SayNoTo1890.com

Following on from some recent posts, here are some more geographical alternatives for different Bank of Ireland services and departments:

• Business Online 1890 818 265 - Call 01 4606445
• Lost 365 cash cards and credit cards queries 1890 706 706 - Call 056 7757007

Following our post earlier in the week, we received a couple of more e-mails from readers of this site with some other alternative numbers for different other Bank of Ireland services and contact phone numbers.

The first of these is for the Bank of Ireland Customer Care Unit. This is where you’d go if you have a complaint about any Bank of Ireland service area.

• Bank Of Ireland Customer Care Unit 1850 753 357 - Call 01 661 5933

Thanks to the SayNoTo1890.com reader who, after some over and back with Bank Of Ireland customer services, was able to provide us with this alternative number for the Bank Of Ireland Insurance Services department.

Bank of Ireland

• Insurance Services 1890 604 604 - Call 01 462 0222

Based on some research that we did recently, we think that this alternative number should work as well.

• Insurance Services 1890 604 604 - Call 703 9800

If you have any other alternative numbers, e-mail us via the contact page.

From the research that I’ve done over the past couple of weeks, it seems like it’s not possible to call 1890, 1850 and 0818 numbers from Skype.

At different times during the day, and using several different companies’ numbers, I got a couple of different responses to

Bank Of Ireland 1890 365 365 - Extension 33653 doesn’t answer. Your message cannot be delivered because that mailbox is full. Please dial another extension number. Goodbye.

Financial Regulator 1890 77 77 77 - Gets through to some random ladies home number after ringing out for a while.

Bord Gais 1850 632 632 - Comes back with “Invalid phone number”

NTL (Service) 1800 321 321 - Also comes back with “Invalid phone number”

So, if you have Skype and you need to call any of these 1890, 1850 or 0818 phone numbers, you will need to use the geographical alternatives provide here on www.SayNoTo1890.com.

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

Thanks to the reader who sent in these details for Bank Of Ireland Life.

• Bank of Ireland Life 1850 309 309 - Call 01 7039537

We have added numbers to the Banks section (BOI Credit Cards) and the Utilities section this evening on www.saynoto1890.com.

The two added to the Utilities section are for Pay as You Go Vodafone and Speakeasy O2 customers to call their respective customer services - but they only provide CallSave 1850 numbers.

These are interesting because these companies provide special numbers for their Bill Pay customers (1907 and 1909 respectively) - these numbers are free call numbers.

So, if you’re a Vodafone Pay As You Go customer, you pay 31c from your credit for every minute you are getting customer care.

And if you’re an O2 customer on a SpeakEasy plan, you pay 30c for each minute of your customer care calls.