It is worth trying the site ‘saynoto0870′ to find alternative standard rate ‘geographical numbers’. (Jet2 is listed).
http://www.saynoto0870.com/

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Darren

This also drives Travel Agents nuts. Often we have expensive phone lines to call where as direct customers get lower rates. E.G. BA charges travel agents 50p a minute to call them. However in BA defense they use a freephone number during strikes.

I would not mind paying a higher rate if the phone was answer and a quick clear answer given (Like Ryanair or Easyjet). However a lot of companies charge you to speak to them to deliver poor service.

When you consider the income that these lines create service can be a joke. Even mid rate lines like 35p a minute produce 15 – 18 pounds an hour (or @18 over 31,000 a year).

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“Trying to contact airlines and travel companies on the likes of Twitter and Facebook is a waste of time.”

Yeah, but if enough followers retweet it starts to grab their attention. I usually retweet complaints for this reason.

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I suspect that when asked, budget airlines like Ryanair will say something like “it’s how we keep our costs so low”. Or put another way, you’re guaranteed a cheap flight if nothing goes wrong and you don’t ask questions. But a quid a minute is nasty. No wonder they’re rolling in profits. For shame.

Frankly, I’d rather pay a bit extra, say, for a system where you only pay for the time you’re speaking to someone – however *that* would be made to work. Or a maximum 5-minute hold, after which the company rings you back at their cost.

I’d avoid Facebook like the plague – when Facebook Support itself is as much use as a chocolate fireguard (that’s a chocolate fireguard hidden somewhere you’ll never find), you know you’re onto a loser…

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Darren,

I had an experience in December last year when my flight was cancelled as the wethear at the destination closed the airport. However, getting to the destination involved changing plane – the lady at the checkin must have known about the closure (the destination was in the same timezone, we checked in at 16:00, the airport closed at 13:00) We could have made tracks from the point of origin had we known then.

I attempted to complain at the changing airport and later on the phone but to now avail. But they were pretty quick at contacting me when I @’d them on Twitter.

Perhaps some are taking a view of the internet as the place where most damage can be done at the highest speed and handling it appropriately.

Mark

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These rates sound reasonable enough if you are paying for actual time spent on the phone (not the time waiting)

Take a phone operator – say they, including a factor for salary, national insurance, for their manager and for the IT / office. Could well be 60,000 GBP a year for an operator. If they are on 30,000 salary then these overheads would be likely? Probably not far out

Assume they work 220 days a year (taking into account holidays, weekends and bank holidays). Therefore the cost per day of that operator is 273 GBP.

Assume they are able to answer the phone 50% of the time (the remainder of the time they are writing notes about calls just happened, in training or in meetings etc). On an 8 hour day that means they get 240 minutes a day on the phone.

So they cost 273 GBP a day to answer 240 minutes of phone calls.

If this is right then any charge in the 0.50 GBP per minute range is subsidised against actual costs. Anything in the 1 GBP a minute range is just a reflection of the actual costs.

Certainly not a rip off? Yes?

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Unless I’m mistaken, what Alexs calculation deals with is the time the operator spends dealing with actual customers. And this certainly looks like an accurate calculation from this perspective. There is also an assumption that the utlisation rate for the operators is 100% – which is a safe assumption as many of seem to be waiting.

However, where the disparity happens is that if the utilisation rate is over 100%. What happens here is that two people are charged the same rate (which was calculated on the basis of 100% utilisation rate) However, n people are actually filling that 100% while another x people are hanging around waiting for an operator to become free – so there is some room for the airline to charge over and above the utilisation rate, thereby generating a profit.

I appreciate that airlines are businesses which need to make a profit. But, customers, imo, are prepared for pay for service – not time waiting for service. By way of analogy, I don’t pay extra waiting in a queue doing my weekly grocery shopping.

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@Mark and Darren

The likes of Ryanair and easyjest (even BA) that charge the larger amounts do on tend to:

Charge you only when they answer
Give clear fast help or good Customer Service

But in the at the end of the day it is one thing for a “no frills” company to charge (your paying for the thrill or in some case no thrill of talking to them) and yet another expensive brands to charge.

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I find that this kind of practice is very prevalent and applies to all kind of businesses in the UK. The situation is made worse by charging different rates when the call is made from a mobile. For example, some mobile operators still charge even when the call is made to a toll free “0800″ number. The only way is make the cheapest helpline calls is to find an equivalent landline number and also make that call from a landline. saynoto0870 is a good site.

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I had an experience with Ryanair where I needed to add an extra luggage for my trip, their payment system was down when I tried to do it online, so I needed to call the helpline.

I waited 20 min and no one answered, with a cost of 20€ (I needed to pay them 35€ for the extra luggage).

What I found later is that if I called the international number +353 1 2480856 (rather than the country where I am located) I did not pay 1€ per minute but instead 0,017€ per minute.

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