Posts Tagged ‘The Irish Times’

SayNoTo1890.com in Irish Times Pricewatch

Monday, May 25th, 2009

Following on from a story in the previous weeks edition, Conor Pope referenced SayNoTo1890.com in his Pricewatch column on Monday May 18th.

The article, Just Say No Lo , went as follows:

Just say no Lo

Our item about lo-call numbers attracted a large response from readers who were similarly annoyed by the practice of mobile and landline operators not including 1850 or 1890 numbers as part of their bundled minutes and charging as much as 35 cent a minute for calls to them.

“This is the first time I have encountered anyone who has the same sentiment I have about these numbers,” writes a reader by the name of Valerie. She has an Eircom bundle which gives her free local and national calls but not free lo-calls. She has a plan to circumvent the problem, however.

“Being retired, I check websites first to see if they provide numbers for people ringing from outside Ireland, then ring that landline number. It works. It drives me crazy when I’m told it’s lo-call when I actually have the option of it being a free call. My view is that it is another way of conning the public and I’m amazed no one has taken this up with Government departments,” she concludes.

Another reader named Richard said the best way around lo-call numbers was to use the alternative local number.

“It can be a little bit of work finding it, but I normally use the excellent Say No to 1890 website www.saynoto1890.com/a-to-z/ ”.

He was just one of a number of readers to cite the website, which has also featured on this page in the past.

And a third reader from Kerry says that, when it comes to over-priced 1890 calls, the “worst culprit is the Government”. He says it is “nearly impossible to contact any Government department”, but when he called Comreg and his local TDs he got the runaround.

Nice to get the mention, and nice to see that the reaction of the users of the site. Thanks to whomever made contact with Conor.

Ringing Government Departments on 1890 LOCALL numbers

Monday, May 11th, 2009

This article from Mondays Pricewatch column in the Irish Times from Conor Pope highlights a reader, Mannix, who takes issue with the fact that many government departments provide 1890 contact numbers. While these numbers appear to be cheaper, given their LOCALL and CALLSAVE descriptions, for the reader who uses an O2 mobile, it actually costs significantly more.

This is an issue that I’m constantly highlighting on this website. In fact, a very committed reader has been chasing many of the regulatory organisations within the country to see if anything can be done about this issue, but without any success. ComReg, the National Consumer Agency, the Competition Authority, and the Minister at the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, Eamonn Ryan, all say its not their problem. And obviously, the mobile companies who make a huge profit from these calls don’t want to know either.

The research, referred to in Conors article, carried out by Leo Varadkar and Fine Gael is available on their RipOff.ie website here .

The SayNoTo1890.com A-Z geographical alternative telephone number page on the site provides landline numbers for many government departments, including all but 2 of the 21 departments referenced on the Fine Gael website. Calling these numbers instead of the 1890 numbers means that people can call from their mobile without incurring the higher costs.

I’m constantly on the look out for more of these geographical alternative numbers, so if you know of any others, please let me know and I’ll add them to the list. The two from the Fine Gael listing that I don’t have are the National Treatment Purchase Fund and bizarrely given that it’s most likely to be called from a mobile, the Garda Traffic Watch hotline.