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LoCall Charges - A Consumer Perspective
This is the contents of a letter that was sent to, and published by, the Consumer Association of Ireland in their Consumer Choice magazine. It highlights the frustrations concerned when we’re being forced to spend extra money calling companies and government organisations through their use of 1850 and 1890 numbers.
My issue is that most of the telephone providers now offer packages where we pay a single fee for line rental and calls where calls are being made to another landline. However, many businesses and government departments elected to provide a Locall number for clients so that we would only incur a local call charge when we made contact with them. This is fine if a telephone subscriber is paying for each individual call. I and many others, however, pay an additional charge to call Locall numbers as Locall is a premium rate service.
For example, my monthly service charge for all calls 24/7 for any single call with a duration of less than 59 minutes to landlines in Ireland, Northern Ireland and the UK, along with Broadband and line rental, is about €50 per month. If, during the month, I call a business using the regular landline, this call will be included in my monthly subscription; if, however, I call using the Locall number, then there would be an additional charge on my next bill. Unfortunately, not all businesses and offices provide the normal landline number in addition to the Locall number.
I, like other subscribers with similar packages, am being asked to pay an additional charge for a phone call that should have been included in the Telephone Service Package because businesses are only supplying Premium Rate Numbers. This is most unfair to consumers.
Neat trick by hard pressed greedy Dublin hotel
A couple of weeks ago, a Canadian contractor was working in my office for a few days. Being over from Canada, away from his family, he obviously wanted to call home in the evenings from his hotel room.
On the advice of his manager in Canada, my colleague bought a ZapTel Absolute World Card which is supported in Ireland through SkyTel.
His first evening back in the hotel, he tried ringing the 1890 number on the card, but nothing happened. He checked the “dial 9″ and so on, tried again, but nothing. There was also a 1850 number on the card, but this too didn’t work.
He contacted the SkyTel support e-mail address on the card the following day and they provided a local 01 number. That next evening, he tried to call the 01 number as well, but with no joy.
Confused, he checked with us in work the following day to see if he was doing anything wrong. We tried the numbers from the office and all 3 of them worked perfectly. That evening, for one final time, he tried all the numbers again, but without success.
The only conclusion we can come to is that the hotel has blocked the numbers to prevent their clients from calling these numbers. Obviously, nothing strictly wrong with this, but it strikes me as extremely cheap and grabbing by the hotel. It’s not like they won’t make a few quid on the calls to the 1890 or 1850 numbers, but it’s hard to believe they’ll go to this lengths to screw a few quid more from their clients.
Geographical alternative for PayPal 1890 943220
Following a request from a reader of the site, we were able to track down a geographical alternative for the PayPal customer service number 1890 943 220. As of this week, the number has been confirmed to work perfectly.
- PayPal Customer Service 1890 943 220 - Call 01 436 9001
The Other page above has been updated with this new number.
If there’s a 1890, 1850 or 0818 number that you’re looking for a geographical alternative for, just drop us an e-mail and we’ll see if we can track it down for you.
How to ring 1890, 1850 and 0818 numbers from mobiles?
In an earlier post, I wrote about calling 1890, 1850 and 0818 numbers from Skype - basically the outcome was that you couldn’t and that you’d have to make use of the geographical alternatives provided here on SayNoTo1890.com.
When it comes to calling 1890, 1850 and 0818 numbers from your mobile phone, the story is a little different. You’re perfectly free to call these numbers from your mobile, however, based on the information on the Call Costs page linked above, calling these numbers will cost you more than normal calls.
The first thing to note is that mobile calls to 1890, 1850 and 0818 numbers do not get deducted from your inclusive minutes on your mobile contract package.
So, when you’re forced to pay for those minutes, you could end up paying between 3 and 6 times the cost of calling the same numbers from a landling. Check out the Call Costs page to see what it will cost you for the mobile package that you have.
However, if you use the geographical alternative numbers presented on this website instead of the 1890, 1850 and 0818 numbers advertised by many companies, then you won’t have to pay any extra to make those calls. The minutes, because they’re to geographical numbers, will be deducted from your minutes in your phone contract package.
So, if you know geographical alternatives to 1890, 1850 or 0818 numbers that you personally use, and you’d like to share them with everyone, you can mail us here to let us know.
Garda Speeding Ticket - Fixed Charge Notification Office
If you’re unfortunate to have been caught speeding, or any other traffic offence, and you receive your Fixed Charge Notification, your ticket fine, then this alternative geographic number for contacting the Fixed Charge Processing Office might be of use to you.
- Fixed Charge Processing Office 1890 30 40 60 - Call 01 666 8500
This number has been filed under the Government numbers above.
The Insider - maybe not that dangerous
We’ve had a number of e-mails from different people who have provided us with the geographical phone number alternative for 1890, 1850 and 0818 numbers for the companies that they work for.
While this kind of insider information might be as dangerous as the tagline of the movie “The Insider” - Warning: Exposing the Truth May Be Hazardous - it is however useful for the rest of us to get these numbers.
If you’re working for a company who’s main contact number is an 1890, 1850 or 0818 number, you can mail us here to let us know the geographical alternative. We’ll publish the number for everyone else while guaranteeing your animosity.
How to ring 1890, 1850 and 0818 numbers from Skype?
From the research that I’ve done over the past couple of weeks, it seems like it’s not possible to call 1890, 1850 and 0818 numbers from Skype.
At different times during the day, and using several different companies’ numbers, I got a couple of different responses to
Bank Of Ireland 1890 365 365 - Extension 33653 doesn’t answer. Your message cannot be delivered because that mailbox is full. Please dial another extension number. Goodbye.
Financial Regulator 1890 77 77 77 - Gets through to some random ladies home number after ringing out for a while.
Bord Gais 1850 632 632 - Comes back with “Invalid phone number”
NTL (Service) 1800 321 321 - Also comes back with “Invalid phone number”
So, if you have Skype and you need to call any of these 1890, 1850 or 0818 phone numbers, you will need to use the geographical alternatives provide here on www.SayNoTo1890.com.
Geographical Number Updates
Thanks to the users who have contacted us in the past week or so with some number updates. These have been reflected in the relevant pages, but here’s the summary:
- Panda Recycling 1850 62 62 62 - Call 046 9024111
- Department of Social & Family Affairs - main switch changed from 01 874 8444 to 01 704 3000
- The Call Costs page has been updated for Perlico.
- DELL General Sales Enquiries and Printer Supplies 1850 333 200 – Call 01 279 5000
Many thanks to those that have e-mailed us. If you have any geographical alternative numbers for 1890, 1850 or 0818 numbers, please contact us by clicking here.
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