My wife has just received her Freedom Pass. The leaflet enclosed with it refers to Traveline 0871 2002233.

Searching the main site shows that Traveline is a network of local operators, some of which have alternative numbers.

Is it legal for Traveline to use an 0871 number at all?

It certainly isn't legal to publish the number without a declaration of call charges as London Councils hae done.

Traveline's own website https://www.traveline.info/contact/ has the curious remark: "Alternatively, for support on all our services including on our 0871 200 22 33 telephone service and our 84268 text service, please call us on 01766 800 871."

allegro wrote on Dec 29^th, 2021 at 1:04pm:

My wife has just received her Freedom Pass. The leaflet enclosed with it refers to Traveline 0871 2002233. Searching the main site shows that Traveline is a network of local operators, some of which have alternative numbers. Is it legal for Traveline to use an 0871 number at all? It certainly isn't legal to publish the number without a declaration of call charges as London Councils hae done. Traveline's own website https://www.traveline.info/contact/ has the curious remark: "Alternatively, for support on all our services including on our 0871 200 22 33 telephone service and our 84268 text service, please call us on 01766 800 871."

Good Evening allegro

Whilst I cannot comment on the legality of including an 0871 number on the leaflet London Councils issued with your Wife's Freedom Pass, I can agreed it's morally wrong, and here's why:

Freedom Passes are predominantly used in London, where all services are managed by TfL who have their own contact number for any info you need, which is charged at a standard geographic rate.

Any documentation providing a non-gerpgraphic rate number, such as the 0871 number provided by Traveline must have it's calling information provided with it. I believe this maybe one for Ofcom

Also you should complain to both Traveline (expect a reply based on costs of providing the service) and London Councils (who administer the passes and are responsible for sending out that info)

Do let us know how you get on.

We live in London where the Freedom Pass is a very valuable benefit because it also covers tube and rail. But I'd hesitate to say that the majority of Freedom Pass holders live in London. There are a lot more people outside London than within it, and presumably correspondingly more pass holders.

Those in England outside London can use London buses but not tube/rail.

In practice I can't see any occasion where we'd need to phone Traveline.

allegro wrote on Dec 30^th, 2021 at 8:13am:

We live in London where the Freedom Pass is a very valuable benefit because it also covers tube and rail. But I'd hesitate to say that the majority of Freedom Pass holders live in London. There are a lot more people outside London than within it, and presumably correspondingly more pass holders. Those in England outside London can use London buses but not tube/rail. In practice I can't see any occasion where we'd need to phone Traveline.

Good Morning allegro

As far as I am aware the Freedom Pass is a product which is exclusive to London Councils and therefore London.  On that basis there would be no need to advise anyone with a Freedom Pass to ring Traveline if it was exclusively used in London only, however one element of the Freedom Pass is that it's also works as part of ENCTS allowing the holder free Bus travel after 9:30 am across England.

Back on topic, London Councils and or Traveline need to provide call charge information for the Traveline service on any literature advertising their service.

Good Morning,

Futher to my above message I decided to check on here regarding previous posts about Traveline, and randomly decided to search for Traveling Anglia and found this message on their website
Quote:

This website is closing For over 20 years, this website has provided impartial travel advice using timetables compiled by all of the local transport authorities (County Councils and Unitary Authorities) in the region. The Bus Services Act of 2017 means that, by the end of 2020. it will be the bus operators' responsibility to make available timetable, fares and real-time location data. The Government expects "the market" (bus operators and internet information providers) to use the latest technological developments to give travel planning information to the travelling public. Our website is rather dated now, and without funds to develop it with new facilities, and without enhancements to use the latest software developments, the decision has been taken to close it down. The closure was initially due to take place a year ago, and then at the end of March 2020. The rapidly changing data resulting from the Covid-19 outbreak provided a further extension. This website's last day of operation will be Wednesday 23rd September, when our software contracts and hosting arrangements come to an end. Once our journey planner is taken off-line, this page will offer a number of alternative journey planning websites. We will continue to provide data to the Traveline National Dataset as the transition to operators' data takes place. Thank you to the many thousands of you that have found our website useful over the last 20 years.

Could this finally signal the end of Traveline?