say no to 0845......

Page may contain affiliate links. Please see terms for details.

Pete

Guest
Pardon my obtuseness here, but isn't 0845 charged as a local call - so it's never going to cost more than the geographical number?
 

marinyork

Resting in suspended Animation
Location
Logopolis
I heard the other day that a local GPs here as will many others in the country be recommded that the money making 0845 schemes at doctors surgeries cease.
 

snorri

Legendary Member
Well, I am confused.
We were told that to dial the 0845 number for an out of hours emergency we would be charged as if we were making a local call instead of the trunk rate we would be expect to be charged for a long distance call to the out of hours control centre.
Now you are telling me a long distance call is cheaper than a local call?
 

marinyork

Resting in suspended Animation
Location
Logopolis
Sorry I mistyped, I meant 0844 but it's a similar thing. It's a common misconception snorri about what you mention but the people quoting it are telling porkies. 0845 numbers cost more. It's called a local call sometimes as it maybe physically local but the code is not. Doctors surgeries make rebates on a pence per minute on their non-geo numbers, this means that when you ring up you get a spiel before connecting to maximise the dosh flowing to the surgery.

Obviously a long distance call is cheaper than a non-geographic since local/nation calls were got rid of so national is now the same as local.
 

Pete

Guest
I'm now totally confused here, never heard of long distance calls costing the same as local: is this dependent on the phone operator? I do know that there's, in theory, some sort of internet phone thingy linked up to my broadband router but I never found out how to get it to work - not that I tried very hard, seeing as we don't make a lot of phone calls anyway.

What I would like to see is an end to those premium rate 09 (or whatever) numbers. The only purpose they appear to serve is to support dishonest TV game shows. :blush:
 

fossyant

Ride It Like You Stole It!
Location
South Manchester
If like many you have a local call deal - i.e. free, then phoning the surgery on the say 0161 123 4567 from say 0161 123 4444 will be free, but to a non geographical 'local' call it is charged at a normal rate.....

That's how the buggers get round it all..... and for price do it from a land line...
 

marinyork

Resting in suspended Animation
Location
Logopolis
Pete, Local/national was got rid of in 2004, although to be fair it was a meaningless classification a while before that happened.

0844,0845,0870 [/B]are premium rate numbers. 0870 used to be the notorious 0990 but for image reasons was renamed to 0870 and was dubbed "national" hence another reason why 0845 is refered to as local. The difference comes in that 0870 is business high rate and 0845 is business lower rate.
 

gambatte

Middle of the pack...
Location
S Yorks
As above, our talk talk deal means all geographical (01 and 02) numbers are free.

We have to pay for 0845 etc, which normally take several minutes getting through 'If you want...press' menus, to eventually get put in a queue.

'SAY NO' is a regular port of call.
 
Top Bottom