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

I resemble that remark!

Mind you, IIRC, RedHotAnt who started it all were based in Kent. (I didn't do too badly out of them, ~9 months unmeterd service for 50 quid :-) I do feel sorry for the people who joined later though, and even a little sorry for the telcos who never got their 0800 fees.

I may live in Exeter now, but my ancestry is Scottish!

Yes, well students are still on their long summer holidays, aren't they! ;-)

I had not noticed much repetition in Stefans posts. The points he makes are worth consideration IMO. I suspect that there are many users of 18866 including myself who are very pleased to have the benefit of the 18866 call rates. However, it is useful that Stefan has taken the time to play devils advocate and make us aware of potential risks. We can all be better informed before deciding whether we accept those risks in exchange for the benefits.

Agreed. I don't think he should be ridiculed and/or attacked for voicing his concerns.

Oliver.

Hey you! Steady on. "New bollox", please!

:-)

Hi Bob, Stefan here. It's nice to read a well-considered and well argued reply like yours even if you are making a case against my line of thinking. I agree with a lot of what you say but would clarify a couple of things which you attribute to me.

"Bob MacBob" wrote:

I watched some of a TV programme yesterday where the US conspiracy theorists came up with their ideas about how 9/11 was part of a larger US (sic) plan. I recall other broadcasts about how the US never really put a man on the moon. All this is wacko stuff. Makes for great TV. Might even convince the impressionable. But I really do not consider myself as a natural conspiracy theorist. In fact, quite the opposite.

I may not have made myself clear. It was not customer *data* which made Freeserve valuable but it was the potential of generating income from them at some future time. As we now know it was a misplaced valuation. But back then it was thought that this internet company which found a way of covering its costs from its share of the cost of an 0845 call was worth a very great deal. The only thing Freeserve had was a huge customer base. It's competitors (relatively few back then) were offering the same sort of service but had nothing like Freeserve large number of customers.

On the other hand FINAREA SA's 'Call18866' business *might* be based on gathering a large number of customers and in this case using the data about the customers. The T&Cs provide for this. I imagine Freeserve's old T&Cs never had such a provision.

So I draw the similarity that a business which offers a very attractive deal to its customers may not, in the long run, find that it has the value which is put on it in its heyday.

I don't disagree. What you say means that the nearly free lunch is unlikely to be offered for ever. And it at this point that I wonder whether the events which happen may be of disadvantage to the customers.

I recall Frances Cairncross writing a Special Report for the Economist over 10 years ago which I believe she called "The death of distance". (I see it was later turned into a book.) There she argued, prematurely at the time but still very presciently, that it was no longer relevant to measure the cost of telecoms based on the distance covered between the two end parties.

But FINAREA SA have changed the "death of distance" into what I may now call the "death of duration" with their unlimited length free phone calls. I am far from sure that that adds up commercially.

That is the very question I am trying to find an answer to. I don't want to find that FINAREA SA are compensated for the cheap calls they provide me with by selling on my data to irresponsible companies based in far-off countries who may use it for purpose I hadn't considered.

Hello Peter

Actually I did mean "call out to".

Let me explain: If you know the telephone numbers of the people I phone then you could cold call them (or text them or whatever) and in the conversation even make reference to my name in order to add false credibility and false authority to the probably dubious proposition you may then want to make to them.

I am not familiar with Call Sign but the fact is that 18866 will know who you want to contact (you have to tell them that or you aren't going to get through) and they know your identity (because

I share your hope but if someone asked me to put a bet on it I would probably bet on the income 18866 get being too low to sustain their business.

Colin to be honest Stefan has been trying to ram it into our brains that 18866 is a scumbag of a company that are out to rip us off at every turn all week. It has been my experience of this company and that of others here that in fact that this is not the case in fact just the opposite ,they are affording us none time limited calls with in the UK for the very expensive charge of ONE PENNY PR CALL . Stefan is just out to give 18866 a bad name I think he is an employee of one of the opposition telecom companies . Wombat .

I'm also very pleased that Stefan has told us he's a dab hand at setting up anonymous overseas companies. I'm looking forward in hearing the details of these business ventures that Stefan has organised.

Either that or he's an employee of 18866 and is drumming up praise for them. Either way, he seems not to be exactly disinterested.

LOL.

Hi Steve, nice to hear from you. You have been fairly quiet in these 18866 threads for someone who knows more than a thing or two about this soft of stuff.

I recently got involved in a voluntary liquidation of a UK company. But in this case it was as an unsecured creditor. The company I was involved with (which was based in Europe) was owed several hundred thousand pounds by this UK company which went and put itself into voluntary liquidation.

Even with good specialist UK-based lawyers we couldn't prevent them, spiriting away the trade mark and then resurrecting themselves as a phoenix company only weeks later occupying the same premises and which then went on to buy the liquidated stock (including the unsecured goods) at a knock down price. Only the Offical Receiver might have taken an interest but as there was no money left to pay him then that was that.

If Scottish law is even more favourable to a bankrupt business then I ain't ever getting involved with a Scotish company!

When 18866 were charging 1p/min for UK landline calls there were contributions in here from people in the telecomms industry, who appeared to be in the know, and who claimed that 18866's charges would not cover even the costs of collecting and the terminating calls. For example, as I understand it BT would have to charge 18866 standard un-negotiable rates for carrying these calls. With zero per/min charges this must surely make there costing even more un-tenable. Hence their business plan must be based on some model other than making a profit on the UK landline phone calls. It does not follow of course that this is necessarily disadvantageous to their customers even in the long term. They may be prepared to make a loss initially to gain market share and thus economy of scale and then revert to a more realistic charging structure, but still offer a good deal for it's customers.

That is untrue. You say I am trying to make out "that 18866 is a scumbag of a company that are out to rip us off at every turn". Actually I have not said that. I have said that they are in a position to do so if they wish.

I posted to you ... "I am not saying 18866 are a bunch of scamsters. There is no evidence of that. And I don't think you can say they are not scamsters. Because there is no evidence of that either."

Ref: Subject: Re: 18866 terms of agreement Date: Thu, 09 Sep 2004 15:36:42 +0100 Message-ID:

If I have posted a lot about 18866 then that is possibly because there is a lot to say about them. If you don't like my posts and feel I am putting forward a point of view which is so counter to your own then you are at perfect liberty to ignore all the posts I make. OTOH if are going to reply then please do not distort what I am saying.

I have posted (to you again) that just because 18866 runs a tight ship and bills correctly does not change my observation that they seem to be underpricing significantly, are very anonymous, have asked customers to enter into a direct agreement with an overseas company, and have CCA authority on their customers' credit cards.

I have tried to back up all my observations with links to sources. I am wondering what FINAREA/18866 is up to.

I know you are a satisfied customer of 18866 and at this stage who wouldn't be because at the moment they are extremely good value for money. I too am satisfied with the deal I get from 18866.

No matter how much I may wish it, I am not so short sighted as to think that this is going to be the sort of pricing I can now expect to carry on for many years into the future.

Nice idea.

So we can agree on one thing, there is no evidence of either, so what is your point?

Currently many vendors are selling DECT telephones below manufacturing costs. So what is their hidden agenda?

If they are trading only in the UK and collect money from UK cusotmers then what reasons do they have for not having a UK based bank account?

Yes, I remember reading posts like that here.

Agreed.

This is one of the unknowns. It might be or it might not be. I for one certainly do not know.

Quite possibly. But don't you find the number of provisions permitting the selling on of their user's data in the T&Cs slightly odd? Similarly the anonymous corporate structure. Tiscali with its previously attractive 2p a minute has a very visible corporate structure.

And just how can they do this Stefan I know from experience over the last few years that if I ring my bank and tell them I have lost my debit card from that day forth no one can obtain money from my bank account whether it be by continuous authority or not. And don't say this cannot be done because I have done it five times in total up to now my last ISP tried ripping me off not long ago and I had to "loose" my card to prevent them from dipping their grubby hands into my account . Wombat .

That's an interesting approach. I wonder if it would work with credit cards too. :-)

However, some of us remember the "free" ISP scams such as RedHotAnt, BigBlueSky, Nutshell etc..etc

All seemed too good to be true..and they were!

sPoNiX