SayNoTo1890.com

Check out this RTE.ie Consumer Advice article which claims to provide you with “10 tips to help you save on your phone bill”. SayNoTo1890.com gets a mention:

Avoid non-geographic numbers

Most inclusive calls packages (such as BT Talk Plus) include all calls made to fixed (geographic) numbers, and exclude calls made to non-geographic numbers (ie 1890). If you need to call a non-geographic number, try to find out the geographic number for the business you are calling and dial that number instead. This can be obtained directly from the company itself or by visiting websites such as http://www.saynoto1890.com/ (Republic of Ireland) or www.saynoto0870.com (UK).

Most of the tips are quite useful - so the only reason I say “claims” is because I think that the original article was inspired by a BT press release - mentioned here in the Irish Independent as well. Some of the tips are really just pure advertising for BT products - such as the mention of their “Call Mobile” package.

One of the primary reasons for this SayNoTo1890.com website is to help you save money on your mobile phone bill, as well on your landline bill.

The TopTips.ie website has recently published a series of top tips which will help you cut your mobile phone costs by even more.

Click here to find out more about how to save even more money.

We all know that 1850 is a CallSave number, and that 1890 is a Locall number and that 0818 is a National Rate number. But do you know how much you’ll pay to call each of these numbers?

Check out our analysis on the Call Costs analysis of the costs of calling these numbers from most of the phone service providers available in Ireland.

Reading all that - the costs don’t really seem all that lo, or that you’re going to save all that much.

There’s been lots of people coming to this site recently looking for the costs of calling various customer service 190* numbers. I wasn’t sure what they all meant, so I did some checking. Here is the listing for the companies to which these numbers are allocated.

The theory behind these numbers is that they’re free for the customers of the networks themselves. So, for me, 1909 is free when I call from my mobile. Unsurprisingly I suppose, there is no information on the O2 website on how much it might cost me to call 1901, 1906 or any of the other numbers above. A quick check of the Vodafone and Eircom websites reveals the same scenario - 1907 is free for Vodafone BillPay customers, and 1901 is free for Eircom customers, but no cost information on calling the other numbers.

You should be aware that in some situations, you actually won’t be able to call some of these numbers if you’re on a different network.

Back in April, we posted some observations from the UK about how their LoCall and CallSave equivalent numbers were being advertised - making them look like ordinary numbers rather than numbers that were likely to cause consumer pay extra in some cases.

My speculation back then was that it was possible that we could have the same thing here in Ireland with the 0818 range of numbers. By quoting the numbers as 081 8….. it might look like some other type of mobile number maybe.

And here’s the first example of that that I’ve seen (apologies again for the crappy photo quality - N95 phone strikes again):

As a comparison for prices, assume you’re an O2 mobile customer, and you think that this is just another mobile number (081) rather than the “universal access” number (0818).

Calling this number will cost you 35c per minute instead of being deducted from your bundle of minutes - and that could give you a nasty surprise on your bill.

The cost of calling 0818 numbers from most of the Irish telephone service providers is detailed here.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Slightly related to this site, sort of, but do you know which national directory enquiry service is the cheapest? Check out research article on ValueIreland.com - Directory Enquiries Options & Costs.