Two different issues.
I tried it yesterday and today and just got a hiss.
Yes. The latest one listed, date 4 June 10:09 (Saturday) was for 35 minutes and 13 seconds (35:13). Two days earlier (Thur) one for 12:49. The day before (Wed) at 13:28 for 14:32
I will try it again tomorrow.
Alan
Yes, look carefully at the dates/times/duration of the calls for any pattern
Do the durations multiplied by charge rates add up to the £22.xx in each case?
Was the O/P at home at those times
look at any preceding or following charged calls
see if the landline phone has any history of calling that number, or has it stored in any memory
You can program a contact with the access number, which will get you dialling tone, and then key the number manually.
Alternatively, on old Nokias there was a 'pause' and 'wait' digit you could enter, so you could save the contact as:
08081703703pppp01234567890and it would dial the first bit, wait for 4x 'pause' delays (maybe 'pause' was 2 seconds or something like that), and then dial the second bit. 'wait' will prompt you to continue sending the rest of the number.
I think you can still do similar on modern phones, but haven't had cause to try it. On an iphone you can hold down '*' when dialling, which turns into a comma which it seems gives a 2 second pause. When I make a new contact there's a button '+*#' which then shows a keyboard with 'pause' and 'wait' buttons, which can be saved into the contact. I think similar works on Android.
Theo
I looked up how much it would cost to call the 01923 number from my favourite VoIP service. It is 1.5p per minute peak. It must have been a very long call!
John
No copper theft in your area recently?
no suspicion of crossed lines (voices on the line, not getting proper dialtone when attempting to make a call, people claiming you didn't answer when they called you)?
try a 17070 quiet line test.
Silly question? Were you actually at home at all the times of the calls? Are there any "impossible" calls because you know that you were away from home and couldn't have dialled them?
about 90 minutes total for the two insurance company calls, at TT's 24p/minute
I did check the InsCo website and it *is* an 0330 number which is normal rates.
call your own landline form a mobile, does it ring, let it ring, does anyone else answer it?
I think the OP has two problems: a) that an unknown number is being called, several times, for significant call durations, and b) that the call rate (pence per minute) is extortionately high. The second may prompt him to negotiate a cheaper tariff which has a higher monthly charge but which then gives "free" geographical (and maybe mobile) calls.
It is a great shame that 0845 was allowed to be used for premium rate numbers, because people have become conditioned into 0800=FreeFone and then extrapolating that to other numbers that start 08. Am I right that at one stage 0845 and 0345 were both charged at a geographical rate (maybe even local rate), and then 0845 changed? I'm sure when I first got a dial-up internet connection, it was an 0845 number which was local rate: I think my ISP offered two tariffs - no monthly charge but a small non-zero call cost, or a monthly charge but an 0800 free number.
Yep.
No, you can also use the contacts list.
084x were premium rate, all number "owners" were allocated the corresponding 034x "lo-call" number
complaints lines weren't allowed to remain on premium numbers
maybe 0844 "surftime" ?
Something your end phoning home perhaps. Sounds like a good little earner, even worse than the ones that ring you once then hang up you do a callback and bang instant mega connection charge. Brian
He told you who answered a noise. I've seen a similar number, but Virgin do not charge anything odd for that number here, Only 0845 or the premium numbers. It sounds to me like something is screwed in the software to me 0345, are what are termed standard and though not free, are not mega expensive either. If you know somebody near you with talk talk it might be worth having a look at their logs.
I mean if you can prove they are overcharging by their own rates then its obviously a software or human problem. I had this many years back with BT when challenged as to how a completely locked up house had made long calls to sex lines they backed down, strange that. Brian
Originally, in 1990s:
0845 was 'local rate' 0870 was 'national rate' back when those things mattered for residential tariffs. Companies had to pay to have them, rather than getting paid for traffic.ISPs used 0845 numbers mostly for easy routing purposes I think, for customers who had a subscription. Later Freeserve came along (no subscription) and they had some cunning wheeze to make a tiny revenue off their number for generating traffic: not sure how that worked, maybe deals with individual telcos.
Then in the early 2000s 0844 and 0871 came along, charged at a myriad of different prices: 0844 was max 5p/min, 0871 max 10p/min. Revenue share went back to the operator. They weren't 'premium' in the sense of 09 numbers (~£1/min, where the original 0898 had migrated post-phoneday) but they were used for over-the-top micropayments eg internet surfing or cheap international calls.
But those were 'prices from BT landlines, other operators may vary', and they very much did. Then Ofcom decided to 'simplify' the tariffs into a 'service charge' (for the provider) and an 'access charge' (for the originating telco). Telcos saw an opportunity to cash in and set their access charges at 10p or more, meaning a 1p/min 0844 was now 11p/min - that completely blew out of the water any business model of people selling their service for 1p. 0844 and 0871 thus entered a death spiral.
Meanwhile Ofcom invented 03 numbers and insists that 01/02/03 all be charged at the same price, but 0845 and 0870 weren't part of this deal so telcos started to crank up the prices of those too. Not premium rate (no revenue share), just lazy telcos.
Later (far too late, as usual) Ofcom clamped down and said that companies couldn't run complaints lines on 0845/0870 and offered the corresponding number in 0345/0370 as a replacement. So now 084x and 087x are mostly dead, and signs of somebody using them is a scammy flag.
Basically a massive dog's breakfast courtesy Ofcom.
Theo
Yes. My dentist had two numbers for a while, an 01.... number for NHS patients, and an 0844... one for private patients ! Both went to the same phone on the reception desk. I pointed out the nonsense when I was in the busy waiting area one busy morning.
They seem to have dropped the 0844 number from their stationary and website now. Never dared ring it to see if it is still active.
I would regard "premium" as charging either a call setup-charge or a per-minute duration charge that is greater than geographic, irrespective of where the money goes (the telco and/or the called company).
The rot set in when 08xx started to include non-geographic-charge numbers.
Well there's a surprise ;-)
I hadn't realised that 0870 was largely unused nowadays and therefore probably the sign of a scam. I remember the saynoto0870 website which gave either 03xx or geographic numbers for various companies which only advertised 0870 numbers. I remember one company refusing to accept a call on a geographic number that was listed on saynoto0870 because I was dialling it from within the UK and it was intended only for people outside the UK who couldn't dial the 0870 number. Since I was contacting the company to report a fault in product, I thought it was very sneaky for them to try to charge me money at 0870 rate for me to log a support call under warranty. So did their customer services department when I complained by email: they said that the person I spoke to was wrong to refuse the call.
Before calling an 084 or 087 number it's worth checking it at
a fairly straightforward distinction now, but back then it wasn't just geographic vs non-geographic, there were local, regional and national geographical rates
I'm sure there are still some surprises wedged in the middle of 07/08/09 ranges, but OFCOM probably think it's just re-arranging of deckchairs now ...
Worst I can see off-hand is £15.98 fixed fee plus £7.99 per minute for charge rate "sc091" which seems to be one of the 118 DQ numbers.
cdwf's pages still exist as a useful history lesson ..
Most likely an 03 alternative.
Still not geographic vs non-geographic since 03 is non-geographic locationally but charged at geographic rates.
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