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SayNoTo1890.com in the Sunday Times recently

SayNoTo1890.com in the Sunday Times, November 30th, 2014

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Five-minute guide to…

1850, 1890 and 0818 phone numbers

Niall Brady Published: 29 November 2014

CONSUMERS are being forced to use expensive 1850, 1890 and 0818 phone numbers for customer service, making complaints and even when enquiring about products that are recalled over safety concerns.

Legislation introduced earlier this year was supposed to end the scandal by banning helplines from charging more than a “basic rate” for phone calls. However, the new law stretches the definition of basic rate to include 1850, 1890 and 0818 phone calls, even though it could cost up to €5 to call these numbers.

WHAT’S WRONG?

The EU Consumer Rights Directive, introduced into Irish law in June, requires calls to after-sales helplines to be charged at no more than a basic rate, which could mean the call is free depending on your phone package. The definition is so broad, however, that businesses can continue using 1850, 1890 and 0818 numbers for these services.

Diarmuid MacShane of saynoto1890.com, a site that helps consumers beat premium-rate lines, said: “The EU legislation has made no impact on the use of these numbers. I’ve no problem with these numbers if they’re used properly, for example for sales lines, but customer services shouldn’t be used to make money.”

“Revenue sharing” 0818 numbers, which allow businesses to profit from customers’ complaints and requests for help, are generally the most expensive. “Allied Irish Banks and Bank of Ireland switched to 0818 numbers as soon as they ran into trouble,” said MacShane.

State agencies use 0818 numbers too, including the Department of the Environment’s motor tax office, the Private Residential Tenancies Board and the motorway incident number run by the National Roads Authority. “I’ve even seen 0818 numbers on product recall notices,” MacShane said.

HOW DO PHONE NUMBERS WORK?

Known as a Callsave number, 1850 involves a flat charge of 5c to 31c no matter how long the call. LoCall 1890 numbers have a flat charge of 5c-31c per minute, with the total cost depending on the duration of the call. The bill could be considerable for those calling Irish Water’s 1890 number because of long delays in answering calls.

Revenue sharing numbers — starting with 0818 — allow firms to share the cost of the call with the telecoms provider.

The most expensive numbers start with 15 and are often used by TV quiz shows. Costs are typically 30c to €3.50 a minute and considerably more from a mobile.

WHAT ABOUT MY INCLUSIVE CALLS?

Mobile and home phone packages usually include a number of free calls to geographic numbers such as Dublin numbers with the prefix 01 or Cork numbers that begin with 021. Most landline providers such as Eircom include free weekend calls to these numbers. The “inclusive” minutes exclude 15 and, in most cases, 1850, 1890 and 0818 numbers.

CAN I AVOID THE PREMIUM CHARGES?

Firms that highlight a premium-rate number sometimes also include a number for overseas callers. This is normally a standard-rate number with the prefix 00 353; substitute the 00 353 with a “0” to avoid the premium rate. Some providers, like Bank of Ireland, highlight an 0818 number for getting in touch with customer services, although it also lists an 01 option.

TOP TIP

The website saynoto1890.com lets you look up the company you want to call and then lists alternative, cheaper or freephone numbers for that business.

“We get 15,000-16,000 user hits a month, which shows the level of interest among the public for cheaper calls,” said MacShane. “The most popular search is for alternatives to Sky’s 0818 numbers for customer services.”

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Interested in helping create a SayNoTo1890 smartphone app?

SayNoTo1890.com on Mobile DevicesIf you’re interested in helping out in a project to create a SayNoTo1890 smartphone app in early 2015, please read more here.

Designing an appropriate SayNoTo1890 smartphone app will make it much easier to dial the geographic alternatives for the 1890, 1850 and 0818 numbers, helping you save even more money. It will also facilitate the sharing of information to gather even more geographic alternatives as well as ensure those numbers are always as up to date as possible.

It’s been something I’ve been thinking about for a while now, and a smartphone app for the SayNoTo1890.com website is a regularly requested feature from the users of the website.

This detailed blog post explains how I’d like to go about building this smartphone app, and what assistance I’d like to get and will need to get the app built, hopefully early in 2015.

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Geographic alternative for Leap Card

Leap Card ImageMany thanks to the folks at @LeapCard on Twitter for providing a geographic alternative for their 1850 customer service number. It’s been a while coming – a few e-mails I sent them previously went unanswered. This page has now been updated as well.

  • Leap Card
    • Customer Care 1850824824 Call Instead– 015171528

If you have geographic alternative numbers that everyone else might be interested in, please contact me.

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Finding geographic alternatives for 1890, 1850 and 0818 numbers for yourself

HelpI’ve been updating numbers on the website for the last few hours, but reading through so many of the e-mails that I’ve received, I feel like I have to write this blog post.

I’ve written about this particular topic a few times in the past.

Basically, I don’t provide a telephone directory service here, so e-mailing me demanding that I publish a geographic alternative for some company that you’re looking for, or claiming that it’s unreasonable that I don’t provide a geographic alternative for some company or another, means that I’m probably just going to delete your e-mail.

Just for kicks

I do this in my spare time, and for the most part, most people using this website understand that, and help out. And I try to help people help themselves – when someone e-mails looking for a number, and they receive the automated e-mail politely giving instructions on how they could find the alternative themselves.

I do ask in that e-mail, that if they do find the geographic alternative themselves, that they e-mail back letting me know so that I can publish the number and share it with everyone else.

5%. That’s the number of people who’ve requested a number, follow the instructions on the e-mail, and then e-mail me back with the number to share with everyone.

Still, I go on.

Finding geographic alternatives using Twitter

Someone recently asked in a comment what the geographic alternative for the Parcel Motel was. To be fair, there was no alternative number available anywhere on their website.

I found the number sometime after midnight on a Wednesday using Twitter. Simples.

Finding geographic alternatives using Twitter

 

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Pinergy incorrectly advertising their contact number on TV adverts

As coincidence would have it, a couple of weeks ago on ValueIreland.com, I wrote about Pinergy and the other pre-pay electricity providers popping up here in Ireland, Pre-paying for your electricity is unlikely to save you money.

I have to say, I’m not a fan because of the implications that pre-paying electricty is cheaper rather than the fact that it’s actually more expensive. To me, it’s sort of preying on those who have little finances to play around with already.

And they haven’t done themselves again with some inaccurate advertising on their current TV advertising (and apologies for the dodgy screenshot):

Incorrect Pinergy TV advert - CallSave not LoCall

Now, technically, calling a CallSave number (1850) will generally be cheaper than calling a LoCall number (1890), so consumers won’t be disadvantaged by this carelessness, but to me it’s just a bad sign.

This is a company who’ve paid for national TV advertising, and they can’t get a simple thing like this right.

As a matter of interest, instead of calling 1850945020 (as in the advert) or 1850945021 (from their website), you could try calling their head office on 029 50830 instead and asking to be put through.

 

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Updates to website numbers are on their way

House KeepingMany many thanks to the hundreds of people who’ve e-mailed me here with new geographic alternative numbers over the last few months. My apologies for the tardiness in making the updates to the website to reflect this new information, but over the coming weekend I will be updating all the necessary pages with the new numbers provided.

Please keep the e-mails and comments coming – the more geographic alternative numbers we can share around, the more money we can all save on calling these 1890, 1850 and 0818 numbers.

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Calling 1890, 1850 & 0818 numbers from Skype and other VOIP services

Help1890, 1850 and many 0818 numbers cannot be called from Skype or other VOIP services. So, if you’re overseas, for example, and need to call any of these numbers using your Skype service, you’re in bother.

You can, however, make use of all the geographic alternative numbers provided here on SayNoTo1890.com to call these companies.

So, in a situation where you want to call the Ulster Bank to ask them why their systems are broken again, you might try dialing 1850424365, but you’ll get an “Invalid Number” error.

If you’re abroad when you’re trying to make that call, you might be trying to dial +353 1850424365. Skype, however, will recognise this as an 01 Dublin number beginning 850 – not what you’re looking for.

Skype LogoSo, if you’re using Skype or other VOIP services, and need to call an 1890, 1850 or 0818 number, then go to the A-Z link page here and find the company you want to call, or use the search box (top right of this page) and type in the number (no spaces) you’re trying to call to see if there is a geographic alternative available.

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Dublin City Council incorrectly advertising 0818 numbers as LoCall

I’ve written about this before, and will be following up directly with Dublin City Council, but here’s photo of one of their parking ticket machines where they’re describing the 0818 customer support number for “Park & Pay” as being “locall”. If you check out the “Call Costs” page, you can see this would have significant cost implications for mobile users (likely the only people calling this number).

If you're reading this, you're probably on a PC with internet filtering, or a poor connections, so you're missing a picture of a parking meter

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