SilentCallsVictim wrote on Apr 15
th, 2008 at 12:24am:
Let us hope that Ofcom has indeed abandoned the daft idea of allowing an opt-out from what it sees as necessary regulatory measures through use of pre-call announcements, even if it allows its partners to pre-announce its own actions. We await the consultation document with interest.
I think what you will find Ofcom now actually intend to do is merely to remove the requirement for those OCPs who decide not to charge 0870 calls on the same basis as 01/02/03 calls to give any form of pre-announcement at all about that fact. I do not think there is any hope at all that crooked, deceitful and telco loving Ofcom will now do the right thing for uk citizen consumers by saying that as of say 1st July 2008 all 0870 calls will now be charged at geographic call rates by all OCPs full stop.
Quote:So long as all costs (e.g. those for sensing equipment, call outs, regular maintenance visits, telephone line rental and calls) are properly declared to the customer, I see no problem in alarm providers moving over to 0871 or even 09xx numbers if the revenue share is an important part of the commercial basis for their complete service offering
And this in a nutshell SCV is why you clearly have absolutely no business sending out press releases representing yourself as being part of the saynoto0870 movement. You are clearly not of the same mindset as most members of this campaign and remain as you have always been a one man campaign focused mainly only on achieving small pyrric victories based on regular compromises of almost Neville Chamberlin scale proportions purely so that you can then stick a feather in your hat and say that you SCV are a success and have achieved something you can pin your own name to.
The problem is that in reality most people do not understand the structure of UK phone tariffs at all (thanks to Ofcom) and that these calls that are made by hidden diallers are part of burglar alarm maintenance contracts that are usually highly immobile and very difficult indeed to move elsewhere (ADT the largest company has also now swallowed up huge numbers of their independent rivals). Also if the fact that 0871 may be used is referred to at all in the contract it is in some microscopic paragraph of close set type print that almost no customer reads. These hidden charges are most definitely not forced to be put up front to consumers before they sign the contract with them being told that they are likely to make around another £50 a year of payments to the burglar service by way of extra call charges that will appear on their BT phone bill
All these 0870 and 0871 calls on security equipment services have only one objective in mind. That objective is to hide the real total cost of the product at the point of sale. The point of using this method of pricing is to contravene Part III of the Consumer Protection Act 1987 by quite deliberately giving misleading price indications to consumers about the actual running cost of the service.
Phone calls should only be about the actual cost of moving the call from A to B and maintaining and improving the network that does that. They should not be about hidden payments for goods and services. 09 calls are also currently immoral because they are not properly secured so that only the line subscriber can allow them to be accessed and they are a charter for theft by other people with access to the phone line.
I believe and I think most anti 084/7 campaigners believe that all these hidden payment mechanisms by merely dialling a phone number should be abolished in favour of transparent pricing where burglar alarm companies for instance charge the real quarterly monitoring cost on their own bill to customers in a format the consumer understands. Part of the real cost of that contract should not be hidden in premium call charges on the customer's BT Phone Bill. The result of this is that consumers do not what they are paying and that cartel pricing sets in and the competitive forces of the marketplace that should make the consumer king or queen break down.
SCV Your views about NTS calls have never been at all logical, consistent or coherent ever since you decided to try and consume this website as part of your own one man whirlwind campaign and to alter the views of this campaign to fit in with your own hard to fathom sense of what is right and wrong on the matter (seemingly confined only to it being wrong to pay extra for calls to the health service and even then you seem to regularly have doubts on that point.)
Either come on board and oppose all NTS misuse like the rest of us or set up your own website dedicated only to opposing the use of 0844 numbers by doctors surgeries.
One of the particular features of this website's forum I have always enjoyed is the extraordinary commonality of mind between most of those who post. Almost without exception all of us are on a moral crusade against what we regard as a clear cut case of scamming the consumer by hiding the real cost of phone calls. About the only other forum member who hasn't consistently felt that way is a troll we sometimes have to suffer with the number 9 in their forum name.
So SCV make up your mind and either sign up the objectives of this campaign or clear off and set up a campaign site of your own on 0844 doctors NTS numbers where you can also periodically doubt if even they are wrong.
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IMPORTANT: Ofcom delays 0870 changes beyond 1/2/08 (Read 135,201 times)
