SayNoTo1890.com

This is the Metro article I was referring to yesterday.

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Over on my Value Ireland Blog, I take great interest in the activities of many journalists - and particularly those who may be prone to borrowing other peoples research and articles without providing credit.

I noticed yesterday that the newspaper article and customer service waiting line times I referred to below from The Sunday Times was “sort of” referenced in an article in Mondays Metro.

I say “sort of” because the Sunday Times wasn’t referenced, though the results of the research of Jan Battles was.

See here for research carried out by Paul Kelly, formerly of The Irish Examiner, who found that while Sky and Chorus/NTL (UPC) were slow, the slowest to respond were actually government departments and organisations such as ComReg and The Passport Office.

Jan Battles spoke with me on Friday evening last in her preparations for this interesting article in yesterdays Sunday Times. Obviously, as you’ll see, I unfortunately didn’t make it into the final draft.

My response to the long wait times suffered in their survey was somewhat similar to my post below where I provided some alternatives to actually calling customer service help lines.

One of my other suggestions was to set a time limit on how long to wait on line. Given that all the companies surveyed were non-essential service providers, there’s no need to wait on the phone for longer than 5 minutes, or 10 minutes if you really need your TV or internet connection sorted out. There’s definitely no need to be waiting for 1hr 13mins.

I also suggested that you should check the hours that the customer service line is open, in case it starts earlier or finishes later than you might expect. I use an Ulster Bank customer service number sometimes, and it’s open until 7pm and I find I always get straight through when I call between 6 and 7.

I was told that eFlow have recently reacted to their problems with long waiting times on their helpline by having someone answer your call immediately, taking your details and then promising to ring you back (within 48hrs). Keeps the wait time down, but doesn’t necessarily fix your problem as quickly as you’d like – especially when the call back comes more than 48hrs later.

Finally, I was told recently of a large Irish service provider who has a special procedure that kicks in whenever a journalist or “person of interest” calls in with a complaint about their service. This special procedure ensures that these peoples customer service problems are resolved within 24hrs. So, we know it’s possible to do it – if only all service providers could look after all of their customers in the same way.

Sarah McInerney and Jan Battles
The Sunday Times, September 27th, 2008

ASAI set to call on ComReg to investigate pricing anomoly

“LO-CALL” numbers, set up by state agencies and businesses to save callers money, cost up to 49c a minute when dialled from a mobile phone.

The cost of phoning 1890, 1850 and 0818 numbers is shared by businesses, but only if the caller is on a landline. Because mobile phone operators treat these numbers as “non-standard calls”, consumers are being charged at normal rates and don’t get to use their minute allowance. As a result, it is much cheaper to call a business’s normal landline instead of the supposedly low-cost alternative.

The Advertising Standards Authority for Ireland (ASAI) is to raise the anonmaly with ComReg, the telecommunications regulator. “There is definitely an issue here of consumer knowledge, and we will be having a discussion with ComReg about it,” said Orla Twomey, its assistant chief executive.

In a bid to help mobile phone users circumvent lo-call numbers, Diarmuid MacShane, a consumer watchdog, has established Saynoto1890.com. “The 1890 numbers were set up to allow consumers call national businesses at local rates,” he said. “This works fine if you call from a landline. For example, the Eircom lo-call rate is about 5c per minute. Yet mobile phone companies are charging much more for the same call. It defeats the purpose of having a lo-call number.”

MacShane has found alternative landline numbers for the Financial Regulator, the Data Protection Commissioner and ComReg. “I’ve just managed to get a normal landline number for e-Flow,” he said.

He has also posted a list of prices charged by different mobile companies for phoning to lo-call numbers. Vodafone is the most expensive — its pre-pay customers are charged 49c per minute during peak times for a call to an 1890 number. The cost for “pay monthly” customers ranges from 18-35c.

O2 customers are charged 35c per minute for lo-call numbers, while Meteor’s are levied at 15c per minute.

Dermott Jewell, chief executive of the Consumers’ Association of Ireland, has criticised mobile phone companies’ refusal to include lo-call numbers in minute bundles. “The onus needs to come heavily on mobile providers to change their package deals,” he said. “Now that ComReg is aware of this, I would be surprised if something was not done.”

In its defence Vodafone said that “mobile offers the mobility that landline customers do not benefit from. It is important when considering value to the customer to consider the overall pricing structure rather than one price in particular”.

O2 said it charges a flat rate of 35c per minute to “ensure transparency” and the exclusion of some non-standard calls from bundled minutes on price plans is “standard industry practice”.

Meanwhile the National Consumer Agency has begun an investigation after O2 customers discovered that account upgrades they had earned had been revoked. Dozens of users found that the upgrades had disappeared when they went to use them.

The customers have been told that the eligibility criteria had changed and they need to spend more money on calls if the upgrade is to be reinstated.

One user on Talk2O2, the company’s online forum, said: “If I had been told by the customer service agent who gave me the reference number that the upgrade was only going to be valid for two weeks, I would have upgraded immediately.”

O2 said: “It is standard industry practice to review and update criteria [for mobile phone upgrades] on an ongoing basis. Such reviews result in both increased and decreased entitlements to upgrading customers depending on the time of review.”

The company said anybody who rang customer care, or was called by customer care to advise them they were eligible for an upgrade in the last 90 days, is still entitled to it. Customers entitled to an upgrade but who did nothing about it have lost out.