GP/Doctor and Hospital premium rate phone line scam

How often do you phone the NHS or Doctor? When you are ill? When a relative is ill? Or even when you want some health advice?

Well I am disgusted to see that some NHS Hospitals are now charging for you to call them.

Over a dozen different NHS Hospitals have changed their numbers to 0844 or 0845 numbers which charge the caller 5p per minute on a landline and up to 40p per minute while on a mobile phone and the hospital itself earns 1-2p per minute.

NHS Phoneline Rip Off

I personally think that this is outrageous! The NHS, which is meant to be a free service, is charging you for calling them because you want to use their services.Most people will know that GPs have been doing this for a few years now but they are private businesses and are only connected to the NHS via contract. But the hospitals are all NHS so isn’t there some Government guidance that they should be following?

I have read on saynoto0870.com that on average a NHS hospital call centre can generate up to 3,500 calls each week; on average, let’s say a caller spends 5 minutes on the line, by the time they have got through the press 1, press 2 process, then waited on the line to be talked too, in fact thinking about it,5 minutes seems to short.

If they earn 1p per minute that is already 5p per caller, 0.05 x 3,500 callers is £175 per week, £9100 per year which isn’t a bad amount just for phone charges. Especially once you consider that the figure is just for people calling from landlines, no doubt they receive more for mobile users as they are paying 40p per minute.

A article written in The Times, by David Rose, stated that one NHS trust had said that the money made from the phone calls is used to help meet its ’saving targets’, so they are charging the public for a service that they shouldn’t have to be charged for, so that the NHS can keep up with their targets!

Hospital Trusts that use the 0844 prefix include Mid Essex, Mid Yorkshire, Northumbria and South Tyneside, so are you paying more in these areas to be ill?

There are also at least another 8 trusts using the 0845 prefix. The national health advice line, NHS Direct also uses a 0845 prefix. However there is some good news, NHS Direct are supposdly changing their current 0845 once their contract has ended.

I really want to know how everyone else feels on this matter, should we be charged for phoning our local hospital? Do you think that they do it just as a money making scheme or a way of generating funding so that they can provide a better service to us?

I personally think that instead of spending money on a 0844 or 0845 number, they should spend the money on 0800 numbers, maybe then people would be slightly happier with the NHS.

0800 number and 0845 number information from Callagenix.com

saynoto0870.com - Say no to 0870 numbers

Written by DangerousDanMan on August 4th, 2008 with 7 comments.


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7 comments on GP/Doctor and Hospital premium rate phone line scam

Read the comments left by others, or why not tell MrCrip what you think?

Get your own gravatar by visiting gravatar.com Keith
#1. August 4th, 2008, at 7:32 PM.

I would like to have a very, very long discussion with you about this subject. Can you call me on 0870 123 456 asap?

Get your own gravatar by visiting gravatar.com Tony Lee
#2. August 4th, 2008, at 10:13 PM.

I agree to a point but you are missing something here. People using 0844 & 0845 numbers do not do it for the revenue. In most cases for people who use these numbers, the so called revenue is irrelevent. In most cases the 0844/0845 is not routed direct to a call centre but to a centrally hosted telephony server that allows intelligent routing of your call. This means that the call is more likely to get answered quicker as the equipment can try and route to multiple call centres, which is important, especially in the case of the NHS. The small per minute revenue in many cases goes to the telephony company for investing in that equipment. If the NHS or any other company didn’t use these types of numbers then they would have to invest massive amounts of money on equipment to try and run it in house. This would of course be crazy as it is not there expertise and it would be more wasted money that could have been spent on healthcare or in other industries would smply mean putting up the costs of their products.
I can’t believe how many people who comment on these 08xx numbers are missing the bigger picture.
An 0844 costs just 5p per minute to call yet the moile networks are charging 20p to 40p per minute to call them. That is 15p to 35p per minute PROFIT on what should be a 5p per minute call. This is where the problem is. Even if the owner of a number makes 1p per minute from the call the mobile networks are making 10 to 35 times that - that is the scam. Anyway, what use is 1p per minute to the NHS or a call centre when compared to the cost of employing somebody to answer that call. A member of staff on the phone for an hour is going to paid a lot more than 60p! So many people are missing the bigger picture and it is the mobile networks who are the bad boys here as they are profiting massively on these types of numbers which really, at 5p per minute is an acceptable charge for a call. It is the mobile networks who are “raping and pillaging” it would be interesting in light of the unfair bank charges case recently if somebody decided to challenge the mobile networks in the same way. No wonder they give so many free minutes to normal landlines as they know that in reality most people at some stage during the month will ring a number which should be 5p per minute and get ripped off by their network and charged 20p+. It does not cost the network more than the 5p per minute to route the call to the 0844 number. It is pure opportunism by them. In the UK there is an unfair contract terms law and surely if challenged in court the networks would be in breach of this. If they added say a penny per minute onto the call charge nobody would mind and they would make a bit to route the call. I am amazed that OFCOM have not enforced fair and reasonable pricing rules on the networks. It took the EU to step in and reduce the rip off roaming charges. Most of us hate EU regulation but on roaming charges they did the right thing. They are not stopping this profiteering by the networks on 08xx numbers as it is a UK number range so specific to UK so doesn’t have such an impact of other citizens of the EU. We have our own regulator for telecoms in the UK, OFCOM, so why are they doing nothing. Who knows but maybe some mobile network execs are buying some very expensive lunches for people or maybe I am just a cynic!

Get your own gravatar by visiting gravatar.com DangerousDanMan
#3. August 5th, 2008, at 9:16 AM.

Tony, I totally understand what you are saying but regarding the hosiptals, there are only a dozen odd hosiptals actually using the 0844 and 0845 numbers so there are many hospitals not using these prefix’s, they manage, so why do these dozen have to use the prefix? Also, like I said in my post, articles in the Times and Gazette have reported that hospital spokesmen/spokeswomen have said that the hospitals use this prefix to gain profit for their ’savings targets’ and that they get some sort of profit from these services, so there must be some sort of finacial advantage for them having these prefix’s.
Regarding your other point, I entirely agree with you, how can the mobile phone networks charge people these criminal rates, it also does not help that the phone users rarely know what they are paying for calling these lines, and that it’s not covered by their contract.
OFCOM should step in and sort them out!

Get your own gravatar by visiting gravatar.com MrCrip
#4. August 5th, 2008, at 1:30 PM.

More bullshit money making ways to rape further cash from us.

Get your own gravatar by visiting gravatar.com Tony Lee
#5. August 5th, 2008, at 11:45 PM.

It’s a pity Virgin Mobile did take on the same moral high ground/ethical practice that Richard Branson wanted to apply to his “peoples lottery” if they had then we might have had a mobile network charging a fair rate for calls. I know the general opinions on this thread are against 0844 style numbers but I really do not mind paying 5p per minute for a call. What I do object to is a mobile network charging 20p to 40p for a call type that a landline network charges 5p for that is a real rip off and the regulators let it happen! Crazy.

Get your own gravatar by visiting gravatar.com DangerousDanMan
#6. August 6th, 2008, at 10:19 AM.

I do agree with you Tony Lee, 5p for a call is not as much as it could be, but its the idea that the hospitals are charging us more just to call them when we are ill and all for a service that is supposed to be free.

I strongly agree with you about the fact that mobile phone providers charge so much for a call to one of these numbers and that they are not covered by free minutes, also, it does not even cost the providers 20p to 40p to actually call that number, it only costs them around the price of a normal call and they just wack up the costs for the customers because no one is telling them to change their prices. Fortunatly some businesses are changing their numbers to the 03 numbers which are cheaper to call and are covered by free minutes. Plus the dreaded 0870 numbers are supposed to be being classified as a premium rate number so you do not have to pay while your sat in a waiting line.

Get your own gravatar by visiting gravatar.com “NHS Patient”
#7. August 7th, 2008, at 12:29 AM.

I too recognise the valid points made by TL. I would personally be happy and well able to pay £10, or perhaps even £50, for each trip to my GP. I am however very pleased that I do not, because I believe in the principles of the NHS. I do not enjoy paying income tax, but I recognise that part of it goes to pay for healthcare for everyone “free at the point of need”.

When I learn that many GPs and a number of hospitals, and other NHS service providers such as NHS Direct, are taking money (no matter how small the amounts) from patients and using it to fund their services, then I feel justified in my anger at this abuse of the principles of “our NHS”. If use of revenue sharing telephone numbers is allowed to continue, then I worry about the precedent it sets for possible future “innovations” in NHS funding.

It is important to note that all 084x and 087x numbers are revenue sharing. The extra income obtained by the provider of the number is not always passed on as cash. It is sometimes converted into a discount on telephone services. For a non-profit making body, there is no difference between reduced cost and income. NHS Direct, for example, receives no income from calls to 0845 4647, however the extra revenue that is passed to BT because this is a revenue sharing number is offset against BT’s charges for the telephony services it provides.

Those interested in this topic may wish to view extensive discussions in the forum section of a website dedicated to the issue of rip-off telephone numbers, primarily 0870.

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