In todays Blog I want to talk about an insidious practice which is creeping up on us, which is making us pay through the nose when telephoning companies. Its called 0870. I'll also tell you what you can do about it, and urge everyone to vote with their feet and refuse to use these numbers. There is a brilliant website which enables you to do this and you must visit it. It's called www.saynoto0870.com
you might not realise it, but more and more companies seem to be using this prefix in their call centre numbers. The truth is that when you dial a number prefixed 0870 you get charged typically 8p per minute, and you are not warned about it! At first glance, 8p doesn't seem like a huge amount of money, but consider this: a typical call to one of these numbers might go something like this: listening to and endless menu of selections, press 1 for sales, press 2 for enquires, press 3 for complaints etc, and by the time you get to 5 you have forgotton what the first one was, and when you eventually press a number you get to the next level of numbers to dwell on and press. Eventually you may get to speak to a real person and get put on hold for a few minutes listening to cheesy distorted music, get passed round all the departments, and before you know it, 20 minutes has passed, and with 0870 that means £1.60 out of your pocket. And the thing is, you might have phoned them to complain about something they should be putting right!; 'yes, thanks for charging me £1.60 for telling you that you overcharged me on my account'.
And the worst is yet to come. These companies may be taking a cut of the money that you have paid to make the call. That's why these numbers are getting more popular with companies of course. This practice has been investigated by the telecoms Watch dog OFCOM and moves are afoot to do something about it. In the meantime, you can take it in your own hands to boycott these numbers.
You see, there is very often an alternative normal geographic number that you can dial to reach the company and the same department. Such a number consists of the normal geographic area code, for eg. 01924, followed by the actual number (an 0870 number is non-geographic and you get charged the same no matter where you are ringing from, even if the company is next door to you). By phoning a geographic number you get charged on whatever tariff you have chosen with your telecoms provider, which will be much less than 8p per minute. There are several ways to find the geographic number for the company you want to dial. 1) first use the website above, because it has extensive lists for allsorts of companies (sent in by members of the financially wise like you and me).
2) See if they quote an overseas number which starts 44.
Take the two fours away, add a zero in front, and hey presto you have got the geographic number to ring from this country.
3) Ring them up and ask for the number. If they refuse to give it, ask to speak to a supervisor, explain why you object to using the 0870 number (trouble is, this may cost you £1.60!)

Now, companies also extensively use 0845 numbers. These are called 'local rate' numbers and you get charged typically 4p per minute, wherever you dial from. They were first launched many years ago to make calls cheaper for people phoning companies based in a different city.
However, in these days of intensive competition between telecom providers, when you can make calls for say 1p per minute, these 0845 numbers have sadly seen their day, but the crazy thing is that companies still insist on using them! My response to this is the same as above, to refuse to ring 0845 numbers too and find out the geographic alternative. For example I recently needed to ring Direct Line insurance to get a quote. All the numbers in the glossy brochure were 0845 numbers. So I looked up the geographic number on www.saynoto0870.com When I rang the number I wasn't in the right department, but got put through to the right department without any trouble. The outcome was that I paid just 3 p for the whole call, because with my provider they charge zero pence per minute plus a 3p connection charge. Therefore i could have listened to the cheesy distorted music all day and still got charged 3p. Better than 0845 or 0870 !!!!

Astronut