SAYNOTO0870.COM - London Blasts - Using 0870 as Emergency Number

idb

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Re: London Blasts - Using 0870 as Emergency Number
Reply #60 - Jul 8^th, 2005 at 10:37pm

Noting that a geographic number has now been released (due ONLY to public pressure and the disgust expressed regarding profiteering from tragedy), the dear old Met can't even get this right. They give the number as 00 44 20 7158 0010 however 00 is not a universal access number for IDD. This really isn't difficult so why are these people so utterly clueless? The number is +44 20 7158 0010 -a format that most would either understand, or be able to deduce (given 44 as a country code). Most people would, I feel, understand this. I'm not prepared to thank the Met for their efforts - using 0870 was a disgusting tactic in the first place and it, PITO, the Home Office and most of all Ofcom, fully deserve the condemnation they are almost certainly about to receive.

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bbb_uk

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Re: London Blasts - Using 0870 as Emergency Number
Reply #61 - Jul 8^th, 2005 at 10:46pm

I agree idb.

I plan on emailing Ailsa Beaton back and asking why are they still using an 0870 number is it because they can still possibly gain revenue from people calling them.

I noticed that they are still not mentioning the cost of these calls so I'm going to (yet again) mention the ASA policy on not being silent on the cost of such calls and they have to mention that the cost of calling such a number. I'm not going to bother mentioning OfCOM as they're dragging their heels with regards to companies/gov departments ripping us off.

I also believe they have only bothered doing this because of us on this site. I also suspect the fact that I mentioned I have emailed several newspapers and other government departments regarding this did they 'hurry' to publish a geographical.

Can anyone think of anything else I may need to mention in my reply to Ailsa?

I do plan on cc'ing the commissioner in, as well as newspapers and other gov departments.

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Dave Global Moderator Offline Posts: 9,902 Yorkshire Gender:	Re: London Blasts - Using 0870 as Emergency Number Reply #62 - Jul 8^th, 2005 at 10:54pm Quote: I do plan on cc'ing the commissioner in, as well as newspapers and other gov departments. The Commissioner's public email is given as commissioner@met.police.uk NGM says email addresses are firstname.lastname@met.police.uk I use ian.blair@met.police.uk
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freediver

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Re: London Blasts - Using 0870 as Emergency Number
Reply #63 - Jul 8^th, 2005 at 11:06pm

Although the thread here may have gone further and it seems PITO may not be the guilty party, I emailed the CEO of PITO earlier today to say I was disgusted that a part of the Uk Police should be profiting from the 0870 number, and saying I looked forward to them and their telecoms provider forwarding the revenue from these calls to a relevant charity in due course. Will be interested to see what they say on Monday. I also tried posting a thread on the BBC "Have your say" forum under the thread about Hotels profiteering from the disaster but they have so far (unsurprisingly) not published anything that would be anti-establishment.... Steve

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bbb_uk

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Re: London Blasts - Using 0870 as Emergency Number
Reply #64 - Jul 8^th, 2005 at 11:12pm

Quote:

The Commissioner's public email is given as commissioner@met.police.uk NGM says email addresses are firstname.lastname@met.police.uk

I use ian.blair@met.police.uk

I shall but the email I got from Ailsa Beaton I noticed that she had cc'd commissioner not his real name!

freediver, I actually think PITO are just as guilty as the met. In the email I got from Ailsa Beaton, she mentioned "The number used is provided to the MPS as part of a national service hosted by the Police Information Technology Organisation".

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NonGeographicalMan

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Re: London Bombing 0870 emergency number
Reply #65 - Jul 8^th, 2005 at 11:14pm

Quote:

A geographical number has now been released for people calling from overseas, it is 0207 158 0010.

However the met still continue to promote the 0870 number!!!!!!

Here is my latest email to Miss Beaton at the Met regarding this issue:-

--------------------------------------------------------------

Sent: 08 July 2005 23:04
To: Ailsa.Beaton@met.pnn.police.uk
Subject: Geographic Alternate Phone Number Only Listed for Those Calling from Overseas

Dear Miss Beaton,

Further to our telephone conversation around 6pm this evening I am very disappointed to see that the geographic phone number that has now been listed for the Met's Casualty Bureau on its website at www.met.police.uk/news/terrorist_attacks ; is only listed as being a number to call for those living overseas.

When we spoke you assured me that the geographic number would be given equal prominence in all published sources, even though the 0870 number would also still continue to be shown.

Given this now only very restricted admission of the existence of an alternative geographic phone number I am left even more concerned about the underlying contractual terms of the commercial agreement between Pito and Cable & Wireless.

I also find it very disappointing that when I called Pito at 4.56pm tonight to pursue the matter with them, as you had originally suggested earlier this afternoon, that I was answered by a voicemail system that said that they closed at 5pm. But on this day of all days you might have thought that they would actually have stayed open just a little later than 5pm.

Also when we spoke this evening you admitted that you were previously personally totally unaware that 0870 numbers were almost impossible to call from many overseas jurisdictions or that prohibitively high calling prices applied from BT Payphones and most Pay as You Go Mobile Phones. But as Pito is Chaired by Chris Earnshaw, the former engineering director of BT, I find it extremely alarming that he was not able to alert other Police force members of the Pito board to the high costs of calling these numbers and/or the impossibility of calling them from overseas when he, as a BT engineering director who would have directly overseen the introduction of the non geographic call routing system, would surely have been only too well aware of such limitations.

I look forward to receiving an email from you confirming to me that the geographic phone number for the Met's Casualty Bureau has now been listed as a direct alternative to the 0870 number for all callers on its website, rather than as simply a number for those callers who live overseas. This would be in accordance with recent guidelines on such matters from the Central Office of Information, from Ofcom and from the Advertising Standards Authority of which you and Pito unaccountably seem to have remained blissfully unaware.

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idb

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Re: London Blasts - Using 0870 as Emergency Number
Reply #66 - Jul 8^th, 2005 at 11:16pm

Quote:

Although the thread here may have gone further and it seems PITO may not be the guilty party, I emailed the CEO of PITO earlier today to say I was disgusted that a part of the Uk Police should be profiting from the 0870 number, and saying I looked forward to them and their telecoms provider forwarding the revenue from these calls to a relevant charity in due course. Will be interested to see what they say on Monday. I also tried posting a thread on the BBC "Have your say" forum under the thread about Hotels profiteering from the disaster but they have so far (unsurprisingly) not published anything that would be anti-establishment.... Steve

The BBC is a serial abuser of rip-off numbers and has refused to provide geographic numbers after FOI requests. It does, however, publish views that are critical to itself, so wait and see!

As an aside, here in Florida we have a price gouging law (http://www.800helpfla.com/pdfs/statute_price_gouging.pdf) that would make such profiteering unlawful. It may also apply to rip-off phone numbers, however we do not have any 0870 equivalent here, and the thought of paying 15 cents per minute to contact a casualty bureau would disgust virtually all US residents.

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Keith

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Re: London Blasts - Using 0870 as Emergency Number
Reply #67 - Jul 8^th, 2005 at 11:23pm

In the last couple of days I've done the following, but feel completely frustrated!

I called OFCOM and was shocked by their complete lack of interest - told me it wasn't their problem and to contact the Home Office. They seemed very defensive as if I was blaming them for the Police using the 0870 number, which I made clear I wasn't, I just wanted them to do something about it.

I called the BBC to leave a message for You and Yours and the guy I spoke to I think thought I was barmy. Like many in the population he didn't undersatand the implications of the 0870 number, after all its just national rate isn't it. I got the feeling my call wasn't going any further even after I tried to explain the issue.

I contacted a member of the GLA who promised to speak to the Chief Executive of the Metropolitan Police Authority today. I haven't heard back yet.

I'm also trying to escalte this thru' an MP.

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bbb_uk Global Moderator Offline Posts: 2,041	Re: London Blasts - Using 0870 as Emergency Number Reply #68 - Jul 8^th, 2005 at 11:26pm NGM, Your email back to Ailsa is kind of similar to what my reply would be. I still plan on emailing her back but I'll make sure its worded differently than yours (so it doesn't look like I've just copied) even though at the end of the day we're after the same thing!
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NonGeographicalMan

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Re: London Blasts - Using 0870 as Emergency Number
Reply #69 - Jul 8^th, 2005 at 11:32pm

Quote:

I actually think PITO are just as guilty as the met.

Pito are far more guilty on this issue than the Met. They are the people to whom the Met has delegated responsibility on emergency contact centre number issues. It is clearly Pito that has signed the contract with Cable & Wireless and not the Met.

However as Ailsa Beaton is one of the very small number of uk senior police force officers on the board of Pito so she surely ought to have been perfectly well aware of the decision making processes that led to the recommendation by Pito to use this 0870 number. Rather strangely though my conversation with her this evening did not however necessarily indicate this to be the case.

As I understand it if there was a terrorist outrage in Manchester then precisely the same 0870 Pito call centre number and call centre team as has been used for London would have been deployed. This is Pito's excuse for using an 0870 number because it is not assigned to one geographic location so gives them a "nationwide presence".

Unfortunately for them though I have recently established with one of the more reputable suppliers of uk non geographic numbers that there is actually a class of non geographic numbers commencing 02 that are only charged to callers at geographic fixed line call rates but that are not asssigned to any genuine physical telephone exchange in the country (they are in fact purely call forwarding numbers in the same way as 084/7x and 07 and 09 prefixes). The reason these are not widely used is apparently because the call recipient must still pay something towards the call cost. Even though it is less than for 0800 calls it is not zero as it would be with a geographic number on a real exchange.

Of course 0800 and 0845 numbers are also non geographic so precisely how Pito ever came to use an 0870 number for the Casualty Bureau is anyone's guess but I would tend to bet that Cable & Wireless offered a much cheaper price for the provision of the whole call routing and forwarding system if an 0870 number was used.

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idb

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Re: London Blasts - Using 0870 as Emergency Number
Reply #70 - Jul 8^th, 2005 at 11:34pm

Quote:

In the last couple of days I've done the following, but feel completely frustrated!

I called OFCOM and was shocked by their complete lack of interest - told me it wasn't their problem and to contact the Home Office. They seemed very defensive as if I was blaming them for the Police using the 0870 number, which I made clear I wasn't, I just wanted them to do something about it.

I know how you feel - I had exactly the same response from Ofcom. It suggested I call the Home Office. I explained I can't call the HO as it also uses an 0870 number and I was calling from the US. Ofcom said it wasn't an issue that it had any control over or words to that effect. I called the Met - the individual I spoke to was rude, arrogant and uncaring.

Whoever is responsible for this specific number, the blame in a wider sense lies with Ofcom and its management. It is an incompetent, useless and dithering organization and is accountable to no one. It has allowed, unchecked, the proliferation of premium rate 0870 numbers which can only stem from corruption somewhere along the murky chain after all, what other reason is there for these numbers to exist? These numbers do not, in any way, benefit the user. They benefit business, BT, Ofcom and other parties, but not the poor old phone user.

I have two or three FOI requests submitted as a result of this, plus a letter to Webb, CEO/PITO. I will also pursue this with my MP back in the UK.

It's a disgraceful example of government agency cluelessness. Heads should roll. They won't.

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Alternative

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Re: London Blasts - Using 0870 as Emergency Number
Reply #71 - Jul 8^th, 2005 at 11:40pm

I am appalled. I heard on the news tonight that the helpline had received over 100,000 phone calls. If each call lasted only 3 minutes on average and the Met Police get a 4.5p 'kick-back' for each minute, then that's a staggering £13,500 they have received out of concerned and worried friends & relatives many of whom are none the wiser as to the true costs!

They should be forced by law to return the money or donate it to a disaster fund or some other worthwhile cause.

The whole thing is just plain dishonest!

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NonGeographicalMan

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Re: London Blasts - Using 0870 as Emergency Number
Reply #72 - Jul 8^th, 2005 at 11:43pm

Quote:

In the last couple of days I've done the following, but feel completely frustrated!

Your mistake has been to deal with the monkeys rather than the organ grinders.

The Ofcom Contact centre pays so badly that they only employ the worst sort of monkeys who are generally both stupid, cheeky and offhand towards callers all at the same time! As monkeys of course often tend to be.

Try emailing the following instead:- stephen.carter@ofcom.org.uk;matt.peacock@ofcom.org.uk;geoff.brighton@ofcom.org.u
k;kip.meek@ofcom.org.uk

As a tip visit the About Us section of the websites of most orgnanisations you are interested in and look for their board of directors or senior management.

95% of business email addresses in this country are in the format firstname.surname@organisation.co.uk The uk police are usually an exception and prefer to use complicated officer numbers in their email addresses. However happily the Met have set up firstname.surname@met.police.uk email aliases that redirect to the underlying more complicated real email address for all their senior staff.

Rather than email any customer services department in this country you might really just as well go and hit your head on a very hard piece of concrete. Either email the company's board and/or the senior executive staff or don't bother at all is my motto. All of the BBC's senior staff can be easily located on their website and all use the email address format firstname.surname@bbc.co.uk

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« Last Edit: Jul 8^th, 2005 at 11:44pm by N/A »

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Alternative

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Re: London Blasts - Using 0870 as Emergency Number
Reply #73 - Jul 8^th, 2005 at 11:52pm

I am appalled. I heard on the news tonight that the helpline had received over 100,000 phone calls. If each call lasted only 3 minutes on average and the Met Police get a 4.5p 'kick-back' for each minute, then that's a staggering £13,500 they have received out of concerned and worried friends & relatives many of whom are none the wiser as to the true costs!

They should be forced by law to return the money or donate it to a disaster fund or some other worthwhile cause.

The whole thing is just plain dishonest!

Alternative

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PeDaSp

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Re: London Blasts - Using 0870 as Emergency Number
Reply #74 - Jul 9^th, 2005 at 12:57am

I'd just like to thank all you folks for your hard work - I've been too busy to do much.

I will be making a donation to the victims fund - but I will double it in recognition of all your good work. Thanks again.

You have achieved fantastic results; and you've really managed to stick a wedge into the whole 0870 scam.

Keep up the pressure please. They are running scared as they can imagine the headlines!

There is a fund to be set up by Ken Livingstone for the victims - and it would be a victory to have all the profit donated to it. Transport for London uses a London geographic number for all enquiries - so it seems that Capita/C&W etc... have not yet managed to fool them yet.

There are lots of embarrassing FOI requests to be made to get exactly to the bottom of how this 0870 number was selected etc... Plus were ex BT people at PITO/MET aware of the cost and limitations of the 0870 number etc...

Then there are more FOI's to get to the bottom of OFCOMs claim to victory in this matter - ie all the correspondence/emails/calls to the PITO/MET etc... together with timings.

C&W public relations will be a real weak point. FOI's to PITO will tell us how much C&W have profited - and this should be given wide publicity together with a demand that they make a donation equal to their profit from the 0870 number to the victims fund.

Thanks once again.

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