7 replies to this topic

[goldtop]

my latest orange bill shows I made four 0800 (freephone) calls, a total of 37 minutes, from my orange pay monthly 'phone. I was charged approximately 8.9P per minute for these calls although I had hundreds of minutes remaining,

I accept that there was a voice message at the start of each call saying this call will be charged but I assumed this meant that it would come out of my pre-paid minutes.

on a 0870 call it is the recipient that gets most of the premium charged not the network.   in the case of 0800 calls over orange,  it is the network taking all the premium.

was this a mistake by orange and is it worthwhile asking orange for a refund of the ?3 charged?

[moroni]

I am afraid to say that this is one of those cases where you wil be paying the money.
I had the same thing appear on my bill back in november, in my case i was using nearly 30minutes of 0800 numbers every day for conference calls with work so it was a right shock when that bill landed!
i spoke to customers services who politely told me that it was written on my bills for 2 months beforehand to let me know, goes to show how much i read my bills past the numbers in bold!

apparantly if you complain enough you may be able to get something out of them but its been their policy to charge for 3 months now so i would guess its unlikely.

[sporkguy]

We offered customers who complained about it in the first 2 months a bundle which allowed them free 0800 calls for a year.

Unfortunately now this bundle is no longer on our systems so it cannot be applied.

There's only a few 0800 numbers i know of that are freecalls, most of which are charity.

[moroni]

rats, i knew i should have complained instead of just being polite and saying 'oh ok'  <_<

[pd.ryder]

I still think freephone calls should be FREE I'm afraid. Surely the number's owner should pick up the bill? Isn't that why they choose to use an 0800 number? So that folks like us don't worry about the cost when we ring them?

France Telecom (aka Orange ) need introducing to the large splintery stick I keep for burglars - it is robbery after all

[pete252]

Hello Peeps, new to this forum but it looks lively.

Can somebody tell me why a freephone number, which we have all come to know in the UK at least, is chargeable ? I know that landlines will be free on 0800 but it seems obvious to me that 0800 should mean free on all networks and landlines. I have colleagues at work that do not have a landline for whatever reason - why do they have to pay for a free service that my landline provides ?

[pd.ryder]

Hi Pete, welcome to the forum

Don't ask me why, I'm afraid. It all seems rather ludicrous to me.

[Swampie]

pete252, on Feb 22 2006, 00:32, said:

Hello Peeps, new to this forum but it looks lively.

Can somebody tell me why a freephone number, which we have all come to know in the UK at least, is chargeable ? I know that landlines will be free on 0800 but it seems obvious to me that 0800 should mean free on all networks and landlines. I have colleagues at work that do not have a landline for whatever reason - why do they have to pay for a free service that my landline provides ?

Mobile networks claim they have higher overheads and interconnect charges than landlines, and therefore an 0800 number presents an issue for them - providing them completely free isn't good business sense.

However, I cannot see why it shouldn't come out of your inclusive minutes, Orange aren't charged any more to connect to an 0800 number than any other number, so if you have cross network minutes on your account, they should be used.

However, I think the biggest reason for 0800 numbers being charges is because they were used for calling card services, where you dial an 0800 number and then dial another number and you get billed by the company running the 0800 number but Orange couldn't charge you for it.  They used to routinely block/charge for these calling card 0800 numbers when they discovered them (well, you could do that in 30 seconds for some companies - just going to their website or calling their automated CS line!).

By blocking 0800 numbers they effectively kill many of the calling card schemes as it adds 10p per minute onto the cost of the calls.  The only way I can see it being cost effective is for certain international calls.

There's also some which have 'landline' range numbers which do the same but come out inclusive minutes - again, only suitable for international calls really.

So, the 2 reasons I see they're doing it is their costs to handle 0800 calls are greater than landline companies, and they want to stamp out calling cards, bringing the revenue from cc companies into Orange.

They do make certain 0800 numbers free - mainly charity.  I believe T-Mobile are similar, only charity and a few other 0800 numbers are free (ie. AA and RAC I believe).

D