchdog program ?? I'm sure there's more mileage in this yet.    ;D

Good point TonyCR,

It is a situation of dual standards. Motorists get crucified but all these telephone con-men are left alone to continue their scams!

Clearly Ofcom are not going to be very interested, since BT probably carrying the local loop are making out of it as well!

A bit of an update with regards to Ofcom's position on this one.

Last week I lodged a formal complaint via there web site and duly received a letter back from one of their agents with a reply earlier this week. Fairly inconclusive stuff, just acknowledging the fact that my complaint had been noted. I decided to give the guy a call Friday to see what the process was for bringing this scam to a close, his advice was that "The situation will be monitored" and "if there is a large enough number of complaints then the matter will be escalated".

Basically they are not going to do anything at this point until it becomes totally obscene and out of control.

Me thinks we need a plan B, guys!!

Who's up for writing to the BBC? I'm sure they will love it !! and we might get some positive action on that front .

Keep you posted.

P

the leopard can change it's spots . . . . .Be aware, be very aware . . . .I've just had a call from a company called Optic Telecommunications, exactly the same setup as Blueridge Telecom, pence per call unit & loads of call units per call = HIGH COSTS.

Do not use them.

Peter O

wrote on Jan 14^th, 2005 at 2:25pm:

the leopard can change it's spots . . . . .Be aware, be very aware . . . .I've just had a call from a company called Optic Telecommunications, exactly the same setup as Blueridge Telecom, pence per call unit & loads of call units per call = HIGH COSTS.

Yeah, i got call by them too, thats three mutations of the same company have called me alone now, seems like they are covering alot of ground!

Be Aware Blue Ridge Telecom are also calling under the name of Optic Communications and thier pricing structure is exactlly the same.