This post is just to highlight the farce of 0870. Sadly all of you who read this know this already!

Tomorrow I will be involved in a conference call. I am given a list of numbers I can call to dial in. The list is by country and presumably you will be assumed to dial your home country number. Not me sadly. I will be dialing in from the UK, but will be dialling either a US or Swedish number as this will be significantly cheaper than dialing the 0870 number given to UK participants.

Annoyingly it will still cost me (I'm on BT Together Option 3, with the  International add on which costs £1 per month) 3p per minute rather than the 0p per minute it should cost me (Option 3). But still a hell of a lot cheaper than the 0870 number. Why would anyone use the 0870 number other than through ignorance.

Who is operating the conference call? Have you complained? And would you like forum members to help you search for a geographical number?

Quote:


But as with all these scams it is reliant on a form of deliberate deception to the participants that 0870 "is only the BT national rate sir/madam" which the two faced liars at BT to this day perpetuate for 0845 and 0870 numbers on every phone bill they print for their customers (and which the even more incompetent bureaucrats at Ofcom still allow to take place).

If all 084 and 087 calls contained a clear announcement that the number called contained a payment to the party called for providing the service you are calling and stated the amount per minute and there was no pretence it was national rate or local rate then there would be less to object to.  But even then ther would be other issues such as the security of a system involving such payments when phone lines are open for use and not PIN protected against such payment calls by callers other than the line subscriber and in the case of mere customer service desks the issue of whether it is right to charge customers for the mere provilege of calling to do business with the company.

Heres an example here of a provider who uses ngn numbers in different countries.They use National Rate to describe all of them?



https://www.meetingzone.com/intconfnow/default.aspx

Thanks for the feedback everyone. I didn't read any of it until after my call. The info on calling abroad with reduced rates is interesting - thank NGM.

I called the Swedish number to join the conference which I checked beforehand with BT was a Geo number (and got F&F on it as well).

I did complain, but very gently as the people I was on the call with were all potential customers. The call was set up from Sweden and the numbers given out were numbers at their various worldwide offices that linked to the conference. Their UK office uses 0870 hence the direct line to the this internal number linking to the conference is an 0870. So they are not trying to profit out of the conference calls, but out of people phoning their offices anytime. Unfortuately that hits anyone calling into a conference call they set up who calls from the UK. For future calls I have asked for a Geo alternative, but it could be difficult pushing for it and I don't want to get on the wrong side of my customer explaining to him that his UK operation runs a scam!