Response to my escalation. Not the brightest coin in the piggy bank.

Quote:

Can someone please clarify the issue here.

Are 084/087 numbers still being used for particular services, other than those covered by 080/03/01/02 numbers?
This would be a breach of the FCA requirements.

Alternatively, is it simply a case of getting current published information up-to-date with recent number changes?

There may be some of each, but the difference is most significant.

One also needs to check that website references are to current documents, rather than to old material which carried the correct number at the time of publication.

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SilentCallsVictim wrote on Dec 6^th, 2015 at 11:18am:

I meant to say

Quote:

Apologies.

Thanks for your input, I have contacted Santander and although they state that they are CSA compliant they are still publishing 084 numbers. I have started the process and I am awaiting their reply.

Santander are not compliant at present in my view because they are still publishing 087/084 numbers.

allegro wrote on Feb 10^th, 2017 at 5:12pm:


allegro,

Although you have nearly got there (after a very long interval indeed) with Santander it does strike me that your error here was in playing their game by dealing with the dumb and unskilled labour in customer services (who are frequently not intellectually capable of comprehending such matters, especially if they also have difficulty with speaking the English language and/or are foreign nationals domiciled in India or the Philippinnes) instead of escalating matters straight to their Compliance Officer (as they are a bank regulated by the FCA) and if having no joy there then on to their CEO as detailed at www.ceoemail.com/s.php?id=ceo-9340&k=5904e5f3&c=Santander%20Group%20Chief%20Exec...

One reason I withdrew from the fray here is because of the vast and disproprtionate amount of personal effort required to eliminate a common problem that many of the offenders were corporately programmed against doing anything about.  So if I didn't have a personal relationship with that organisation that required me to use its 084/7 number it simply wasn't worth all the time and effort, stress and emotional damage involved (which I get plenty more of elsewhere through other problems in my life such as being a feudal leasehold serf of an oppressive mediaevil landlord (otherwise know as our residents management company, dominated by people who are themselves leaseholders or flat owners)

Ultimately we have still lost anyway because BT group are still getting extremely fat on the additional interconnect costs of 03 compared to 01/02 (this is the main reason per call costs with 18185 and 1899 have gone up so drastically from 0p per  hour to over 60p per hour as 03 numbers are now such a huge part of the daytime call volumes that fixed line providers carry).

In addition BT is making a massive amount out of the extraordinary increase in just 13 years in line rental costs from only £6.33 per month in 2004 (when price controls on BT were removed by Ofcom) to £18.99 per month or so at the present time.  Compared to cumulative inflation of no more than 30% in the same time period.

There is also no competition on fixed line rental as all the other parties in the marketplace such as Sky and TalkTalk or Plusnet have to buy the line rental at whatever inflated price BT Wholesale is now demanding from them.  Basically those charges have gone up by exactly the same percentages as BT Retail line rental.

So basically an unfair and unreasonable set of inter connect charges by BT we could avoid on 084/7 numbers have been replaced by charges we cannot avoid (extortionate BT line rental that has nothing at all to do with the cost of operating the copper wires but everything to do with BT making up for lost revenue on fixed line calls by replacing it with ripofff copper line phone rental charges.

Of course if WiMax had not been blocked in this country by the regulators and the mobile networks actually had good enough 4G coverage to provide us with an alternative to fixed line broadband then BT would face some competition.  But now that BT own the largest mobile operator (EE) there is fat chance of that ever happening!.

So all in all its all been a huge waste of time (as I believe Arthur Dent once said in The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy about the out evolved cavemen) as BT continue to rip everybody off and remains the large, inefficent and bloated fatcat (essentially comparable in unreformability to the NHS) it has always been.

Of course BT being forced to sell off Openreach may have some kind of eventual impact but I expect it will find a way round that too.................

But anyway I look forward to your final report shortly telling us that over a year on (and much more than that since the EU Consumer Rights Directive was incorporate in to UK law) Santander has at last finally been forced to change all publicly facing phone numbers from 084 to 03!