Many businesses and even public sector organisations continue to use 0845 (HMRC), 0844 (SIA) which are not Phonepay Plus regulated and often charge much more than standard landline rate to call, especially 0844. A ban on all unregulated telephone revenue sharing, as Ofcom did with 0870, would then pave the way for calls to 08 numbers to be price-capped at the same level as 01/02/03 numbers without need for expensive rebranding of literature.
In addition,
callers should not be left "on hold" for more than a maximum permitted time specified in law (e.g. 4 minutes), without being given opportunity to be called back.
UK Mobile operators should be legally required to connect 0800 numbers free of charge, for a limited no of minutes e.g. 20 mins per call.
It will benefit callers to businesses, public services and banks, with cheaper call rates.
Especially to those who call from mobiles and those on lower incomes.
It will stop the called organisations from profiteering from those who call them & remove the incentive to wring money out of callers by leaving them on hold for many minutes or even hours.
It might also encourage service providers to widen the offering of their internet services, instead of requiring users to call expensive 084 or 0871 numbers to access certain services.
09 numbers will be obviously revenue sharing. Such nos should be for value-added services only, not customer support & enquiries.
HMRC swapped their 0845 lines over to replacement 0300 and 0345 numbers between April and October 2013.
DWP made a similar swap in April 2014. Most government lines have now changed to 03 numbers.
Regulation 41 of the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013 requires retailers, traders, and passenger transport companies to use 01, 02, 03 and 080 numbers for post sales helplines.
The FCA will shortly bring in similar regulation for the financial sector some time later in 2015.
After a gap of almost six years, 0870 numbers return to revenue sharing on 1 July 2015 with a Service Charge of up to 13p per minute, the same as for other 087 numbers. The Service Charge on 084 numbers, including 0845, is up to 7p per minute.
From that date, all users of 084, 087 and 09 numbers are required to declare their Service Charge wherever their number is advertised. This will catch sales and enquiry lines, many of which will move to 03 numbers.
From the same date, calls to 080 numbers become free from all mobile phones.