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

True, but with phones as cheap as they are now the gap is closing.

Nokia 6310. Thee classic no nonsense business phone!!

---------- I Deliver.

I meant a DVD seperates player.

---------- I Deliver.

There is no need to swear. I have trimmed you bad language. You are AFAICT a silly ignorant fool.

Taks one to know one mate . Wombat .

Now we're getting down to brass taks.

At one point it cost 6p to make a 5 minute peak time call with 18866 (1p connection plus 1p a minute) and the the next thing you know is that the same call costs 1p.

In this example, that's going from 6p to 1p. Some callers will speak for far longer and some for far less. I have taken five minutes as a guesstimated average.

FINAREA/18866's income stream has been slashed!

By comparison Tiscali's cheapest plan still charges 20p for that call.

As you knowm you would not necessarily get a refund from your credit card company if you have given FINAREA a continuous authority. Your CC company may make an ex gratia payment but it is certainly not obliged to.

I think the issue is bigger than just spam. You and your contacts might get contacted endlessly in the several different ways which are detailed in FINAREA's contract.

I am unable to definitively answer your question. I don't know what FINAREA are up to but the company is certainly not engaging in normal business practises. They have no need to undercut their competition as massively as they now do if their intention was only to poach business. FINAREA were already undercutting pretty much all the competition when they charged 1p a minute.

I might ask you, what sensible business rationale do you think is at work here which justifies the huge price drop from a bargain 1p + 1p a minute to an insignificant 1p a call?

BTW why do you claim that number 6 concern me?

Have you ever tried to get money out of a company which has declared insolvency?

I don't care how cast-iron and legitimate your claim is to a refund of money taken wrongly on a continuous authority transaction; in that circumstance you are very unlikely to get much if anything at all of what you are owed.

And if it the company were declared insolvent you would be wasting your time taking even that office to court.

Afraid I did not. They got their money's worth by getting us to work all hours. Very sleepy town though.

Ooops. Typo. Make Tiscali's charge 10p and not 20p.

Quite . Wombat

Yes, and if I'd used Tiscali in the last month alone, my CC bill would have been around £25 instead of £4, and it beggars belief what it would have been if I'd called direct from my Orange phone. This explains in part why I'm not really concerned about the highly unlikely possibility of 18866 ripping me off for fifty quid, which I'll get my credit card to refund. I'm more interested in what I've saved since signing up with them last year. It's about time for you to let go on this one, I think.

David

They might be hoping to get a huge number of customers subscribing, then they'll 'hike' the price back up to 0.5p per minute. The customers will stay, and they'll make more money. I'll certainly stick with them if they do that.

David

Which court? The UK courts, Swiss courts, Italian courts or perhaps that special administrative region has it's own legal system?!

Oliver.

As far as an insolvent company is concerned, a tennis court is as good as any other court.

I agree with you David but try getting this into Stefan's brain ,why oh why cannot they just stop all this going on about 18866 and make full use of it while it lasts . Wombat .

Now, that wasn't very taktful!

Well, until recently, Tiscali typically charged me 3p for such a call: the call charge was supposed to be 2p/min, so it would have been 10p total, but they only listed about 50% of the calls I made (so that makes it 5p on average) and then of the ones listed, 2/3 were free (so that makes it about 23p on average).

Where was your vendetta against Tiscali's low rates?