bbb_uk wrote on Jul 12^th, 2006 at 8:07am:


Good idea! Why didn't I think of that?

Heinz wrote on Jul 6^th, 2006 at 1:48pm:


Heinz I just can't believe you never make such calls.

I bitterly dislike making them but they cannot be avoided on occasion with some products I am a customer of - for instance both Sky and Tivo (which has its call centre run by Sky) and for which all 0870 alternatives are presently withdrawn and which do not take customer instructions by email.  Much though I hate the numbers I cannot distort my life so much as to not buy products I otherwise want to have and which are only available from a monopoly 0870 supplier.  I do the best I can by always using the alternative number where there is one and using www.18185.co.uk at 4p per minute when there is no other alternative.

As to the SayNoTo0870 Day its a great idea but it requires getting journalists on side in advance at nearly all the national newspapers and on radio and tv and to get them to run the story prominently.  And the message must be not to call any company that promotes 084 or 087 numbers on that day, even if there is a geographic alternative listed on this website.  If there was a huge decline in calls to Sky and the Inland Revenue they would notice although really a week long boycott would do them much more damage.

However I fear that even now getting the co-operation of enough national newspaper journalists would be very difficult and it could be a damp squib.  I think we need a Panorama program yet on this subject before such an approach is likely to work out, much though I in principal support it.  To get a mass boycott of 0870 numbers to work would also require a large number of people to understand the scam and want to act against it and unfortunately at the moment the majority of the general public still find the scale and significance of the scam too cunning for them as mere simple mortals to understand or want to understand.  Of course they shouldn't have had to as the regulator should have dealt with the issue before it ever became a serious problem........................

Barbara wrote on Jul 6^th, 2006 at 8:20am:
It's hard to believe the degree of stupidity that exists within UK organizations, commercial or otherwise. My last employer, when I lived in the UK, used an 0870 number for its 'staff information line' which was primarily used for dissemination of corporate information. This organization, a government agency with a staff of around 10,000, actively encouraged employees to call from their office phones. Whilst the agency may have been making a couple of pence per minute from NTS revenue, it would pay in the order of 8p per minute for each and every call (virtually all would be made during weekday daytime). Despite the agency having a sophisticated telephone switch that could easily accommodate a 'voice mailbox' or similar on one of its internal extensions (as it does with its 'inclement weather information line'!), thus reducing the cost to effectively zero, it preferred to have the ludicrous 0870 solution, presumably suggested by some idiotic consultancy company in partnership with a 0870 reseller. Completely bonkers, but consistent with the UK civil service (including Ofcom) being clueless about telephony matters. 

I also had to laugh about this report on the BBC web site: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/5201748.stm

"Stolen phones cost FCO £600,000"

which includes

"Two satellite phones stolen in Iraq cost the Foreign Office almost £600,000 in bills, a spending watchdog says. It took about 18 months before the phones were cut off, despite a junior staff member in the Foreign Office telephony unit querying the huge bills. 

The National Audit Office said neither senior staff nor the Iraq Policy Unit bothered to look into it and continued to pay the itemised monthly bills. "

Read it and weep.

Unbelievable.

Does this proposed date not almost coincide with the introduction of BT's new sneaky minimum call charges and per minute pricing?

If so, this could be a valuable hook for our Day "further example of rip-off telcos", " is this why we fought war?"

You get the idea...

Now - about organisation of the event led by senior members of the forum? (I refer my Hon Friends to remarks I made earlier (ad nauseam))

I don't think this day will be at all effective unless we obtain the prior agreement of various major national radio and tv journalists to support it though.

I am not a Big Man but just a passionate enthusiast of the cause.  Unfortunately I also know by now that this is seen by the media as a dispute by people who don't like paying a few pennies on their phone bils (plus many media outfits also use the numbers themselves) so it doesn't inspire the same level of strong public interest or consistent feeling as child abuse or the murder of a policeman.

The Big Man of this forum is Daniel who controls the content of all the editorial areas of the site.  So far he has been totally silent on this matter and without his support I doubt it is going anwhere.  In fact Daniel really hasn't helped at all lately, even by providing a facility to search for numbers automatically in the Unverified list (if none is found in the Verified one) whilst still pointing out that they have not been checked so cannot be guaranteed to work.

The proposed date is actually far too soon.  I would suggest some time in Jan or Feb when people aren't busy with Christmas but are all broke and counting the pennies.  Also October is too soon to get anything arranged.

Tanllan wrote on Aug 7^th, 2006 at 10:00pm:


Which date do you refer to Tanllan on which we start earning for ourselves?

As the tax year starts on 5th April then if one looks at things on an annualised basis then many people are working for the Inland Revenue until the start of August before they get a penny of their earnings for their own use.

Of course we all know that in reality it doesn't work like that and they annualise it and take a roughly equal cut out of your wages each month.

Of course the biggest earner of all from this website seems to be so busy spending the proceeds that he no longer has time to even participate in any discussion in the forum.