Can you believe that Her Majesty The Queen's Representative for Royal Ascot ticket sales for the Royal Enclosure is now using an 0870 number for ticket sales even though Her Majesty's Representative does not have a website allowing you to purchase tickets online or to show you the current state of ticket availability for any of the five Royal Ascot days.  Although there is still an 01344 number listed for Royal Ascot this only gets you through to the normal Ascot ticket office who refuse to connect through calls to the separate Royal Ascot Ticket Office.

I sent the below email.

-----Original Message-----
Sent: 12 May 2006 07:04
To: royal.enclosure@ascot.co.uk
Subject: Her Majesty's 0870 Disgrace

I just wanted to provide the view that is is little short of a disgrace that Her Majesty's Representative should be utilising a £4.50 per hour covert premium rate number for phone calls on its ticket line when Daily Badges now cost £78 per day.

Customers do not have to pay a company to go through the front door into its shop on the high street and so I do not see why your potential customers for the Royal Enclosure should have to pay you for the privilege of telephoning you to possibly purchase badges costing £78 each per day?

Here are the various web references regarding the inappropriate use of 0845 and 0870 numbers:-

The view of a county council trading standards department

Para 1.3 Page 1 of www.ofcom.org.uk/consult/condocs/oftel_0845/responses/leicester_cc.pdf

and

the view of the CEO of BT Retail, Ian Livingston

http://business.scotsman.com/banking.cfm?id=764772005

and

two recent guidances from the Advertising Standards Authority

www.asa.org.uk/cap/news_events/news/2005/Hanging+on+the+telephone+on+and+on+and+on.htm

www.asa.org.uk/cap/news_events/news/2005/Stop+the+call+confusion.htm

and

the current Parliamentary Early Day motion deploring the use of 0870 telephone numbers by government departments

http://edmi.parliament.uk/EDMi/EDMDetails.aspx?EDMID=28872%09%09%09%09%09%09%09&SESSION=875

and

Another guidance from the Committee of Advertising Practice of the Advertising Standards Authority

www.cap.org.uk/cap/news_events/news/2005/CAP+rings+the+changes+for+telecoms+providers.htm

and Pages 5 and 6 of the below minutes from my own district council where we agreed policy to stop the future use of 0845 and 0870 numbers.

www.molevalley.gov.uk/media/pdf/1/s/Council_Minutes_190705.pdf

I look forward to your comments on this matter.

Regards,

Below is the email I subsequently received from Libby Duggan the Royal Enclosure Manager.  She attempted to assure me that 0870 numbers were charged at National Rate despite my previous email highlighting why they were not and then some idiot describing himself as Ticket Sales Manager called me this morning to also attempt to make the same claim.

I suggested they had not bothered to read my original email and the weblinks I provided as if they had done they would know these claims that 0870 is National Rate were not correct.

They gave me all the usual nonsense about how all their calls were handled so much more efficiently as a result.  Interestingly when Ms Duggan and the ticket sales guy called me today indiviudal 01344 Ascot numbers were shown on my Caller Display.  A call back to each of these - 01344 878506 and 01344 878476 - does not reveal them to be the main Royal Enclosure IVR call line.  They appear to be individual staff member phone numbers at Ascot Racecourse.  The main difference is that the official Royal Enclsoure ticket line puts you on hold for minutes on end before you get to speak to anyone.

Now could that be the better quality of service from the 0870 number they are referring to I wonder by any chance. ;) ::)

-----Original Message-----
From: Libby Duggan [mailto:libby.duggan@ascot.co.uk]
Sent: 12 May 2006 11:11
Subject: RE: 0870 Phone Cost & Call Queue Issues & Lack of Ticket Ordering Website

Thank you for your email. I am consulting with our IT department as their knowledge is considerably more than mine and we will be in touch shortly.

Regards

Libby Duggan
Royal Enclosure Manager

A google of        royal enclosure ascot 01344          gave this as first line (but the site wouldn't load)
Further details can be obtained from the Royal Enclosure Office on 01344 878 474

A quick dial at 1810hrs connected to a voice message.
"Thank you for calling the royal enclosure office............"

a very nice man wrote on May 15^th, 2006 at 6:15pm:

A google of royal enclosure ascot 0344 gave this as first line (but the site wouldn't load)  Further details can be obtained from the Royal Enclosure Office on 01344 878 474

This suggests to me that this is the old Royal Enclosure website before they adopted the 0870 phone numbers, hence the website itself no longer being available.  My main concern was the unbelievable lies still being peddled by the Royal Ascot management that 0870 was National Rate etc and that it was me who was wrong and this is why I made the post in this section rather than in Geographical Alternatives.

Didn't the "I've sold my objective BBC reporter journalistic soul for a well paid superannuated cushy Ofcom career", Ofcom Head of Communications Matt Peacock not assure us on BBC Radio 4 that Ofcom's objective was to force all companies with an 0870 phone number to also publish a geographic alternative too though? ::) >:(

I wonder what happened to those fine sounding sentiments?  If Mr Peacock was a government minister there would be calls for his resignation although personally I would much rather see the resignation of Messrs Stephen Carter and David Currie.

wrote on May 15^th, 2006 at 6:27pm:

If Mr Peacock was a government minister there would be calls for his resignation .....

And a swift move to an unelected non-job in the EEC with multiple expense accounts and a 6-figure non-contributory pension.

Heinz wrote on May 15^th, 2006 at 8:30pm:

And a swift move to an unelected non-job in the EEC with multiple expense accounts and a 6-figure non-contributory pension.

I think you refer to Tony Blair's next career move.  Or what about the United Nations as I believe a certain Mr Coffee Annan soon reaches the end of his second and final term of office. ;)

What a shame that we defeated councillors are not as in demand for these gravy train jobs with highly over inflated salaries.

Of course I will always have an irritating habit of letting my conscience get in the way of continuing to do a job that is good for my wealth but consistently screws the best interests of uk citizen consumers. [smiley=sad.gif]

In the unverified database we have one entry for "Her Majestys Representative - Royal Ascot":

0870 7275678             01344 876876             Ticket Line for Royal Enclosure at Ascot

I suggest that 0870 7275678 ->  01344 878474. They give the same recording, now, out of hours. "Thank you for calling the Royal Enclosure Office..."

01344 876876 is not the above 0870, but is 0870 727 1234. This is the general Ascot ticket sales line. See the website.

There are other 0870 numbers on the Ascot websites. See www.ascot.co.uk

Dave wrote on May 15^th, 2006 at 9:10pm:

In the unverified database we have one entry for "Her Majestys Representative - Royal Ascot": 0870 7275678             01344 876876             Ticket Line for Royal Enclosure at Ascot I suggest that 0870 7275678 ->  01344 878474. They give the same recording, now, out of hours. "Thank you for calling the Royal Enclosure Office..." 01344 876876 is not the above 0870, but is 0870 727 1234. This is the general Ascot ticket sales line. See the website. There are other 0870 numbers on the Ascot websites. See [url=www.ascot.co.uk[/url][/quote]]www.ascot.co.uk

[/url]

The first Her Majesty's Representative alternative numbers for the general Ascot ticketline number in the Unverified database is one that I added last week and unfortunately I gave the main Ascot ticket office number in error unaware they would not handle Royal Enclosure enquiries.

If entries in the Unverified database were owned by the person adding them they could then delete or amend them if they realised that they had made a mistake.  Instead of which an initial mistake is made and the only way get them corrected is manually via a PM to Dave or bbb which may or may not get acted on.

It would be far better to put all other Unverified entries under the control of the contributor and then when they became Verified still allowing the contributor to submit a correction via his account but then alllowing forum management up to 28 days to veto the correction after which it would be implemented regardless if forum management had not yet found time to take any action in this time frame (as is usually the case).

At the moment with Verified and Unverified numbers there is no indication who contrbuted a number or when they contributed it and no way for users to give satisfaction ratings as to their accuracy so very little way to judge how useful or accurate a number is likely to be.

Also doing a Find on the Unverified list does not seem to find many words for whatever reasons.  One has to cut and paste the whole Unverified list into Excel to overcome this.