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

We’d love to get your comments and feedback on this site. And if you either know of some geographical alternative numbers that you’d like to share with everyone, or if there’s a particular number you’d like us to try to follow up and find for you, please e-mail us here info@saynoto1890.com.

I was pleased to read the article re “say no to 1890″ in the back of the Tribune Business section yesterday as this is something that has irritated me for some time. The issue does not only apply to mobile packages, but also to landline tariff packages. I’m on an all-in package for landline calls from Perlico, where all local and national landline calls under an hour are not charged separately from the monthly amount. However, this does not include the increasing no of 1890 no’s and to a lesser extent, the 1850 no’s. The same packages from Eircom, O2, Smart and probably others also apply the same rules, procedures and landline charges for 1890.

I have sometimes tried to get the landline no from some telephonists of the various 1890 places, to no avail, and I am highly surprised that this issue has not been taken up by the Consumer Assoc of Ireland. I also would have expected that some journalists would have written a few articles at this stage to publicise the issue - similarly to the periodic articles on petrol prices at different garages. 1890 is fine with me as long as people are given a choice. However, not only are people not given a choice, but it would appear that some organisations conceal their main landline no’s by ommission from phonebooks and also headed notepaper.

To be fair, the first journalist to write about this was Paul Kelly in the Irish Examiner. And today, Conor Pope in the Irish Times Pricewatch has printed a readers letter about the same issue. I believe also there was a letter written to the Consumer Association of Ireland Consumer Choice magazine in the last number of months also.