Quote:
The National Audit Office produced a report critical of Ofcom/Oftel and its balls-up of DQ (http://www.nao.org.uk/publications/nao_reports/04-05/0405211.pdf). The report concluded (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4358513.stm):

*Residential consumers are paying more for directory enquiry services than under 192

*Consumers are confused by the array of numbers on offer and as a result use directory services with the most memorable numbers, which may not always offer the best prices

*Consumers are using directory enquiry services less frequently than they did prior to deregulation

*It is difficult to be certain whether service quality had changed as a result of deregulation as there were no accurate figures about the performance of the old 192 service.

Edward Leigh MP, chairman of the public accounts committee, was d4mning in his assessment of the role of Oftel, the forerunner of Ofcom, in deregulation.

"This is an instance where competition was not needed and is not helpful."

"Yet Oftel almost had a blind faith that competition was always good and jumped in feet first."

"The general public has lost out. Most of us are paying more and do not appear to be getting a better service."


Ofcom, which assumed control of telecoms regulation from Oftel at the end of 2003, said it recognised mistakes had been made.

"The information for consumers at the time of deregulation was not good enough," Matt Peacock (we've heard of him before), Ofcom director of communications, told BBC News.

Exactly Dave and idb, I couldn't agree more.

All of this confusion appears to result from the complete incompetence of the people controlling Ofcom and/or their questionable motivation which seems to be ultimately at the base of everything which they decide. As you point out there should never have been this disparity in the length of codes. It is this complete failure to anticipate and plan properly for future needs in a realistic sense in all aspects which leads to many of these opportunities for scams of one kind or another. The standard code should have been longer to give more capacity for expansion and they all (as a category) should have had a defined single charging protocol. To avoid any conflict with the NNP that must have been on the basis of registered accounts only. Any other casual premium uses should have been within 09 (including DQ). The whole issue of so-called "connection charges" is another area which has never been properly addressed and for which no proper protocol or charging structure has ever been considered or defined. Equally there has never been any proper consideration or definition of what is really a "value-added service". The term is used glibly with no adequate definition nor any proper charging protocol.

However, at the end we come back to the same old consideration; this level of incompetence is just too great to be an accident. Even if you searched the streets to find the most dumb village idiot existing and put him or her in charge of Ofcom it would still not result in such structural chaos, confusion and lack of consistent protocol.

We are therefore forced back to the realisation that none of this is in fact an accident. It was all a very carefully thought-out strategy to produce telecoms structural confusion which would deliver the greatest number of opportunities for ripping off the British consumer, by means of smoke and mirrors, because someone or more likely a specific group of individuals concerned with making all of these decisions has their greedy snout in the trough somewhere and is profitting significantly out of this intentional structural chaos and confusion, by means of the plethorea of scams and rip-offs which may thus be applied within it.

Absolutely bb_uk. It would be commonsense, unless as I have suggested there is in fact a hidden agenda in this?

Don't forget that prior to privatisation (to supposedly introduce competition, and reduce the costs to consumers as you mention) directory enquiry calls were FREE! The 192 charge (of 50 p as you rightly state) was introduced as a precursor to privatisation. Now put this together with all of the other apparently senseless decisions; can you begin to see this deliberate strategy through the mist of it all?

Quote:

I have an idea that BT actually reduced the rental when they introduced 142 and 192 charges. Or do the rose-tinteds need cleaning?

Of course the best (i.e. cheapest) DQ service is 08000 192 190.

To the person who was looking for the contact details of RingTrue, a WHOIS Search brought up:

Ringtrue Solutions
Monreith House
Dumfries
DG1 4BP
GB

Regd Co. No.: 4019094

Searching that co no on Companies House brings up the following details:

RINGTRUE SOLUTIONS LTD
PEMBROKE HOUSE
11 NORTHLANDS PAVEMENT PITSEA
BASILDON
ESSEX SS13 3DX

HtH Rich

RingTrue's main DQ service is 118355 at a very reasonable 30p flat rate per call and they also run 188440 at 20p per minute with no connection charge.  See www.ringtrue.co.uk

But they also have 118866 and 118001 charge at £1.50 connection and 30p per minute.   One wonders who the 118001 scam number is aimed at other than that I suppose people who have remembered that 118 is for DQ services might call it in error thinking it is for BT?

To my mind this whole scam relies on the biggest underlying problem which is Ofcom's refusal to enforce compulsory price announcements for all non standardly priced uk numbers.

If dialling 118866 caused a message to be played saying that the call cost is £1.50 connection and 30p per minute and that this 30p per minute will continue to be charged  if you use their "we can connect you to that number" service then nobody would be ripped off either on this confusion with 18866 or in general by people using the "we can connect you" service without realising the outrageous per minute call cost.

The fact that Ofcom have persistently claimed it is too difficult to play an announcement saying how much any uk phone call costs says to me that there is high level collusion to keep all the telecoms scammers in business.

All of these scams on 084/7 numbers rely on people not knowing what they are paying for the goods.  If people knew that the goods were being charged at a premium ripoff price in advance they would not buy them.  It is really that simple.  Imagine the fuss if at Tesco a can that looked like Tesco Value beans turned out to have cost £2.00 on your shopping bill when you got it home.

Unfortunately all of the normal duties of the Office of Fair Trading on telecoms matters are passed over to Ofcom and this is how and why normal Fair Trading standards on price disclosure and price transparency to telecoms consumers are completely bypassed.

Also basically a phone line is like an open bank account with no security and no PIN number or signature needed where anyone with access to your home can steal from you at a rate of £90 per hour on the highest priced calls.  And there is no feature to have PIN protection against those calls being made.  You can only have them barred out completely, which is highly inconvenient.

The reason that so much scammer activity is focused on telephone calls is because security and consumer protection is so low that it is very easy to do.

One can only hope that the totally useless and telco profitability loving Stephen Carter is replaced by someone who does have the best interests of all uk citizen consumers at heart.