Heinz wrote on Jul 10^th, 2014 at 11:56am:


Sadly I believe that the current UK CEO and the other members of the Board of Directors who agreed to the ludicrous move to 0844 numbers all still hold their positions.

More interesting will be to focus on well known organisations (especially those which claim to be member owned or to be mutuals) who still continue to use 0845 numbers for customer service functions despite the implementation of the requirements of the EU Consumer Rights Directive in respect of phone number use in to UK law.

Top of my hit list in that regard is going to be BUPA.  In a recent phone conversation with their UK CEO (Dr Damien Marmion), he continued to assure me that their own particular 0845 numbers were different, were definitely "local rate" and did not cost extra to use and did not involve a revenue share.  He was also patronising, supercilious and dismissive on the phone number issue in the way that doctors all too often tend to be when dealing with patients.

See www.bupa.co.uk/contact

Health assessments           0845 600 3458

GP services                          0845 600 3458

Musculoskeletal services    0845 600 4778

Dental services                 0845 600 4779

BUPA must surely be at the top of our hit list for enforcement action against their continued phone number misuse .