Wednesday 28 February 2007

Beware Premium rate phonecards

This week I have just received my phone bill, to my astonishment a normal £23/month bill had transformed itself into a £200 bill for the month (with unbilled calls I suspect being another £100 !).

From further investigation of the bill I have found a premium rate number which has been dialled, unwittingly I may add, by my aupair. She had rang the number thinking that this was a prepaid card ( actually it was left by a previous aupair). The card boasts cheap international calls with 200, 400, even 900 mins free. On the reverse are the instructions of how to use it to receive your free minutes. The long and the short of the instructions are that after 10 mins (£15 cost) you will be told a freephone number and pin, you are then supposed to hang up and redial using this freephone number and pin- beware if you do not you will be continually charged at £1.50/min.

To someone with english as their first language the instructions are not 100% clear and confusing, to a visitor to a country, here to learn english these are nigh on impossible to fathom out.

I would advise anyone not to use these 09 numbered cards unless they are sure of the consequences.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

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