Mobile charges to local and national rate numbers

Commenting on mobile providers charging people for calls to local and national rate number such as 0870 and 0845, Rob Barnes, head of mobiles at moneysupermarket.com, said: “02 is the last of the “big six” mobile providers to charge customers for calls to these numbers. It is grossly unfair to charge out of bundle minutes for calling these phone numbers and it would appear the operators are working as a cartel as they all apply roughly the same charges.

“In effect mobile users are being punished for the growing trend for business to use these numbers for customer contact. People are also often held on these numbers for a number of minutes and are then stung with outrageous call charges. Most scandalous of all are the charges applied to freephone numbers – freephone should mean just that!

“As recent figures from OFCOM have shown, people in the UK are increasingly relying on their mobile phone, with more than double the number of mobile connections than landline connections at the end of 2006. Therefore, many people will make calls to these numbers from their mobiles. With this in mind my advice is to keep calls to a minimum and use your landline for freephone numbers.”