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16th September 2009: It's good to talk.... But at what cost?
As you are all hopefully aware by now we recently changed our phone numbers and Hugo has kindly given me the opportunity to explain why.
OFCOM who regulate the various communications industries have long been looking at fixing the '0870 problem'. But first a bit of history to show how the problem originated.
08xx numbers were created to allow companies to present customers with a nationally available number at a fixed cost, be it free for 0800, local rate for 0845 and national for 0870. Companies liked this because it allowed them a number which would not need changing if they moved premises and also gave fixed costs for budgeting. However, in the case of 0870 numbers they also allowed the charge to the caller to be flexible, thus the 0870 problem began.
Customers found they were being charged significantly over the intended national rate when calling 0870 numbers (and in turn some companies were significantly supplementing their income by receiving a share of the call cost even while they held you in a queue!). This resulted in the birth of websites such as saynoto0870.com (as usual, consumers raising an issue before the regulators) and finally the OFCOM review.
So what have OFCOM done? If you want to read the detail follow this link but the gist of it is that 0870 numbers will now come back down to a fixed national rate. This is great news for consumers but meant quite significant changes for businesses operating these numbers - they would now be charged to receive calls to 0870 numbers.
Now of course this is where we come to the decisions by companies like us to move away from 0870 numbers. Some have moved to 0844 numbers (which still provide them with revenue) but Gabem decided to take the opportunity to instead benefit our members by switching to a geographic number. This means that most of you will hopefully now be calling us for free on inclusive minutes.
I feel it's important at this point for us to raise our hands and say that we did receive some revenue from our old 0870 number, but that was not the main reason that it was used. The main reason was for security and disaster recovery (which us guys in IT take very seriously), but new technology has now allowed us to get both of those from a geographic number.
It's a pity not all companies have taken the opportunity to better serve their customers and we will always continue to look for ways to improve our offering. If you have any ideas then please contact us, we also now have a twitter account @GabemUmbrella which you can contact us through in addition to phone/SMS and email.
The IT Guy
16/09/2009
