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Beware of 08xx numbers
I was shocked last month to get a mobile phone bill that was over £8. Yes, that may not sound much, but bear in mind that I have a calling plan with unlimited calls, texts and internet. So, after looking through the itemisation, it turns out that I spent £8 on a couple of calls to 0870 numbers.
Now, for a bit of background, there seem to be three types of "non-geographic" numbers:
- 0800 numbers, which are free from landlines but not from mobiles (more on that later),
- 0845 numbers, which are supposed to be charged the same as a national-rate call,
- and 0870 numbers which are just plain expensive, whether you use a landline or not.
Let's start with 0800 numbers, I have a vested interest in these numbers, since my wife runs one for her company (The Pass Lane). These numbers work by the recipient of the call paying for the cost of the call rather than the person making the call. These numbers should make it free for your customers to contact you, however with more and more people using mobiles, this isn't the case. The reason 0800 calls aren't free from mobiles is because the company doesn't necessarily want to pay the higher cost for you to call from a mobile. 0845 numbers are just supposed to be an easy to remember niceity, and 0870 numbers are expensive presumably because the company doesn't want you to phone them.
The mobile phone companies will allow you hundreds of free minutes, yet these 08xx numbers aren't included. You're likely to be paying around 40 pence for every minute you're on the phone to these numbers, and with most of them being call centres, a lot of that time will be spent on hold. There seems to be a slow movement towards 0300 numbers instead, which are included in your free minutes, but many companies have already invested in 08xx numbers and don't want to change all their literature, etc.
For 0800 numbers, if the company you're calling is prepared to pay for the cost of your call from a landline, and your mobile company is prepared to offer you free minutes to a landline, then surely that reduces the cost down to zero, and you (the person calling from a mobile) shouldn't have to pay anything??
One solution (to a problem that shouldn't exist), is Say No To 0870.com, which allows you to search for a company or number, and tries to return a geographic number for them, which is then much cheaper, or free to call. This is well worth doing, as a typical 10 minute phone call could cost you £4.
So, my questions to no-one in particular (ok, maybe Ofcom) are:
- Why bother with 0300 numbers at all? We could just change 0800 or 0845 numbers to do the same
- Why aren't 08xx numbers included in free minutes?
- Why are 0870 numbers so massively expensive? Who's pocketing the cash?
As usual, answers on a postcard to my contact page
2010-05-01 18:12:00 0 people have commented on this postWhy you shouldn't use 3 AntiVirus programs
I feel the need to follow up on a piece of playground gossip I overheard this afternoon. I overheard two people discussing how slowly their Microsoft Windows PC was running, despite having 3 different AntiVirus programs running.
In the vain hope that someone will read this advice, I'll explain why having 3 different AntiVirus programs running will only make things worse, not better.
Without going into too much detail, an AntiVirus program will scan files on your hard disk when they are accessed. Therefore one AntiVirus program will make your computer very slightly slower, but this downside is greatly outweighed by the benefits that an (up-to-date) AntiVirus application will bring, protecting you from all sorts of nasty viruses and worms.
The problem comes when people install multiple AntiVirus programs to try to fix a slow or infected machine, in the belief that "more is better". So, as we know, AntiVirus programs scan our disks when files change. However two or more A/V programs begin to step on each others toes, the programs start to scan the files not only that you've accessed, but those that the other A/V programs have accessed, thus setting off a chain of events which will massively slow down your machine.
So, stick with a single AntiVirus program you trust, and most importantly, keep it up to date by downloading new virus definitions on a regular basis. You might want a second program to scan for spyware or malware, but you'll only need one anti virus program.
Good, Free, AntiVirus programs for Windows include Avast and AVG. Don't click on, or install anything that pops up on your screen unsolicited and promises to fix your machine for you!
2010-04-19 20:25:00 0 people have commented on this postSave money on your Adwords campaign
It's just occurred to me that if you've got a sufficiently well-known website (think Amazon, Tesco, etc) that there's no point in you bidding for your own name as a keyword in your Adwords campaign. If your website already occupies the top few listings in google's organic (unpaid) search results, then big companies could save a huge amount by not having a sponsored link as well.
I've noticed that a large proportion of 'ordinary' web users will click on a sponsored (paid) link without realising, and an increasing number of people use Google / Yahoo / [insert favourite engine here] as their address bar (i.e. rather than typing Facebook into your browser's address bar (and letting the browser sort out the http://www and .com bits automatically, they'll bring up a search engine instead (sometimes with comical results)
So if you run an Adwords campaign (and you rank well in organic search) consider not bidding for your own brandname as a keyword on it's own, as it'll be cheaper for you if people just click the first organic result instead!
As usual, let me know what you think by contacting me (until I get a comments section sorted on the blog).
2010-04-17 12:24:00 0 people have commented on this postUK Election 2010 - The Manifestos
I know who I'm voting for - do you?
Have a look at their policies in PDF form here:
Visual Studio 2010 UK Availability
I'm trying to get Visual Studio 2010 Professional ordered in the UK, but although Microsoft's global launch date was April 12th, it seems we're still unable to buy it on this side of the Atlantic. Despite Microsoft UK's website saying that it's available to buy from retailers such as Dabs and Amazon, visiting their sites either yields nothing (Dabs) or says it won't be in stock till May 31st (Amazon).
If you're trying to get Visual Studio 2010 on a Volume License or Select Agreement, resellers are saying that it's not even on their price list yet, and to try again in May. I know I can use the trial version personally, but until I can get a quote, I can't convert all of my work over to .NET 4 until I'm sure the quote will get signed off.
So, my question to Microsoft is: what happened? We don't even need physical media, so why can't UK Volume license customers buy it if our American cousins can? Contact Me if you know.
2010-04-15 19:17:00 0 people have commented on this post
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