18866 and protecting your data (or Who Wants Cold Calls?)

Sorry Stefan, but that sounds like a load of old bollox...

Stefan has a recent history of spouting bollox in an attempt to give

18866 a bad name. I think he must have a reason to resort to dirty tricks.

You may disagree with what it says but in my view he has done a lot of research and most of his arguments are credible. Certainly his views deserve consideration. IMO many readers will value his analysis and they can then be better informed as to whether they consider the potential risk worth taking for the short term reward of very cheap phone calls. If you consider it b******* why don't you offer some reasons for your opinion?

Your underlying assumption seems to be that 18866 can't possibly make a profit, therefore there must be some sinister motive behind the company. But try analysing their rates against a typical calling pattern and you'll probably find that overall they aren't really that much cheaper than the competition.

For instance most of their mobile evening rates, and all their 0845 & 0870 rates are significantly more than even BT. If they target residential users, who probably make the majority of their calls off peak, then their headline "1p per call" is only 4.5p per call cheaper than BT, or 3p cheaper than Tele2, *per call*. Whereas their evening rate to Vodaphone is about 6p *per minute* more expensive than most of the competition. So if you make one 10 minute call to Vodaphone and 10 landline calls on an evening, you'd be better off using BT than

18866.

OK you can choose to route individual calls via different providers, or even buy a box to do it, but in reality the vast majority of people simply couldn't be arsed - they'll choose one supplier that seems to offer the best rates and go with them for all their calls. And with headline rates of 1p per call, it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking 18866 will obviously be your cheapest provider. It ain't necessarily so.

At least with 18866, they do actually charge you. TalkTalk are currently giving you a tenner to join (if recommended) with free calls offpeak for a year, and free calls to other TT customers anytime. You could route mobile/daytime/international/non-geo calls via someone else and never pay them a penny.

Fair enough, a good pint well made.

Firstly, it was not my intention to belittle Stefan as an individual, but more the bracket of personages that fall under the banner 'conspiracy theorist'. I am finding them to have become quite sickening, particularly in relation to terrorism and the USA - but let's not get started on that. But I did find that during the process of reading the article, my impression of Stefan's character was sinking slowly down into the quicksand so revered by conspiracy theorists.

I will admit that my analysis of his analysis was somewhat minimal, but I think it was the supposition that call18866 was in some way analogous to FreeServe which was the straw that broke the camel's back. However, they do both clearly share the attribute of having a large customer base worth knowing - but what customer base isn't? I'd put FreeServe's over priced IPO down to a fevered market, drunk with the pleasures of the unknown (a symptom of most high tech IPO's, especially at that time

) combined with the traditional market game of buy big and then sell fast for a quick and large profit. And of course it's very easy to justify the ridiculous price by claiming to the long term investor that the generated working capital is very useful for projected expansion. Well I'm sorry, but I cannot accept that this in any way resembles call18866 or that the customer data is what valued FreeServe so highly.

I think it's more likely that they are breaking even and/or another successful area of their organisation is subsidising them in order to have a ready made customer base for an emerging technology that they and/or their partners are working on.

How about if they develop a little box similar to One.Tel's Phone.Pal which they give away free to everyone. Except this box combines a modem with a VOIP chip which connects to a 1p per minute non-geographic line. Now the line provider is paying them for the calls made just as they did to FreeServe et al. OK you say, but they only charge the connection fee. But since they have flexible T&C's what's to stop them changing to a flat 1p per minute to any destination in the world? Meanwhile there's very little competition left to compete for cheap national calls.

Anyways... that's just my fantasy I'm sure. But I genuinely believe that they buy loads of capacity cheap and sell it cheap (stack 'em high and sell 'em fast). Of course, the free national calls very likely do make a loss but it's not inconceivable that from their market experience thus far, they've found ways of compensating for that in other areas.

This point is worth exploring, back in my uni days (nearly 20 years ago) we studied a couple of examples about loss leaders in "Business Studies". The first example was that supermarkets would sell milk and bread below cost to attract punters into their stores, and they will generally buy more than just the bread and the milk. The second example was a famous chain of off licence who would sell their wine off at cost, why, because they negotiated

90 payment terms with their suppliers and by selling the wine off at cost, they were sure to sell the stock out within 30 days (to students on grants?) and bank the money to earn interest before having to pay their supplier's invoices. OK these were the days when interest rates were close to 20%, so this may not be applicable now. OTOH maybe this is a new way to "launder" money?

I was a Freeserve customer before they sold out, and AFAIK my personal data were not sold off, well at least I did not get an influx of junk mail as a result.

If you continued to use them after they were taken over, then Wanadoo would make money out of you. That is what they were paying for.

Very few notions generate as much intellectual resistance, hostility, and derision within academic circles as a belief in the historical importance or efficacy of conspiracies.

Even when this belief is expressed in a very cautious manner, limited to specific and restricted contexts, supported by reliable evidence, and hedged about with all sort of qualifications, it still manages to transcend the boundaries of acceptable discourse and violate unspoken academic taboos.

The idea that particular groups of people meet together secretly or in private to plan various courses of action, and that some of these plans actually exert a significant influence on particular historical developments, is typically rejected out of hand and assumed to be the figment of a paranoid imagination. The mere mention of the word 'conspiracy' seems to set off an internal alarm bell which causes scholars to close their minds in order to avoid cognitive dissonance and possible unpleasantness, since the popular image of conspiracy both fundamentally challenges the conception most educated, sophisticated people have about how the world operates and reminds them of the horrible persecutions that absurd and unfounded conspiracy theories have precipitated or sustained in the past.

So strong is this prejudice among academics that even when clear evidence of a plot is inadvertently discovered in the course of their own research, they frequently feel compelled, either out of a sense of embarrassment or a desire to defuse anticipated criticism, to preface their account of it by ostentatiously disclaiming a belief in conspiracies.

They then often attempt to downplay the significance of the plotting they have uncovered. To do otherwise, that is, to make a serious effort to incorporate the documented activities of conspiratorial groups into their general political or historical analyses, would force them to stretch their mental horizons beyond customary bounds and, not infrequently, delve even further into certain sordid and politically sensitive topics.

Most academic researchers clearly prefer to ignore the implications of conspiratorial politics altogether rather than deal directly with such controversial matters.

A number of complex cultural and historical factors contribute to this reflexive and unwarranted reaction, but it is perhaps most often the direct result of a simple failure to distinguish between 'conspiracy theories' in the strict sense of the term, which are essentially elaborate fables even though they may well be based upon a kernel of truth, and the activities of actual clandestine and covert political groups, which are a common feature of modern politics.

For this and other reasons, serious research into genuine conspiratorial networks has at worst been suppressed, as a rule been discouraged, and at best been looked upon with condescension by the academic community. An entire dimension of political history and contemporary politics has thus been consistently neglected.

For decades scholars interested in politics have directed their attention toward explicating and evaluating the merits of various political theories, or toward analyzing the more conventional, formal, and overt aspects of practical politics. Even a cursory examination of standard social science bibliographies reveals that tens of thousands of books and articles have been written about staple subjects such as the structure and functioning of government bureaucracies, voting patterns and electoral results, parliamentary procedures and activities, party organizations and factions, the impact of constitutional provisions or laws, and the like. In marked contrast, only a handful of scholarly publications have been devoted to the general theme of political conspiracies--as opposed to popular anti-conspiracy treatises, which are very numerous, and specific case studies of events in which conspiratorial groups have played some role -- and virtually all of these concern themselves with the deleterious social impact of the 'paranoid style' of thought manifested in classic conspiracy theories rather than the characteristic features of real conspiratorial politics.

Only the academic literature dealing with specialized topics like espionage, covert action, political corruption, terrorism, and revolutionary warfare touches upon clandestine and covert political activities on a more or less regular basis, probably because such activities cannot be avoided when dealing with these topics. But the analyses and information contained therein are rarely incorporated into standard works of history and social science, and much of that specialized literature is itself unsatisfactory. Hence there is an obvious need to place the study of conspiratorial politics on a sound theoretical, methodological, and empirical footing, since ignoring the influence of such politics can lead to severe errors of historical interpretation.

This situation can only be remedied when a clear-cut analytical distinction has been made between classic conspiracy theories and the more limited conspiratorial activities that are a regular feature of politics. 'Conspiracy theories' share a number of distinguishing characteristics, but in all of them the essential element is a belief in the existence of a 'vast, insidious, preternaturally effective international conspiratorial network designed to perpetrate acts of the most fiendish character', acts which aim to 'undermine and destroy a way of life.'

Although this apocalyptic conception is generally regarded nowadays as the fantastic product of a paranoid mindset, in the past it was often accepted as an accurate description of reality by large numbers of people from all social strata, including intellectuals and heads of state. The fact that a belief in sinister, all-powerful conspiratorial forces has not been restricted to small groups of clinical paranoids and mental defectives suggests that it fulfills certain important social functions and psychological needs.

First of all, like many other intellectual constructs, conspiracy theories help to make complex patterns of cause-and-effect in human affairs more comprehensible by means of reductionism and oversimplification. Secondly, they purport to identify the underlying source of misery and injustice in the world, thereby accounting for current crises and upheavals and explaining why bad things are happening to good people or vice versa. Thirdly, by personifying that source they paradoxically help people to reaffirm their own potential ability to control the course of future historical developments. After all, if evil conspirators are consciously causing undesirable changes, the implication is that others, perhaps through the adoption of similar techniques, may also consciously intervene to protect a threatened way of life or otherwise alter the historical process. In short, a belief in conspiracy theories helps people to make sense out of a confusing, inhospitable reality, rationalize their present difficulties, and partially assuage their feelings of powerlessness. In this sense, it is no different than any number of religious, social, or political beliefs, and is deserving of the same serious study.

The image of conspiracies promoted by conspiracy theorists needs to be further illuminated before it can be contrasted with genuine conspiratorial politics. In the first place, conspiracy theorists consider the alleged conspirators to be Evil incarnate. They are not simply people with differing values or run-of-the-mill political opponents, but inhuman, superhuman, and/or anti-human beings who regularly commit abominable acts and are implacably attempting to subvert and destroy everything that is decent and worth preserving in the existing world. Thus, according to John Robison, the Bavarian Illuminati were formed 'for the express purpose of ROOTING OUT ALL THE RELIGIOUS ESTABLISHMENTS, AND OVERTURNING ALL THE EXISTING GOVERNMENTS IN EUROPE.'

This grandiose claim is fairly representative, in the sense that most conspiracy theorists view the world in similarly Manichean and apocalyptic terms.

Secondly, conspiracy theorists perceive the conspiratorial group as both monolithic and unerring in the pursuit of its goals. This group is directed from a single conspiratorial centre, acting as a sort of general staff, which plans and coordinates all of its activities down to the last detail. Note, for example, Prince Clemens von Metternich's claim that a 'directing committee' of the radicals from all over Europe had been established in Paris to pursue their insidious plotting against established governments.

Given that presumption, it is no accident that many conspiracy theorists refer to 'the Conspiracy' rather than (lower case)conspiracies or conspiratorial factions, since they perceive no internal divisions among the conspirators. Rather, as a group the conspirators are believed to possess an extraordinary degree of internal solidarity, which produces a corresponding degree of counter solidarity vis-a-vis society at large, and indeed it is this very cohesion and singleness of purpose which enables them to effectively execute their plans to destroy existing institutions, seize power, and eliminate all opposition.

Thirdly, conspiracy theorists believe that the conspiratorial group is omnipresent, at least within its own sphere of operations. While some conspiracy theories postulate a relatively localized group of conspirators, most depict this group as both international in its spatial dimensions and continuous in its temporal dimensions. '[T]he conspirators planned and carried out evil in the past, they are successfully active in the present, and they will triumph in the future if they are not disturbed in their plans by those with information about their sinister designs.'

The conspiratorial group is therefore capable of operating virtually everywhere. As a consequence of this ubiquitousness, anything that occurs which has a broadly negative impact or seems in anyway related to the purported aims of the conspirators can thus be plausibly attributed to them.

Fourthly, the conspiratorial group is viewed by conspiracy theorists as virtually omnipotent. In the past this group has successfully overthrown empires and nations, corrupted whole societies, and destroyed entire civilizations and cultures, and it is said to be in the process of accomplishing the same thing at this very moment. Its members are secretly working in every nook and cranny of society, and are making use of every subversive technique known to mankind to achieve their nefarious purposes. Nothing appears to be able to stand in their way--unless the warnings of the conspiracy theorists are heeded and acted upon at once. Even then there is no guarantee of ultimate victory against such powerful forces, but a failure to recognize the danger and take immediate countervailing action assures the success of those forces in the near future.

Finally, for conspiracy theorists conspiracies are not simply a regular feature of politics whose importance varies in different historical contexts, but rather the motive force of all historical change and development. The conspiratorial group can and does continually alter the course of history, invariably in negative and destructive ways, through conscious planning and direct intervention. Its members are not buffeted about by structural forces beyond their control and understanding, like everyone else, but are themselves capable of controlling events more or less at will. This supposed ability is usually attributed to some combination of demonic influence or sponsorship, the possession of arcane knowledge, the mastery of devilish techniques, and/or the creation of a preternaturally effective clandestine organization. As a result, unpleasant occurrences which are perceived by others to be the products of coincidence or chance are viewed by conspiracy theorists as further evidence of the secret workings of the conspiratorial group. For them, nothing that happens occurs by accident. Everything is the result of secret plotting in accordance with some sinister design.

This central characteristic of conspiracy theories has been aptly summed up by Donna Kossy in a popular book on fringe ideas:

Conspiracy theories are like black holes--they suck in everything that comes their way, regardless of content or origin...Everything you've ever known or experienced, no matter how 'meaningless', once it contacts the conspiratorial universe, is enveloped by and cloaked in sinister significance. Once inside, the vortex gains in size and strength, sucking in everything you touch.

As an example of this sort of mechanism, one has only to mention the so-called 'umbrella man', a man who opened up an umbrella on a sunny day in Dealey Plaza just as President John F. Kennedy's motorcade was passing. A number of 'conspiracy theorists' have assumed that this man was signalling to the assassins, thus tying a seemingly trivial and inconsequential act into the alleged plot to kill Kennedy. It is precisely this totalistic, all-encompassing quality that distinguishes 'conspiracy theories' from the secret but often mundane political planning that is carried out on a daily basis by all sorts of groups, both within and outside of government. It should, however, be pointed out that even if the 'umbrella man' was wholly innocent of any involvement in a plot, as he almost certainly was, this does not mean that the Warren Commission's reconstruction of the assassination is accurate.

However that may be, real covert politics, although by definition hidden or disguised and often deleterious in their impact, simply do not correspond to the bleak, simplistic image propounded by conspiracy theorists. Far from embodying metaphysical evil, they are perfectly and recognizably human,

with all the positive and negative characteristics and potentialities which that implies. At the most basic level, all the efforts of individuals to privately plan and secretly initiate actions for their own perceived mutual benefit --insofar as these are intentionally withheld from outsiders and require the maintenance of secrecy for their success--are conspiracies. Moreover, in contrast to the claims of conspiracy theorists, covert politics are anything but monolithic. At any given point in time, there are dozens if not thousands of competitive political and economic groups engaging in secret planning and activities, and most are doing so in an effort to gain some advantage over their rivals among the others. Such behind-the-scene operations are present on every level, from the mundane efforts of small-scale retailers to gain competitive advantage by being the first to develop new product lines to the crucially important attempts by rival secret services to penetrate and manipulate each other. Sometimes the patterns of these covert rivalries and struggles are relatively stable over time, whereas at other times they appear fluid and kaleidoscopic, as different groups secretly shift alliances and change tactics in accordance with their perceived interests. Even internally, within particular groups operating clandestinely, there are typically bitter disagreements between various factions over the specific courses of action to be adopted. Unanimity of opinioon historical judgements.

There is probably no way to prevent this sort of unconscious reaction in the current intellectual climate, but the least that can be expected of serious scholars is that they carefully examine the available evidence before dismissing these matters out of hand.

FFS Plonk.

Erm... so what do you think about 18866 then? :-)

"Andy Pandy" wrote in message news:414095ac$0$29869$ snipped-for-privacy@ptn-nntp-reader01.plus.net...

The majority of people who can't be arsed will either stay with BT or their cable operator. Those who make a bit of effort will possibly move to a CPS service and maybe make all their calls using that service perrhaps with a dialler to make it easy for them. However, users of 18866 have to make a concious decision each time they make a call and so are much more likely to base that decision on the cost of the call they are about to make. 18866 users are also likely to be more price concious than average.

But those who can't be arsed will be unlikely to do that.

And you needed to repost the original post in its entirety to plonk him?!?!?

Methinks you are the plonker.

Here, have some of these

No one is forcing you to use them. BT needs people like you to subsidise its shareholders' dividends.

why sign contracts in an enviroment where prices change monthly and quality is of course questinable when you can change providers for each call, I use the list provided by Joel F on

works great most of the time

ben

I would suspect 18866 were up to no good if they were based in Scotland not Switzerland

Most of the unmetered ISPs of a couple of years go (skyblue, etc.) that couldn't possibly make a profit from their ridiculously low monthly charges, were Scottish based Why? Cos Scottish bankruptcy law is so liberal

Those ISPs never had any intention of paying their telecom bills (allegedly) When it came time to pay their bills they all declared bankruptcy

Is Swiss bankruptcy law as liberal as Scotlands??

Steve Terry

Yes so quick please. If you don't like 18866, cancel your account. You've made your point, and it's getting irritatingly repetitive.

David

I'm assuming 'too much time on his hands.'

David

04-01-17&id943 Yes, and the Sun rises in the East. Everybody knows this. It's a bit OT for u.t though, even allowing for the famous thread drift...