loddon wrote on Oct 1^st, 2007 at 1:00pm:


I see that quite a few of the petitions still ahead of us in terms of signatures are ones that I have signed:-

Allow The Red Arrows To Fly At the 2012 Olympics
Repeal The Hunting Act
Give All Gurkhas and their families British Citizenship
Have A Referendum on the EU Constitution
Make Jeremy Clarkson Prime Minister
Abolish All Faith Schools
Scrap all plans for road tolls or congestion charging
Reject proposals to restrict or ban the use of older cars
Make St George's Day A Public Holiday

In fact that makes 9 out of the 16 petitions that are ahead of stop doctors 0844 numbers.

Still with this government there are so many different causes that one needs to keep lobbying about.............................

joe65 wrote on Oct 5^th, 2007 at 5:40pm:


The Jeremy Clarkson petition has been running for a very long time so has to be judged in that context.  Also there is a very big pro motoring lobby in this country and most keen motorists regard this speed camera loving and non road building and congestion charging allowing Labour government as about the worst there has ever been.

Voting for Jeremy Clarkson as Prime Minister is therefore a way to express the contempt felt by most keen motorists for their treatment by the Labour government.

The anti doctors 0844 NEG petition now has 10,667 signatures and is in 16th place but the petition to allow the Red Arrows to fly at the 2012 Olympics that only started a couple of weeks ago now have over 100,000 signatures.  It is clearly being orchestrated by those with the ability to communicate with the armed forces and by the various pro motoring lobby groups that were behind the anti road tolls petition I would say.  I am suspicious that petitions to this signature are not actually being fiddled by some elaborate means as I was also very suspicious with the anti road tolls petition.  Of course all the names and addresses are real names and addresses but have all the people concerned really actually signed the petition.  It may be that organisations which have members who would support the cause are signing up all their members to the petition en bloque whether they have actively consented or not.

Much though we may get stirred up about the 084/7 scam like it or not there are other causes that the population at large get even more stirred up about.

11,630 votes now, me included.

13,000 votes today!!

  My surgery have introduced this 0844 range, but I have recently discovered that they have lied in claiming it is a "Lo-Call" the same as 0845. Unlike 0845, 0844 does not offer peak and off peak, and the charge, even from a BT line, is not the same as 0845. Any argument surgeries may have in favour of 0844 fail because they could just as easily moved to 0845, which is less of a rip-off due to historic associations with local rate. 0844 was introduced initially for Dial Up internet, and was specifically designed as a system to charge a premium over the cost of a geographic call which went to the ISP, surgeries have effectively misused this facility to generate revenue as though their patients were connecting to the internet.
    Further to this scam, my surgery will NOT allow me to book an appointment for tomorrow in person, I have to PHONE the next day. Naturally, EVERYONE is told this, and the result is an avalanche of calls queued at 8:30am, all of which generate revenue even though it takes a while for the receptionists to book the appointments while at the same time dealing with visitors who find the receptionist "on the phone" when they arrive to attend. I have been told that for each surgery day, only FIVE slots per doctor can be booked in advance, all the rest are "emergency" on the day only. In fact, patients who are actually that ill on the day cannot manage the stress of battling through a call queue, and would find it easier to book at a quiet time. If they fail to get through in time, all the "emergency" slots are taken by the non-emergency patients who could not pre-book and had to fight it out on the day. In effect, "emergency" appointments are allocated on those most able to navigate the calling system, not on the basis of clinical need as would be the case before, where a visitor or caller could get an appointment the next day if they had an illness that was unlikely to "go away overnight".
     Unfortunately, no-one can actually make a valid complaint to the regulators unless they are personally affected, or are complaining on behalf of another affected individual. Anything else is "feedback" and gets a polite reply (sometimes) and gets filed in the waste paper basket.

  Thanks, It is only recently that I discovered that 0844 is NOT the same as 0845, which is now actually CHEAPER that the geographic numbers to call. If my surgery had gone over to 0845 I would be thanking them!
    The original problems were with surgeries using 0870, and I thought the 0844 trick was a way around these regulations. It seems it is not, as all I would have to show is that their 0844 number is charged at a premium to an equivalent geographic number, such as my dentist.

    One possible concern I have is whether complaining could get me "struck off" by the surgery. Although it shoudn't happen, it is often a case of an organisation doing something it can't by law, and the aggrieved party having to pursue redress. This is similar to the way banks victimise customers who excercised their right to challenge illegal bank charges (they were thrown out and told to bank elsewhere with little notice).

  The fact is that surgeries have done this under the noses of the primary care trusts, AGAIN! long after they were made to ditch their 0870 numbers after complaints.

   Since the summer, I have seen an explosion in this rip-off, which I thought was finally going to be brought to an end come March 2008.

sherbert wrote on Nov 2^nd, 2007 at 8:21pm:

You are spreading another telephone myth. It is not just "free" packages that 0845 is more expensive on.

The Petition now stands at over 16000 votes and is tenth largest.