Has anyone else noticed and been affected by the changes that 1899 have made to their invoicing? This may also apply to their associated providers 18185 etc. I have not checked yet so I am not sure.

They seem to have moved over to producing "pdf" invoices on line, but their invoices are not produced in a true pdf format; in fact they do not appear to be real pdf at all! They seem to be producing "pdf" invoices using a free utility they have downloaded from www.paologies.com. ; This utility however seems to produce files labelled "pdf" which are only viewable if you are using a MS operating system!

The whole point of pdf is supposed to be that the files are portable across all operating systems. I have changed all of my systems over to Linux now. I have 3 or 4 different pdf applications and I can view all proper pdf files without any problem. I cannot view their new "pdf" invoice files at all though. In all of my pdf applications their invoices appear as blank files.

Has anyone else had this problem?

Hi NGM'sG,

Clearly if you happy with XP then there is no reason for needing to change. I had become increasing sickened by the attitude of MS and the instability and unreliability which I had experienced, culminating in the ridiculous bloat, insecurity and inability to continue using what you had paid to use after 30 days, unless you then played further adventure games. I thus determined to make the effort. It is not easy purely because there is so much confusion out there, amongst many who have no idea what they are talking about, but post in forums making supposedly valid statements! Once you have put in the groundwork and sorted out the wheat from the chaff in Linux, you find that there are distros which are now very advanced and easy to install and maintain. If anyone considers making the change I can now point in the right direction. (There are basically two extreme types of Linux - Linux for nerds who want to spend all of their time playing Linux, and Linux for those who want to install it and get on with using it!) I now have various distros of Linux running on a total of more than 5 PCs, with proper working wireless networking, sound, video, printing, scanning and MIDI.)

As you observe, Finarea do not generally respond to their customers' problems or needs. However in this case I did get a number of replies from them, although it is clear that they cannot be bothered if their new invoices may be read only on MS OSs with Adobe, even though their invoices are not produced using Adobe Acrobat. (There is a version of Acrobat for Linux, but that also cannot read their invoice files produced with the freeware utility they have decided to use, which does not produce proper pdf files.)

My recent communication with 1899 was as follows:  

"Dear customer,
You must install Adobe reader for system to work.
Kind regards
Customer service"

My reply:

"That is a fatuous reply! Adobe is just one proprietary application for pdf. By definition pdf files (Portable Document File) must be able to be read by any pdf application! That is the international standard. The objective of pdf is that they can be read when any operating system is being used - not only Microsoft systems.

An increasing number of people are going to be moving to Google's on-line OS (which is essentially Unix based) in the near future. What are you going to do then? Only have customers who do not use the Google system? How is it that all other companies produce pdf files which are proper pdf files and can be read on all OSs? Only you decide to use a free downloaded inadequate application which cannot produce proper pdf files, presumably because you cannot be bothered to purchase a genuine commercial application which works properly?

Your processes worked properly until you decided to change over to using this piece of free software to produce your invoices in sham pdf. Why you chose this particular one is difficult to understand, since there are many other freeware applications (to work from MS OSs) available to produce proper pdf files, which do work with all other OSs. Rather than dictate to your customers that they must purchase one particular pdf software application only, and must use MS operating systems only, I suggest that you need to become more customer centric; otherwise, particularly as users turn to the Google OS you will lose customers.

Customers are the lifeblood of enterprises. If any enterprise is not customer focussed then it will not prosper in the long term. That means doing what the market wants and needs - not attempting to dictate to the market what it must do !!"


Thanks for the tip about zerop NGM'sG; I will look at that and see if they do not have this sort of problem.

NGMsGhost wrote on Aug 11^th, 2009 at 12:44pm:

They've changed their website to http://www.call1301.co.uk now.

Beware though, they currently only accept payment by (dangerous) continuous payment authority on credit or debit cards (i.e. no direct debits).

Additionally, many of their prices are double or triple 18185's (e.g. triple 18185's 1p/minute to Spain, double 18185's 1p/minute to New Zealand).

I can't find any published charges for 0845 calls either.

Heinz wrote on Aug 12^th, 2009 at 1:05pm:


I expect you may well be right Heinz.  I was just interested to see that there was now at least now one Indirect Access alternative to the Finarea brands just when you might have thought the Indirect Access market was nearly dead due to Indirect Access Call barring being more and more common with non BT suppliers and the additional the disgrace of Ofcom letting BT ever bump up the connection charge to try to blackmail most people in to taking a call package with them or ripping off anyone who does not notice the ripoff and still fails to route their non call package included calls elsewhere.

I would only be nervous about continuous credit card authority with a company I had never heard of.  Callax has been around for several years now and seems a reasonably large supplier and I would have no reason to expect them to suddenly make unwarranted debits on my credit card.

NGMsGhost wrote on Aug 12^th, 2009 at 2:09pm:


But I don't think that is the case here, though I wonder if dorf has assumed that.

There are versions of Adobe Reader for Linux, and they are free, and the one I used earlier works with the files in question, and there is alternate link to read the invoice in apparently ordinary html format ...... so I don't really understand the objection this time, particulary the suggestion that the company is forcing anyone to buy any particular software

dorf wrote on Aug 13^th, 2009 at 9:11am:


Surely American Express would only issue American Express cards, even though other card issuers (eg MBNA) do now issue Amex cards.

dorf wrote on Aug 13^th, 2009 at 9:11am:


Try again. Hover the cursor around a bit and I think you'll find the Invoice N and the pdf/Reader logo, though close together, are separate links, though they are similar enough that you don't realise this from the javascript:__doPostBack(... shown in the status bar

Both this and the other PC with Linux open both fine using IE or Firefox or Adobe Reader as applicable.

I wonder if the non-standard may actually be the other reader programs you're using, but I don't have any to try myself, bar a downloaded but uninstalled version of Foxit

There are several versions of the PDF file format.  Which version do the files claim to be?