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On Thu, 2 Jul 2009, Martinus Scriblerus wrote: > 2009/7/2 Gordon Henderson <gordon+dcglug@xxxxxxxxxx>: > >> However - http://www.saynoto0870.co.uk/ is still a good place to get >> alternatives. > > There is some misleading information for the organisation I work for. > We use an IN to distribute calls to various centres around the country > to reduce queuing. There are a series of numbers quoted to allegedly > get through to the office for different areas. Probably just some poor > so and so whose direct line number has leaked out, and most likely > somebody who has their own job to do. One thing that really really got my goat was the whole scam applied to 0870 and 0845 numbers being "sold" to businesses (and places like doctors, dentists, local councils, etc.) due to the ability to queue a call "in the network" rather than at the premises. Well - to some extent that's true, and arguably needed for mega-corps handling 100's of calls a minute, but for the most part it was (and still is) a huge rip-off, and the "owners" of these revenue generating numbers don't care. A report was published recently about the revenue generated by some companies - I'll see ifI can find it, but I recall that British Gas was taking in millions a year from them - all because they can answer the call at the network level then put you on hold in a queue - while you pay, and they trickle in the cash. You can have 1000 calls on hold to a 100-person string call centre. Now I've no issues about using the telephone service as a revenue generation, or micro payment system, but at least people could be up-front about it, and I really don't see why I should pay to complain to someone like british gas or my bank )-: For the average SME (1-250 staff), call queuing at the network level really should not be justified at all as it's really not hard to get the number of lines required into a building to support the erlang number of them making/taking phone calls. And I can network Q using 01/02 numbers - so why can't everyone else? Oh, no money to be made that way, silly me... Oh - and while saynoto0870 is good, it's not always possible to get an underlying 01/02 number for an 0845 number... I can allocate them with no underlying 01/02 connected at all... Gordon -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html