18866 terms of agreement

I assume the benefits of extra DD customers is outweighed by the cost of opening a UK office.

Oliver.

I did not make myself clear - how will exactly can a none resident UK company open a UK bank account given that they will not have any of the "Proof of Address" IDs required by all UK banks?

Also with DD the request for payment might fail if there are insufficient funds in the account. I suspect that with the margin involved, Call18866 does not really care or afford to have bad/risky customers.

By starting a company called Finarea (UK) Ltd along with a company trading acount.

Oliver.

They may have reasons why this may not viable (probably tax reasons, and probably the additional burden both in cost and resources in running a UK company).

Colin Reddish wrote: [...]

It has been suggested that their business objective is to cheaply dispose of excess call minutes. If this is the case, there will only be a finite amount of service they can provide before the unit cost goes up. Thus, they may not wish to expand their business beyound that point.

There speaks someone who hasn't tried to get a UK bank account as an overseas company.

Or if 18866 made all their money from calls to UK landlines. But they don't.

Given that the only snag with 18866 is not being able to get through because their system is busy, right now, I don't think they are all that bothered about not getting every possible customer.

An overseas company can usually open an account by using their home bank if that bank has UK branch in the UK or by providing third-party references (and maybe also guarantees) to the UK bank.

I could be wrong, but when I raised this with my bank and a couple of other high street banks I was told that they must meet the same ID requirements printed on the bank's leaflet for opening new accounts. I was asked by Korean company to assist them to open a bank account in the UK last year as they do a lot of trade with the UK and want to minimise their bank charges and exchange commissions.

True :-)

I have not had any busy tones yet. And if they are running near to capacity then surely they could raise prices and make more profit if that is their objective. If they reduce prices in this situation that could be because their main objective is to build there customer base for some other reason than current profit on calls.

There were lots of people that expressed similar sentiments about not a few "free" ISPs around 4--6 years ago. They ended up with a distinct "failure to communicate, boy".

However, I don't believe that they were ripped off by misuse of CCAs, even though this seems the likeliest outcome of the present "offer".

I sometimes dial "18866 0" and immediately get "sorry, we do not cover this destination yet"!

Oliver.

They would still need to pay per minute charges to BT, 0800 charges, etc etc. Regardless of how cheap they're doing it, they are clearly making a big loss on domestic and particularly international calls.

We don't know what termination fee arrangements they have, but it's quite possible that they are piggy-backing onto someone else's deal.

None for 18866 access. For 0808 access, possibly.

That's not what happens. Either nothing happens, or you get a message about signing up for the service.

uhhh? 18866 access is going to cost them, it maybe cheaper than standard 0800 access, but only about 20% cheaper, it certainly isnt free! (and incidently in per minute costs identical to CPS conveyance charges)

Linus

Not had any of those yet either. But I've only made about 200 calls.