SayNoTo1890.com

I’m obviously catching up on old links that I’d found related to this site - this one from Michele Neylon in September last year. His comments as follows show an interesting dilemma for businesses thinking of getting 1850/1890 or 1800 numbers:

We are based outside Dublin, so for a lot of people there still is the mental block with ringing an 059 number instead of an 01 or a region free 1850 / 1890

I know from my perspective that I don’t really mind where a business is based, and given a choice, since I always use a mobile phone, I’d much rather the 059 compared to the 1850/1890 number.

On the flip side, I’ll mostly stay away from a business who only provide a mobile number as the contact number for the businesses. It may be a mental block as above, but if I’m going to be dealing with someone for business, I’d at least like to know they have somewhere I can call round to if I had to.

I found an interesting link from the Consumerist (Shoppers Bite Back) which linked to this article from VOIP-News - PBX Hell: 50-Plus Hacks and Tips to Get to a Real Person at Any Corporation in 10 Seconds or Less.

The article is focused on people calling American companies, and is part of a campaign within the US which included the GetHuman website. This site provides the sequence of buttons to press for different companies customer service numbers which will bring you straight through to a human operator.

A funny take on this from LifeHacker recommends using expletives to get straight through to an operator when faced with an automated voice recognition system.

The IVR operator gave me a list of options, I said, “F*@#!” and he said: “I think you said you want to talk to a customer service agent. Is this correct?”

Back to the VOIP-News article - one of their points in their 50 tips was as follows:

Very interesting - for companies who provide freephone 1800, CallSave 1850 and LoCall 1890 numbers have to pay for these numbers every time a customer calls them on them. So, the less time someone spends on hold on the phone, the less money they have to pay.