From ICSTIS:
Premium rate services offer information and entertainment via phone, fax, PC (e-mail, Internet, bulletin board), mobile (SMS/WAP) or interactive digital TV. Services range from sports, voting and sex lines to competition, directory enquiry, chat and business information services, and currently vary in cost from 10 pence per call to £1.50 per minute. The money paid for the call is shared between the telephone company carrying the service and the organisation providing the content.

See also: http://www.icstis.org/icstis2002/default.asp?node=21

No - its not true. its doing the rounds at the moment and both OFCOM and ICTSIS have posted notices to advise consumers that it is simply untrue.

YAC (www.yac.com) is a licensed UK telecom operator providing inbound call services to both personal and business customers. One of our primary services is 'YAC Number' - a personal numbering service. All personal numbers issued in the UK are authorised and regulated by OFCOM http://www.ofcom.org.uk/.

The number range '070' is specifically designated by OFCOM for personal number services. They allow the End User to use just one contact number, and in many cases to accept fax messages as e-mail attachments. Under no circumstances is revenue earned from the volume of calls passed to the number holders. OFCOM expressly forbids it. YAC has issued almost one million personal numbers in the UK. All YAC personal numbers begin with the digits 07092 .

The cost to consumers of calling YAC numbers is strictly regulated. YAC numbers are designated at the industry 'K' rate. The cost of calling these numbers is similar to the cost of calling a mobile phone number. For example, the cost of calling YAC issued 07092 numbers from a BT landline is:- Daytime 37.5p per min / Evening 25p per min / Weekend 10p per min. These prices include VAT. These are BT's standard published rates. They do not charge £50 per minute. The cost of calling may vary from mobile phones or other telecom operators, but certainly not to the extent quoted.

Whilst it is appreciated that the purpose of sending the original e-mail was well meaning, and that there are many scams that consumers must be aware of, the e-mail contains false information which we consider detrimental to our business, and to the businesses that rely on our numbers as their primary point of contact .

OFCOM can take immediate action to contact the relevant telecom operator if a suspected scam is reported to them and we believe that this is how the issue should have been addressed.

The e-mail first surfaced a year ago, but appears to have a renewed life in the past week.
We are aware that the e-mail message has been passed on several times by recipients, and the issue has been brought to our attention by customers that were alarmed that there appears to be an e-mail campaign advising consumers not to call 0709 numbers.

flagpole -

Do anything other than follow your advice? Absolutely not.
I actually meant that the charge of £50 is not a scam, since there is no such charge. Getting revenue from machine-generated unsolicited calls certainly is a scam.

Since when is 37.5p peak the same as 16.5p for a mobile call on Talk Talk? For that matter 25p v 13p and 10p v 5p? To me, at this price, all 070 numbers are counted as premium rate, and are set as barred in my phones routing tables. Don't even try to convince me that somebody is not making money, as you will be wasting your breath.

Andy

There will be someone making money out of these calls, that's obvious. There is money to be made out of every call dialled, be it local, national, international, mobile, premium rate etc etc.

The thing pjfeerick referred to was that YAC receive no revenue stream when one of their 070 numbers is called. The profit on those calls is made by your preferred telecom provider, for example Talk Talk and also by BT. And I guarantee you that it's BT who'll be taking the lion's share of any profit made on these type of calls.

So you are correct when you say someone is making money but it is certainly not the 'owner' of the 070 number.

Oh and for the record 0871 numbers are 10p a minute to call and are literally one step up the ladder from 0870 numbers which are charged at national rate which is just under the 10p mark. in these instances the person/company that you are calling do earn a revenue for every second that you are on the line and 0871 pays them slightly more than 0870.

Hope this helps.

Botty

Once in a while I receive a simular message, but the one thing I notice with the message is the time received is 5 and a half hours ahead of when I received it: example, 01-Mar-04 20:45 when its only 01-Mar-04 15:15, so my guess is the message might have come from India?
Last edited by button04 : 15-03-2004 at 11:31

Call rates to 070 personal number services like YAC vary. As YAC allow their 07092 numbers to be routed to landline AND mobiles the charge for calling their numbers must be higher than calling any of the UK mobile networks. This is how they earn their income.

But it's not a premium number as such and the number's holder does NOT make any money. i.e. I've had a YAC number for years now. At one time I had it routing to my mobile, but now I use it purely as a fax=>email service which I've been very happy with.

As a YAC customer I don't pay a penny for receiving faxes direct my inbox as a PDF, usually within a couple of seconds of the fax being sent. OK, so the person sending me the fax pays a slightly higher rate than calling a mobile - fair enough the service is paid for PAYG in a manner. But can you think of any other way I could receive faxes as nice PDF attachments with the along with the actual CLI of the sender too?

Now I've stopped using my Nokia Communicator 9000i (yes the 'brick') I forward my Orange fax number to my YAC number. I do this as I would previously receive faxes direct to my Comminicator as it had the capability. So now I give out my YAC number as my fax number, but in the event someone still had my Orange fax number and sent a fax here it would be sent to my email via YAC. OK, in this case I'd pay the Orange=>YAC divert portion of the call for the occasional fax sent to this number which would be at a higher rate than any landline=>YAC, fair enough.

Overall I'm very happy with YAC as for the most part it's providing me with a free fax-to-email service.

I also have an OPAL number too. This is another personal numbering service which, like YAC, only ever makes money from me when someone calls my number - I pay no monthly service charges nor did I pay a setup fee.

The service I have from OPAL is essentially a hunt-group number, whereby a caller leaves their name and listens to a choice of on-hold music (selected by me) while it attempts to connect the caller, dialling, in turn, up to five numbers, mobile or landline; e.g. first home, then mobile, then work DDI etc. Whoever answers the call is prompted with something like "Hello, I have a call from <recorded caller's name>. Press 1 to accept the call, or 2 to reject and send to voicemail" - If the caller leaves a voicemail I'm notified of this via a single ring to my mobile from OPAL's main number. Not too bad for something which costs me Nil eh!

I may be wrong, but I believe both YAC and OPAL also sell/lease prestige phone numbers for their respective services. I imagine this, along with other value added services they provide, primarily targeted at business users, must be their main sources of profit. I can't see them paying their running costs and making much from the call revenues alone.

For the record I don't work for either of the above companies or have any association or affiliation with them in any way. The point I'm trying to make in this post is that personal numbering services can be very usefull and cost affective personal and business tools which do not charge an arm and a leg for their services but rather provide good value, IMHO. Nor do they make huge markups from the revenues earned from the cost of calling these numbers.

I hope most of the above made sense

Faz

Sorry to resurect an old thread (of mine)....

I just got a txt....


Now i know this must be a scam of some sort as i've not ordered this stuff, but what is the scam, it's a free phone number....

When you phone up, they give you another number tp phone up, whihc is 09+. This is another way of fooling people.