SAYNOTO0870.COM helps campaigners strike back at NHS surgery | HMRC responds (in part) to SAYNOTO0870.COM’s call

SAYNOTO0870.COM has been taken to the streets by campaigners in Reading. The Earley Neighbourhood Action Group is distributing posters bearing the landline numbers for a local surgery.

Brookside Group Practice in Earley has resisted all calls for it to abandon its 0844 477 3005 Business Rate telephone number, despite a ban, which was introduced nearly two years ago.

The Group’s publicity of the surgery’s geographic numbers, supplied by SAYNOTO0870.COM, will enable patients to avoid expensive calls. It should leave this particularly large practice wondering whether it is really worth imposing a charge on patients.

This is a great example of how alternative numbers can be used to further the fight against the inappropriate use of Business Rate numbers.

The NHS should be free at the point of need, which means that providers should not be imposing charges on patients in this manner.

Cheaper calls to the Tax Credits Helpline

Meanwhile, HMRC has, in part, heeded our call to switch on its 0345 numbers. Its Tax Credits Helpline can now be called on 0345 300 9300 instead of 0845 300 3900.⁽¹⁾

This means that calls, many of which come from mobile telephones, will come from bundled minutes, rather than costing anything up to 35 pence per minute.⁽²⁾

It is a first step by HMRC. DWP, including its agency JobCentre Plus has yet to do anything about its Business Rate numbers. They should introduce 0345 numbers to run alongside their 0845 ones immediately. SAYNOTO0870.COM will be delighted to promote them!

In the longer term, the 0845 numbers should be phased out completely and replaced with 03 numbers.

And finally…

SAYNOTO0870.COM was featured in Tuesday’s ”Rip Off Britain” programme on BBC One.

1. Users of 084x Business Rate numbers can migrate to their equivalent 034x ‘UK-Wide’ number. It is standard industry practice for providers to permit such a change whilst under contract.
2. Call Costs Table by David Hickson, author of NHS Patient Blog, who is NOT affiliated with SAYNOTO0870.COM. This table shows the additional charges patients incur on a 5 minute call with various landline and mobile services.

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Contact: Dave Lindsay, SAYNOTO0870.COM
E-mail: dave {at} saynoto0870 {dot} com

Citizens Advice’s silly phone numbers game

Citizens Advice has a new 0844-prefixed national phone number which attracts premium charges.

SAYNOTO0870.COM can reveal, for free, that there is a way to avoid paying the fee. Citizens Advice has chosen to only advise only select customers about it, after they have paid up to 41 pence. And this is from an organisation that pledges to offer advice for free!

The secret

The number for the new helpline is 08444 111 444. When dialled from a mobile phone, callers are advised that they can avoid the charges of up to 41 pence per minute by redialling 0300 330 0650.

Unlike the 0844 number, calls to it will come from any bundled minutes. But, in order hear about this alternative, callers will have to spend up to 41 pence! This is because it isn’t promoted anywhere else.

Citizens Advice keeps secret from landline callers the existence of this cheaper way of making contact as they don’t get to hear the message at all. Not only that, but if you ring the 0300 number from a fixed line, you will be told that it is for the exclusive use of callers using mobile phones.

• If you need to ring Citizens Advice from your mobile, dial 0300 330 0650 instead.


• If you have a landline and are thinking of using it to call the 0844 number, you may well find it cheaper to ring the 0300 number from your mobile, especially if it gives you inclusive minutes.


• For the Welsh speaking, the published number is 0844 477 2020. It too has a cheaper mobile-only counterpart which is 0300 456 8356.

Not to be outdone, individual bureaux sport their own 0844 numbers and, until now, unpublished 0300 mobile-only numbers as well. Some of these can be found in this PDF document.

Non-transparent call charges

Citizen’s Advice states, of its 0844 numbers, that calls “will be charged at five pence per minute from a landline and may cost considerably more from mobile and other phones.”

It really should get its own house in order before criticising others!

All calls to 0844 numbers attract Service Charges, for the benefit of numbers users (service providers). The telephone companies we make our calls with then add on their own Access Charges to these.

The Service Charge on the most common 0844 numbers (including those used by Citizens Advice) is around 5 pence per minute. So a call made from a mobile phone that costs 41 pence per minute imposes an Access Charge of 36 pence per minute.

The Access Charge of a landline provider that charges 13 pence per call plus 10 pence per minute is 13 pence plus 5 pence for every minute.

Calls from BT lines attract a tiny tiny Access Charge which is held low by regulation. This is why, when combined with the Service Charge, ringing Citizens Advice’s numbers costs 5.105 pence per minute plus a 12.5 pence Call Set-up Fee. This means that BT’s rates vary rather than others varying from BT’s.

So Citizens Advice’s statement is hardly being clear about what callers will pay:

• It claims that they will pay less than cheapest call rate in the market.


• It says that mobile and other calls “may cost considerably more” than the alleged landline rate. The truth is that the quoted rate is certainly considerably less.

Hypocritical

• Citizens Advice says that one of its key principles is to offer advice for free. But through its use of 0844 numbers, it benefits to the tune of around 5 pence per minute for its service.


• In its response to the Ofcom consultation on the future of non-geographic phone numbers earlier this year, Citizens Advice said that it strongly supports the regulator’s proposal to improve price transparency. Yet it isn’t open about the amount it costs to ring it.

NHS GP Telephone Numbers: Analysis of call rates

NHS GPs are banned from using telephone numbers that cost more to call than geographic ones, and this has been the case since 1st April 2011. They were given a year (from April 2010) to make any necessary changes so that persons do not pay more.

A Health Minister stated in Parliament:

“It is absolutely clear that there is no distinction between landlines, mobiles or payphones. The directions are very clear that patients should not expect to be charged any more.”

This quashes any suggestion by some parties that the ban doesn’t extend to mobile phones or only applies to certain BT customers.

I have compiled an extensive list of rates charged by various landline, mobile and public payphone operators for calls to geographic, 0845 and 0844 numbers used by surgeries. To download it, follow the link at the bottom of this posting.

This evidence proves beyond reasonable doubt that persons do in fact pay more to ring practices on their 0844 and 0845 numbers.

That is, unless they can demonstrate that persons do not and will never subscribe to all the tariffs I’ve highlighted. I think that the likelihood of this happening is zero.

• Download my paper NHS GP Telephone Numbers: Analysis of Call Rates (PDF | 143kB)

UCAS says 'NO' to those trying to avoid rip-off 41 pence per minute charge to ring Clearing Hotline

UCAS has recently shut off its landline number published by SAYNOTO0870.COM which used to go through to its clearing service¹. It is now answered by a message that redirects to the widely published Premium Rate number, 0871 468 0 468, that costs mobile callers up to 41 pence per minute².

How stupid for UCAS to stop people calling the ordinary number to avoid up to 41 pence per minute charges in order to protect its own subsidy of 8 or 9 pence per minute!!


Further points

• UCAS advises, incorrectly, only the call charge from BT fixed lines³, yet many callers will be ringing from mobile phones and landlines provided by companies other than BT.


• There is a number that UCAS publishes for overseas callers⁴ that is included in mobile and landline packages’ bundled minutes. However, when it is dialled from the UK it won’t allow access to the Customer Service Unit.


• UCAS joins the likes of BSkyB which disables any alternative that is found. And like HMRC, UCAS has moved to block UK calls to geographic/03 alternatives that are given for overseas customers.

Finance helplines

Once they have their place, students will need to speak to the relevant finance body. Student Awards Agency for Scotland (SAAS) uses 0300 555 0505, so no alternative is needed!

However, those in the rest of the UK will be given 0845 numbers, and these are all operated by Student Loans Company. Alternatives that get through to the same menu options as their 0845 counterparts are as follows:

• Student Finance England 0845 300 5090 = 0141 243 3600
• Student Finance NI 0845 600 0662 = 0141 243 3591
• Student Finance Wales 0845 602 8845 = 0141 243 3960

- ENDS -

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Contact: Dave Lindsay
E-mail: dave {at} saynoto0870 {dot} com | Twitter: @FairTelecoms | Blog: saynoto0870.blogspot.com

Notes to Editors

1. Until recently, the number 01242 545701 went through to the main “Customer Services Unit”. It is now answered with a recording which redirects to the 0871 number and advises that a call from a BT landline will cost no more than 9 pence per minute.


2. T-Mobile charges 41 pence per minute to 0871 numbers and O2, Orange and Vodafone all charge between 35 pence per minute and just under 36 pence per minute on pay monthly packages.


3. UCAS says that calls to its number from a BT landline “cost no more than 9p per minute“. This is incorrect as all such calls attract a 12.5 pence Call Set-up fee in addition to the 9.19 pence per minute call rate. This means that a 10 minute call will cost £1.05 which equates to 10.5 pence for each minute.


4. It publishes +44 330 333 0230 for callers from overseas, but when dialled from within the UK, callers are greeted with a message telling them it is for international callers only.

BT reduces cost of ringing mobiles; Terminate the Rate gets hopes up on savings

Terminate the Rate is right to proclaim reductions in the cost of ringing mobile phones from BT landlines, but its figures are somewhat over-egging the pudding if taken as being the actual savings customers will enjoy.

It correctly states that evening calls will fall from 7 pence per minute to 5.3 pence per minute and that this is a 24 percent reduction. This does not take into effect BT's Call Set-up Fee of 12.5 pence (per call), its policy of rounding call durations up to the next whole minute and rounding call charges up to the next whole penny.

I have prepared a spreadsheet which calculates the charges and actual percentage reductions for calls up to 10 minutes at 30 second intervals.

A 1 minute evening call has dropped by 10 percent and a 3 minute call at the same time will cost 14.7 percent less. These are hardly anywhere near the 24 percent headline figure now are they?


Call Set-up Fees (or sometimes called "Call Connection Fees"), whole minute billing and rounding each individual call charge up to the next whole penny means that we actually pay more for every minute of a chargeable call than the published "per minute" rate would have us believe.

If a butcher were to round up the weight of meat to the next 500g interval, Trading Standards would be down on him or her like a tonne of bricks. But Ofcom sits idly by and allows calls of 1 minute and 1 second to be rounded up to 2 minutes. That's 59 seconds of call that are billed for but are never made!

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Contact: Dave Lindsay
E-mail: dave {at} saynoto0870 {dot} com

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Notes to Editors

1. Mobile termination rates fell on 1 April from around 4.7 pence per minute to 2.66 pence per minute and subsequent reductions are due in coming years.
2. A termination rate is a charge one telephone network operator imposes on another for connecting (known as terminating a call). For example, when a BT customer calls a '3' mobile, 3 imposes a termination charge on BT for connecting the call.
3. I thoroughly support the campaign to drive down mobile termination rates, but not the way in which Terminate the Rate campaign misleads in this case.
4. Virgin Media has a similar policy (see www.virginmedia.com/callcosts).

What are local call rates and how have they changed over the years?

Back in the day when BT was the only provider of telephone services, there was only one local rate, and that was that. Today, however, different rates for local calls are available, as determined by tariff.

In this posting I explain how it used to be and how it is now.

What is local rate?

“Local rate”, “local call rate” and variants thereof is the price a subscriber pays to ring a landline number in the local area.

What was it like when we all made our calls with BT?

Because everyone made their calls with BT and there was only one pricing tariff, local rate was the same for everyone. At that time, one could therefore refer to the local rate.

There was also the national rate which was greater than the local one.

What was the cost of calling 0845 numbers?

The 0845 numbers existed at that time, and, by regulatory dictate, BT charged the same price as it did for local calls to ring them. This is where the association between 0845 numbers and “local rate” came from; it only ever applied on BT’s old tariff.

How has local rate changed?

Today there are many providers, all charging different rates for local calls. Many landline users have an inclusive package, which means that they pay zero pence per minute for local calls. Alternatively, they are chargeable on a ‘per minute’ basis.

The vast majority of landline subscribers don’t pay more to call landline numbers outside their local call area. Where calls are inclusive, local and national ones are inclusive, and where they’re not, the same ‘per minute’ rate applies to both.

Mobiles, by their very nature, only charge a single rate for calls to landlines, irrespective of distance.

All in all any consumer’s “local rate” is likely to be the same as his or her “national rate”. As such, I usually talk about “geographic rate” as use of the term “local rate” has the tendency to re-enforce the myth that it’s more expensive to call longer distance.

How do 0845 call rates stand now in relation to local calls?

They cost more than local and more than national geographic calls (remember that local and national calls now cost the same on respective tariffs). Mobile users are hit the hardest with charges of up to 41 pence per minute and calls not come from bundled minutes.

Higher 0845 rates are to be expected due to the fact it costs the telephone companies more to connect calls to them than with geographic calls. BT’s call rates are held artificially low by regulation.

The need for 03 numbers

In the days of BT-only telecommunications, 0845 provided companies with a way of having a number that wasn’t associated with any particular location, but which cost no more to call than a local number.

The 03 numbers don’t relate to any geographic area and their call rates are pegged to geographic call charges with all telephone providers. They are suited to the multi-provider market, unlike 0845 numbers which are only linked for customers of BT.

Conclusion

Whilst the continued use of the local rate term is not incorrect, it is important to be mindful that:

• national calls don’t cost more than local ones;
• 084x calls cost more than geographic calls;
• all 03 numbers cost no more than geographic calls on any individual tariff, as dictated by regulation.

Who is responsible for setting the cost of a telephone call?

The ban on phone numbers that cost more to call than geographic or landline numbers within the NHS has had little effect.

One of the biggest reasons for this appears to be the way in which PCTs are taking at face value assurances, given by GPs’ telephone providers, on the cost patients incur when dialling their numbers.

In this posting, I explain, using some simple logical thinking, why these supposed affirmations are in reality totally worthless.

Who is responsible for setting the cost of a telephone call?

Many GPs imply that it is down to their own telephone provider. They cite phone provider assertions that patients pay the same as a geographic or local call.

For this to be the case there would have to be regulation which all telephone call providers must obey. They would all have to be prevented from charging more, but there is no such rule!

The telephone system as a whole allows customers of one telephone provider to ring those of other providers. It also allows the call providers to set call rates independently of one another.

So it follows that it is the caller’s telephone company that sets the call’s price and not the receiver’s.

What about local or geographic call charges?

In the days when we all placed our calls with BT, it charged national calls at a higher rate than local ones. Crucially, as everyone made calls with the same provider, which offered only one tariff, there was only one price for local calls. So it was valid to refer to the local rate.

Also, at that time, 0845 calls were charged by that sole provider at the same rate as it did local calls.

But today, there are many providers offering many tariffs, charging different rates for local calls. So there is now no single local call rate that applies to everyone. Additionally, charges for 0845 calls are generally greater and are therefore no longer aligned to these varying local rates.

Furthermore, with today’s tariffs, in most cases all geographic calls, whether they are local to the caller or national, cost the same on any one particular tariff at any one time.

What about call charges?

We don’t have to look very far for some examples of major providers charging more for 084x calls than local calls. Virgin Media charges just over 10 pence per minute for 0844 g6 and 0845 numbers, yet geographic and 03 calls are inclusive or just below 9 pence per minute.

T-Mobile charges 41 pence per minute to 0844 and 0845 numbers, but geographic and 03 calls are inclusive or up to 30 pence per minute, depending on tariff.

Load of twaddle

To summarise:

• It’s the caller’s provider that sets the cost of the call.
• 0845 calls are no longer charged the same as a local call.
• Calls to 0844 and 0845 numbers are more expensive than local calls.

So the suggestion that a 0844 or 0845 number costs no more than a geographic call is utter twaddle!