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ComReg to probe lo-call mobile tariff - SayNoTo1890 press coverage
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.
1901, 1902, 1903 etc. - Do you know what all the options are?
There’s been lots of people coming to this site recently looking for the costs of calling various customer service 190* numbers. I wasn’t sure what they all meant, so I did some checking. Here is the listing for the companies to which these numbers are allocated.
| 1901 | Eircom |
| 1902 | TalkTalk |
| 1903 | Not Active |
| 1904 | BT Ireland |
| 1905 | Meteor |
| 1906 | SwiftCall |
| 1907 | Vodafone |
| 1908 | NTL / UPC |
| 1909 | O2 |
The theory behind these numbers is that they’re free for the customers of the networks themselves. So, for me, 1909 is free when I call from my mobile. Unsurprisingly I suppose, there is no information on the O2 website on how much it might cost me to call 1901, 1906 or any of the other numbers above. A quick check of the Vodafone and Eircom websites reveals the same scenario - 1907 is free for Vodafone BillPay customers, and 1901 is free for Eircom customers, but no cost information on calling the other numbers.
You should be aware that in some situations, you actually won’t be able to call some of these numbers if you’re on a different network.
New Numbers added this evening
We have added numbers to the Banks section (BOI Credit Cards) and the Utilities section this evening on www.saynoto1890.com.
The two added to the Utilities section are for Pay as You Go Vodafone and Speakeasy O2 customers to call their respective customer services - but they only provide CallSave 1850 numbers.
These are interesting because these companies provide special numbers for their Bill Pay customers (1907 and 1909 respectively) - these numbers are free call numbers.
So, if you’re a Vodafone Pay As You Go customer, you pay 31c from your credit for every minute you are getting customer care.
And if you’re an O2 customer on a SpeakEasy plan, you pay 30c for each minute of your customer care calls.
More alternative to LoCall and CallSave numbers
ViVAS Call Centre – 1850 717 717 – use 01 6193620 instead
VHI – 1850 44 44 44 – use 056 7753200 instead
Bord Gais Energy Supply - 1850 632 632 – use 01 8190395 instead
ESB Customer Supply - 1850 372 372 – use 018529534 instead
Bank Of Ireland Phone Banking - 1890 365 365 – use 01 4044470 instead
Vodafone Pay as You Go - 1850 20 87 87 – use 042 9385504 instead
O2 Speakeasy - 1850 601747 – use 061 203345 instead
As before, if you have any other suggestions, post a reply to this message, or e-mail us.
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