I wrote a while ago that I’d done some work in the background to optimise this website for use on your mobile phone – the original post is here.

Over the past few months, I’ve received some feedback saying that the site sometimes didn’t display pages as expected. After some investigations, I think those problems should be fixed now.

So, if you’ve a “smart phone”, you can create a bookmark for SayNoTo1890.com on your home screen that’ll make it just like an “app”, and it’ll take you straight to the A-Z page listing of companies. More instructions on how to do that are provided here.

Following a few requests from users of the site, I have no updated the L page with the geographical alternative for the Liberty Insurance 1890 and 1850 numbers.

You can find them here now.

I was just alerted to this over the weekend. At the end of January, this website made it into the Irish Daily Star, which you can see here.

Low call, high cost
Irish consumers are needlessly paying out up to €5 a time to call ‘low-cost’ numbers such as those beginning LoCall 1890 or 1850 Callsave — even though they could get the calls for next to nothing. That’s according toSaynoto1890.com. The site points out that popular phone deals with inclusive minutes exclude calls to LoCall 1890 numbers, Callsave 1850 and national 0818 calls from their minute bundles and it provides cheaper alternatives.

If you see the website mentioned anywhere else, or if you hear it mentioned on the radio anywhere, please let me know.

Finally, thanks to a user of SayNoTo1890, we have a geographic alternative number for the Greyhound 1890989998 number.

In what has been the most the most requested geographic alternative number that I can remember since setting up this website (well, maybe apart from SKY), a user of the site has very kindly sent me through the geographic alternative for the Greyhound 1890989998 number.

So, instead of dialing 1890989998, you can now call instead - 014658300 and save yourself money on the call.

From various readers, I understand that Greyhound have been very keen to try to direct their new customers ONLY to the 1890 number, but now we can save money by using the 01 number instead.

It’s worth remembering that Greyhound have a couple of other 1890 numbers, all of which have geographic alternatives on the “G” page of this website. Hopefully they won’t try to disable these geographic alternatives – but if anyone notices any changes, please let me know.

PS - to the  so called “innovation” company who stole all the numbers  that I, and the users of this, website have gathered since 2007 on this website so that they could charge people €1.50 for their iPhone app – I know that you don’t have this Greyhound geographic alternative, and I know that you will probably use this blog post as an “inspiration” for your next app update.

It has been brought to my attention over the weekend that a company has stolen pretty much all of the phone number data from the SayNoTo1890.com and created their own version of this website for which they’re charging consumers to use.

This is sad for me for so many reasons.

With the kind help of the users of this website, there is 5 years of work gone into SayNoTo1890.com to compile a listing of numbers which will save consumers money on their phone calls, and are available for all to use, free of charge.

To now have a company steal all this work and try to profit from it completely misses the point of why this website was set up in the first place.

I have compared the numbers from this site with the numbers they’re making available – and while they are providing some extra numbers not available here – they have definitely copied the numbers from this website – even the incorrect ones.

It’s kind of ironic really – someone rips off an anti-ripoff website.

So, it’s worth remembering, if you really want to avoid any costs when calling 1890, 1850 and 0818 numbers, then using SayNoTo1890 (even on your mobile) is the only way to do it.

I’ve just installed something on the website now that should make using the SayNoTo1890.com website easier on your mobile phone. I’m still testing it at the moment – it’s working only okay for me right now on Android. And it seems to be fairly functional on the iPhone as well.

So, forget paying any money for an 1850 / 1890 / 0818 app – follow the steps below to add SayNoTo1890 to your home screen on your mobile phone and save yourself some money – by avoiding 1890 / 1850 / 0818 call costs, AND avoid paying out money for apps that this site does for free.

What to do?

Go to whichever is your normal browser on your mobile phone, and navigate to SayNoTo1890.com. The A-Z page should open up from there and give you the links to access any of the pages containing the geographic alternatives.

If you want to turn this into a (sort of) app, use your mobile phone browsers functionality to “Add shortcut to Home”. That’ll put the SayNoTo1890 icon onto your screen for easy access in the future.

Your thoughts

I’d appreciate if you could try this out to see if it works okay for you, and if the site performs as you would expect. If you have any feedback, please drop me your thoughts here.

Update 23.55

Thanks to the SayNoTo1890 user who has already contacted me about searching via the mobile site. I hadn’t noticed that it was missing, but I’ll follow up now to see how I can get it to work.

Many many thanks to all the users of this site who’ve e-mailed in comments and new numbers over the past couple of months. My apologies for not acting on them sooner, but I will be updating the site in the next couple days, so your new numbers, your comments and your updates should be available at least by Monday morning.

Please don’t let my tardiness stop you contacting the website either – nothing is being ignored, and everything will eventually make it onto the website.

This interesting (in parts) e-mail came from the seemingly unhelpful people in Aer Lingus regarding a geographic alternative number published on this site for their customer service 0818365000 number.

With regard to the listing below. Please ammend it as it is inacurate.
0044 208 234 4333 is London Accounts Dept only. We cannot and do not help with Customer Service & Reservations. We just ask them to redial the correct number.

Aer Lingus Customer Service and Reservations 0818365000 – Call Instead 00442082344333 (this is a UK number, so use on Skype or if you have UK minutes bundles)

It’s worth noting two particular things here:

1. Aer Lingus make money whenever their Irish customers have to call this 0818 customer service number. You’d almost think it was in their interest to provide a crap customer service just so they can make more money on the phone calls.

2. UK customers of Aer Lingus aren’t forced the inconvenience of having to call such a premium rate number – they get their own geographical alternative number.

Great to see an Irish business looking after tourists and visitors to Ireland – it’s just a pity they’re shafting us here in Ireland at the same time.

I have responded to the person who sent me this e-mail asking why they don’t give the same courtesy to Irish customers that they provide UK ones, so we’ll see if there’s any response.

In this earlier note, I refer to the automated e-mail that you’ll get if you e-mail me asking to find a geographic alternative for a particular 1890 / 1850 / 0818 number.

This e-mail provides some tips on how to seek out a geographic alternative number without my assistance. If you do manage to find it, it’d be great if you e-mailed me back to share what you found so that I can share the information with everyone else.

Here’s the e-mail:

Hi,

This is an automated response.

If you’re sending geographic alternatives, I will update the website asap.

If your’re asking about alternative, can you please first check this web page – http://bit.ly/krHGPD – if it’s there, then I cannot find an alternative.

Otherwise, could you please:

1. Go to the Contact page on the website of the company, find the number you have now. Is there a “from abroad” number? Companies provide these numbers also while promoting their 1890, 1850 or 0818 numbers.

2. Do a Google search for the number. Sometimes other websites will provide alternatives for numbers.

3. If you haven’t sent me the 1890 / 1850 / 0818 number, I won’t be able to find an alternative. Please do so now.

If you’ve found the number, e-mail me I’ll share it with others. If not, please bear with me.

If I can find it, I’ll let you know. And if I can’t, I’ll ask the website users if they can help.

Many thanks for using SayNoTo1890.com.

Editor, SayNoTo1890.com

Many thanks to everyone who uses this site, and to those who make contact. Over recent times, I’ve received a few e-mails which have frustrated me to the point of prompting this note:

• This is not a telephone directory website – it will not have every number that you’re looking for. If you can’t find it, you can e-mail me and if I have time, I’ll try to find it.

• When you e-mail me, you’ll get an automated response with instructions on how you may be able to find geographical alternatives yourself. If you follow those instructions, and find the alternative number, it’d be great if you could e-mail me back with the details and I’ll share them with everyone.

• If you are e-mailing me looking for a number, the odd “please” or “thank you” wouldn’t go amiss. I do this in my spare time, at my own expense so, in the meantime, I save myself the grief any more by ignoring you.

• There’s no point e-mailing me with your own business’ phone number. This is not an advertising website – much less, a free one. If you run a business and provide an 1890, 1850 or 0818 phone number, you’d be providing your customers a much better service by deleting those contact details from your website and just providing a regular phone number – leave out the middleman.