SayNoTo1890.com

Below was the last post for a week or so. I have much higher priorities at the moment which must take precedence over Value Ireland and SayNoTo1890 and they’re currently suffering from lack of attention.

SayNoTo1890 will return on April 1st. In the meantime, please feel free to view the static ValueIreland.com website to get loads of hints, tips and articles for living in the consumer Ireland of today, or the SayNoto1890.com website to get your geographical alternative numbers to 1890, 1850 and 0818 numbers.

You can still contact us at info@valueireland.com if you have any geographical alternative numbers for any businesses using 1850, 1890 or 0818 numbers. We’ll publish them when we’re back.

For this site I was doing some research on the costs of calling 1850 and 1890 numbers from mobiles and different landline providers. One thing that came across that was vaguely interesting was the hours that companies deem to be peak and off-peak.

All the mobile companies, except 3 Mobile, treat the hours from 08:00 to 18:00 as being their peak time. As far as I can tell, the 3 Mobile company don’t distinguish between peak and off peak at all.

In theory, if it’s the case (the call cost information in general on the 3 Mobile site is pretty sketchy), this could possibly be a good a thing - depending on the call cost per minute you’re charged all the time. But on the basis that if things seem too good to be true, they probably are, and given past experience with 3 Mobile, I’d be a bit wary.

Firstly, to anyone who may have subscribed to the blog in the last few days, please check your subscriptions as you may have signed up for the Value Ireland Blog instead (not that that’s a bad thing). I had the subscribe links to the right pointed to the wrong blog, but it’s all fixed now, so you can click now and really be subscribed to SayNoTo1890 and get the regular updates of new geographical numbers.

Secondly, we have changed the website address now as part of the consolidation of the blog and website into this single presentation. The original blogspot address is now no longer valid - you should now only use www.saynoto1890.com to access all our information.

There was a response to my post below yesterday on the Value Ireland Blog about the 0818 number that Vision Independent Productions are using which may cost more for people who have packages of included minutes on their home or mobile numbers - 0818 calls are outside of included minutes.

It is a non profit phone line and is charged at national rates 8c per minute so it doesn’t discriminate against people outside Dublin. The high prices quoted were from mobile phones and is due to what mobile phone companies charge. Feel free to call the production office directly on 01 8602832 with your stories of savings.

I’m guessing this response was from someone within the production company, but if you do have any ideas for their new show, call the 01 number they’ve now provided.

In previous posts (in July and August) I wrote about an article written by Paul Kelly in the Irish Examiner about how calling Irish businesses and organisations was costing Irish consumers more than it should do.

This is because calling Locall and Callsave (1890 and 1850) numbers is not normally included in bundles of minutes that consumers get with their mobile or landline packages.

In his article, Paul provide some regular phone numbers which could be used instead of these Locall and Callsave numbers to call certain companies. We followed up by providing some more in August. By calling these alternative numbers, consumers can use up their inclusive minutes, rather than paying extra for the calls.

We have now set up a new website, http://www.saynoto1890.com/ which will provide consumers with an up to date listing of alternative phone numbers which can be used instead of to Locall and Callsave numbers.

We invite you to keep a book mark of this site for future use, and if you have any numbers that we should know about, please post your comments with any numbers you’re aware of that may be of use to other consumers.

(First published on Value Ireland Blog on September 4th, 2007)