Readers e-mail – who’s impacted by these 1890, 1850 & 0818 numbers

which? logoThis e-mail came through from a user of the SayNoTo1890.com website in the recent past.

Came across your website after seeing Which? article about saynoto0870.com. My bugbear is Sky customer services 0818 number – I had 4 hours of phone calls to them (trying to fix problem they caused with their new viewing cards!) If I had an ordinary national or local number I wouldn’t have had to pay anything as I have free national (except 0818 of course) and local calls tariff with eircom. The nice Glaswegian girl in Sky did try and find one. She gave me an 0845 number and told me it was only a local call rate(!!), but came up empty for Ireland. Another one is the 1850 373 772 for ESB public lighting section – I do my civic duty and reports light out and get charged for it. The nice Cork girl at the ESB couldn’t find a ‘normal’ number for me.

I didn’t realise the full consequences of the 1890 numbers, which the company I work for use. I don’t think we realise the latest consequences of our locall numbers.

Do businesses (who are the majority users of our locall numbers) suffer as much with the charging structure of 1890 as private customers? If you say they do, then I’ll certainly highlight your website and 1890 consequences with our marketing and customer service departments, as our intention is to provide a local cost service to our business clients and we’re not making any money from offering the 1890 numbers, so it must be the phone companies!

sky logoThere is no distinction between business and personal phone callers when using 1890 phone numbers – what does impact on all users of these numbers is the phone package that they’re on.

If they have a phone package with inclusive minutes, then these 1890, 1850 and 0818 numbers will cost those calling the numbers. In fact, it will cost significantly more than even if they were to call an 01 number without the inclusive minutes – sometimes up to 30c per minute.

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