Beware phone number scammers;!...

Which might make sense for people who work there, but as a consumer it's difficult to see how having different points of contact does anything other than deter complaints. Wasn't the whole point of rebranding ICSTIS as PhonePayPlus so that it could get away from it's history of not actually doing anything?

In message , at 13:57:09 on Fri, 21 Mar 2014, Duncan Wood remarked:

The pattern of complaining to the delivery point, followed by a watchdog/ombudsman, under oversight of the process [not individual complaints] from a regulator and with overarching responsibility from a government department is repeated for a very wide range of issues.

Are you asking for one point of contact for everything from late trains to bent solicitors?

It was partly because they wanted to get away from a poorly understood acronym, but also because the scope of premium rate had evolved considerably. Not just paying per minute to talk to someone, but things like paying for a ringtone or paying to vote in a TV programme.

I've had ICSTIS fine & sanction a premium rate company.

No, but one for telecoms providers would be useful, how is one supposed to guess who to complain to?

The current names even more confusing than the acronym.

That would be a passengers' watchdog, surely? It reads to me like a watchdog that watches passengers.

But it's still an unhelpful name, however it describes itself.

In message , at 14:49:07 on Fri, 21 Mar 2014, Duncan Wood remarked:

Is that for retail telecoms providers to complain about wholesale telecoms providers, or for consumers to complain about everything they don't like which happens over the phone?

You don't guess, you do searches, ask people, and so on.

I disagree. As a branding exercise perhaps something slightly better could be devised, but the old acronym mean nothing to almost everyone.

Seems like the same problem with the NHS this morning. Something 75 different bodies to complain to....

In message , at 16:02:44 on Fri, 21 Mar 2014, Alan remarked:

Is that one complaints body and 74 layers of appeals process... or more likely one place to complain for each Hospital Trust/PCT area?

It's not *incomprehensible*. Just ridiculously long.

Well well;!, This turned up earlier;)...

Dear Mr Sayer

Service using 070 numbers

I write in reference to your complaint relating to the Parcel delivery service e-mail using 070 numbers and the outcome of our investigation.

PhonepayPlus has carried out a full evaluation of your complaint including the information requested and supplied by the provider operating the service.

The Executive contacted the network operator Atlantic Communications Corporation Limited responsible for allocating the 070 numbers. The network has confirmed all the 070 numbers used relating to the Parcel delivery service have now been deactivated.

Thank you for bringing this matter to our attention

Kind Regards

Complaint Resolution and Enforcement

In article , Duncan Wood scribeth thus

Well Ofcom aren't that known as an enforcement organisation;!...

That's one of the things that annoys me, too. Commercial organisations can call themselves what they want (heck, I don't even care if Royal Mail have another go at branding themselves "Consignia" once they've been privatised), but regulatory bodies, government departments and quangos should have names which clearly reflect their function.

Mark

That's because the old name for which ICSTIS was an acronym was itself a really badly chosen name which didn't give any clues as to the organisation's purpose. The solution to that would have been find a name which did convey its purpose, not replace a cumbersome and unwieldy non-descriptive name with a marketing buzzword non-descriptive name.

Mark

The latter would seem nice, at the moment there's at least 3.

Or would could just let the obviously well known regulator refer one to the right department

The old one sounded like a badly branded government agency wheras the new one sounds like a premium rate phone merchant rather than a regulator.

In message , at 22:19:00 on Fri, 21 Mar 2014, Duncan Wood remarked:

There's many more than that. For example if someone rings you up selling a dodgy financial product you have to work out if that's whatever the FSA is called this week, or another of the regulators from that sector; and so on. It's a bit ambitious to have a one-stop-shop because it'd cover so many different industries.

One thing that works better in the Netherlands is to have the same regulator also dealing with data protection issues that are linked to phone calls, although of course these days there's legal convergence between phones and Internet so they have to handle email spam as well.

If you phone OFCOM up I'm sure they'll tell you where to complain about premium rate issues,

In message , at

The "TIS" stood for Telephone Information Services" which is what had become out of date by shifts in the market. You can't really call voting on X-factor an "information service". But it is a Pay-By-Phone thing.

OK, I'll bite. What sort of name do you suggest?

In message , at 19:50:36 on Fri, 21 Mar

Ah, so your real beef is that telecoms deregualtion has resulted in a "ridiculously long" list of products for people to deliver their services over?

The Premium Rate Telephone Services Regulator. It doesn't really need an abbreviation. Its domain name would be the easily memorable premiumrate.gov.uk.

Mark

The FSA is now the FCA (Financial Conduct Authority) and the PRA (Prudential Regulation Authority)...

It's alsmost as if They wanted to confuse us.