Quote:

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6199509.stm

Its nice to see Ofcom doing something for the consumer if only it wasn't as usual two or three years too late after scamming on this matter had become rife.

It also still seems rather a pity though that Ofcom aren't apparently worried about a sizeable majority of UK telephone customers being completely "short changed" and ripped off whenever they need to make a call to what were once ordinary UK business phone numbers.

In fact Ofcom and their sidekicks at ICSTSIS actually plan to further endorse the scamming by allowing these new hidden Premium Rate 0871 numbers to be miseladingly entitled Business Rate

Dave wrote on Dec 21^st, 2006 at 4:16pm:
I've only scanned half way through the MAC statement and I'm sure I read that if a complaint was made against an ISP for not supplying a MAC, etc it would take them the usual amount of time (generally 6months+) to look into it.

I can imagine if hundreds complain then it would be looked at as a matter of urgency but otherwise it's pointless complaining.  However, now that ISP can't withhold MAC (unless it's technically not possible to migrate) then there is a good chance ISP's wont because they now know that Ofcom can do something whereas before, stupid OfcoN made it voluntary and "hoped" that ISP would oblige without any problem.

What's so stupid if OfcoN thought about it is that ISP's know that most customers wont go through the hassle of moving ISP's without a MAC due to being without internet for upto 2 weeks and having to pay normal price instead of the lower cost of using MACs to move.

So say I own my own ISP and was scrupulous to purposely withold MACs because I know that most customers would still stick with using my ISP because they don't want to be without broadband for weeks and pay the normal full cost of moving.  Now giving this choice, or just issuing MAC's of my own freewill and losing a customer what is it I would do in such circumstances?  I'd obviously refuse or make up excuses for not issuing MAC's to avoid losing a customer.

Common sense tells you that is what could easily happen and has done a lot of times according to posts on MSE and even as far as customers being blackmailed to move to a certain ISP only (obviously more expensive) if their current ISP goes into receivership.  Tiscali LLU did this recently and even refused to do anything when asked by Ofcom simply because Tiscali LLU knew Ofcom couldn't do anything.

Dave wrote on Dec 21^st, 2006 at 4:16pm:


Well gets tougher anyway Dave which is better than the current sorry situation.  But perhaps your point is that this is in fact another sham action by Ofcom like its change on 0870 while still allowing OCPs to charge extra and doing nothing at all about the 0844 and 0845 scams and watering down the original proposals on 0871 becoming properly Premium Rate.

Apart from the actual disgrace of 0844, 0845, 0870 and 0871 not being forced to move to 09 though and make clear call price announcements and have no queueing allowed my biggest beef with Ofcom is that they have not even made it an offence punishable with big fines to go on calling 084 and 087 numbers local/lo-call and national rate numbers in marketing material and information leaflets.  They rely on the ASA and us campaigners having to waste huge amounts of time to have the ASA adjudicate matters on a complaint by complaint basis and with them lacking powers over Police and local council information leaflets and websites.

Ofcom could at the very least have imposed tough rules to stop calling 084/7 lo-call/national rate without immediately shutting them down.  And surely we could at least have expected them to take the full page newspaper ads to publicise this that they took to publicise de-control of BT residential line rental and call prices claiming wrongly that it would be to the advantage of the general public.