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Pricewatch - Lo-call comes at a high cost
I mentioned this query to the Pricewatch section in the Irish Times from a reader that was published yesterday. This link (sub required) shows the original item on the Ireland.com website.
Stan Conroy in Dublin wrote to ask if we had noticed how many advertisers and service providers are increasingly using 1850 and 1890 “lo-call” contact numbers. “Nearly all government public services now use these numbers,” he says, and while on the surface it might seem like a good deal for consumers, it actually can work against people.
“Many telephone subscribers have Eircom or BT bundles (and there must be tens of thousands) which include ‘free’ local and national calls but with the notable exception of calls to 1850 and 1890, for which there is a charge. So for us 1850 and 1890 calls are anything but ‘lo-call’” he writes.
“1850 calls are charged at the local rate irrespective of duration while 1890 calls continue clicking up cost as the minutes go by.
“As most 1890 calls are to call centres this can build up to be significant cost. By the time you go through all the menus and then hang on for someone to answer, 10 minutes can easily go by, at a cost of about 50c, and that’s before you start to discuss your query. If you could deal with a call centre in 10 minutes that might be ok but experience tells me that it can be much longer and often means a call back to get all the information I require.
“Many of my non-public services are happy to give me a local number when I ask, for example, for AIB, BOI, Hibernian Insurance, Anglo Irish Bank.
“But State services have a reluctance or an inability to give out a local number.”
He accepts that the individual cost per call is not enormous “but the cumulative amount lining the coffers of Eircom etc must be significant”.
If anyone knows Stan Conroy, let him know this site is here 
LoCall Numbers Could Cost You Extra
The main reason that consumers end up paying more rather than less when making calls to such 1890/1850/0818 numbers from mobile phones and from landline providers like Eircom is because these calls are specifically excluded from minute bundles.
The journalist does show that there can sometimes be alternative numbers (local or national numbers) that consumers can call which would actually be part of their minute bundles and then wouldn’t incur extra costs.
Which is exactly what this site in the UK does - SayNoTo0870, where O870 is the UK equivalent of 1890. On this site, users provide alternative numbers to the 0870 number for users to call, and not incur excessive charges. There are different rules and issues in the UK, but the idea is pretty good.
So we in Value Ireland are going to do something similar. We’re going to publish as many local numbers for the popular companies which Irish consumers must call on a regular basis.
To kick things off, we’ll quote the suggestions provided in the article linked above:
AIB Phone Banking - 1890 242424 - use 01 6670024 instead
Ticketmaster Ireland - 0818 719300 - use 01 4569569 instead
A trick to finding these alternative numbers is to check a companies “Contact Us” page, and to look for a “From Abroad” number which is normally a local or national number rather than the 1890/1850/0818 numbers.
Do you have other alternative numbers that would work instead of these 1890/1850/0818 numbers? Post them here and we’ll keep track of them, or e-mail us.
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