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.

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.