Say No to 0870 in French?

Mes amis, does anybody know if our cousins français 'ave a site similaire to ours?

There's a fracas brewing over zeer about Air France 'enhancing' its call centre services by changing from an 0802 prefix charged at a mere €0.15/min - to a four digit short number charged at an entirely reasonable €0.34/min. What's more, the four digit short number will lead to a menu giving a choice of three services each of which you could dial directly before ;D

Plus ca change - plus c'est la même chose!

~ Edited by Dave: Thread title amended and several threads joined together.

As far as I know, the UK is in the lead in Europe with this site. There are plenty of countries where the sheep pay over the odds fooled by names such as "service numbers" for cust to biz calls. Finland is a classic example where mobile and landline calls became so reasonable that companies jumped to 0x00 codes with connection and per min charges to reverse the price drops.

France is bad. Those 3xxx short codes for basics such as travel reservation at 34c/min run off voice-activated menus designed to keep the clock ticking. A pal with utility accounts in France spent ages digging up direct landline numbers since the ridiculous 0892 codes could almost all not be dialled from abroad - this is a clue that *many* French companies have alternatives but I have not seen a site listing them. Perhaps there's a need to translate this site's good aims into other languages with keywords to pull in a wider audience?

have a look at http://www.geonumbers.com/  also for spain and belgium  ::)

A similar website for numbers in Ireland is SayNoTo1890 and is even named after this website!

The website has been created by Value Ireland and the news page says that it was launched on 4 September 2007.

I am not quite sure what I am doing or even if I should ask this here but If not then I can't see where.

I live in Tenerife and in Spain the 0870 and 0850 are replaced by 901 and 902 (not necessarily in that order, or even as direct equivalents) I do not speak Spanish yet so I cannot look for the equivalent 'Say No ' site in spanish. Can you help by adding Spanish 901 and 902 numbers or telling me if there is an equivalent Spanish site. The problem is exactly the same here. What is the point of having free calls bundled with internet (which is much more expensive here than UK) when many numbers you need to call are excluded ?  :-/

Hope you can help

# Separate thread for better exposure
# Retitled to reflect the content ~ DaveM

Site for Germany, Belgium and France:

http://www.geonumbers.com/

for Netherlands:

http://www.vraagalex.nl/index.php?p=anti

maybe some useful ones there for from UK

I was in Paris recently and used a "Numero vert" freephone 080x number to access telephony services. I saw various advertisements with 081x and 082x numbers which I suspected were like the UK 084x and 087x numbers. No warning of charges.

This website is out of date but suggests that there is a problem:
http://www.beyond.fr/a/phone.html

.....furthermore, there was a French website similar to saynoto0870 which published the geographic equivalents of premium rate numbers.  It was shut down earlier this year because of "pressure by certain businesses"
http://www.geonumbers.com/fr/suspension.php

lompos wrote on Aug 14^th, 2008 at 9:10am:

.....furthermore, there was a French website similar to saynoto0870 which published the geographic equivalents of premium rate numbers.  It was shut down earlier this year because of "pressure by certain businesses" http://www.geonumbers.com/fr/suspension.php

This is a shame; the subtext is that personal pressure was put on the author.

I am sure the European Commissioner for Telecoms would be very interested in this story...

I'm sure that if we could somehow contact the French website owner that we could possibly see a way around this. Like maybe hosting it ourselves under a separate flag of convenience !?

What could the French businesses do about that !! ::)

Can I ask for advice from the forum-I have been asked to dial a Spanish number +34 91 322 6824 (government department in Spain) which I believe may be a premium rate number. Can anybody give me advice on how Spanish premium rate numbers are formatted and any idea of the price? I have tried to Google for the information but could not seem to obtain it. Many thanks for any information that can be supplied.

Have a look here.....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%2B34


This should tell you every thing you want to know.

803..806...807 & 907 seem to be the premium rate numbers.

redant wrote on Aug 14^th, 2008 at 1:14pm:

Can I ask for advice from the forum-I have been asked to dial a Spanish number +34 91 322 6824 (government department in Spain) which I believe may be a premium rate number. …

I have joined your thread to the existing one on overseas Saynoto0870-type sites. See above for an example.

+34 91
Madrid. When Spain renumbered all geographic codes took a leading 9.

redant wrote on Aug 14^th, 2008 at 1:14pm:

Can I ask for advice from the forum-I have been asked to dial a Spanish number +34 91 322 6824 (government department in Spain) which I believe may be a premium rate number. Can anybody give me advice on how Spanish premium rate numbers are formatted and any idea of the price? I have tried to Google for the information but could not seem to obtain it. Many thanks for any information that can be supplied.

The equivalent of 084/7 covert revenue sharing numbers in Spain begin with the area codes 901 and 902.  Cheap 1p per minute landline call carriers to Spain like www.18185.co.uk by and large refuse to carry calls to these numbers.  Most of the large Spanish organisations with call centres now regrettably use 901 and 902 prefixed numbers.

The equivalent website to www.saynoto0870.com for these Spanish 901 and 902 numbers is http://nomasnumeros900.com/

Unfortunately at present they do not seem to have geographic alternatives for as high a percentage of Spanish 901 and 902 numbers as this website does for our 084/7 numbers.  But at least there is a website and the problem has been recognised. [smiley=thumbup.gif]

By the way our family has an apartment in Spain so I regularly have to find ways to avoid dialling 901 and 902 prefixed Spanish numbers.

So far as I know 913 is a normal Spanish area code for Madrid.  According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%2B34 area codes 911 to 988 are all regular Spanish geographic area codes.  It is only area codes 900 to 909 that are non geographic but each one of these codes implies a different call tariff.  Confusingly both 800 and 900 prefixed numbers are Freephone, 901, 902, 908 and 909 are the equivalent of 084/7  NTS and 803, 806, 807 and 905 and 907 seem to be used for what we might consider to be Premium Rate very high cost revenue sharing applications.

However the mix of numbering is such that the Spanish telcos have done an even better job of confusing, dividing and ruling with hidden covert revenue share number prefixes than the British ones have. :o >:( :'(

Tanllan wrote on Aug 14^th, 2008 at 3:56pm:

+34 91 Madrid. When Spain renumbered all geographic codes took a leading 9.

Yes all two digit Spanish area codes became three digit area codes some time in the late 1990s by adding 9 to the front of them - eg the Balearic islands became 971 instead of 71.  Of course since then they then have also purloined the early 900 number range codes not allocated to any area code for NGN type applications and then also created 8xx area codes some of which are Freephone and some of which are premium rate.

The common theme of all these NGN ripoff systems seems to be to deliberately adopt irrational and inconsistent code prefixes so the public will not know what is and is not a covert premium rate number. :o