[Perfect Choice]

VM have been trying to get hold of me for the past 3 or so weeks and finally did last night. They were ringing up to offer me the extra £5 option for all 08 numbers to be included in my call package.

The person ringing me (from Newcastle call centre I was told – Home Services?) said I had incurred a cost on these services of over £6 so a benefit to me. However I said I would check my bills first before proceeding if worthwhile which is good that I did.

I checked back 10 months worth of bills and only found a single month bill over £5 cost for 0844/0871 and even combining the total 0844/0871/0845/0870 calls I could only exceed £5 cost in 2 out of 10 months.

Even accounting for VAT, my average monthly bill for such numbers was around £3.60 so this was very close to getting to be a con and was disappointed that whatever systems VM use to calculate such figures did not give an accurate picture of my costs on these numbers. Of course the person ringing me may have “accidently” not been that specific on the £6+ charge mentioned as I did have a single month when that was the case.

But it only took me a few minutes work to confirm paying £5 a month is not worthwhile for me even if every insurance firm, etc who I tend to ring on these numbers moved over to 0844/0871.

So the morale of this story is to check your own records before committing to anything new to your call plan, the data you are being quoted may not be accurate or may only reflect a single month, as the only way in my case a £6 figure could be quoted.

Incidentally I’ve checked all the main insurance companies I use right now and the reason for 08 numbers being on my bill. Only 1 uses a 0844/0871 number and one even still provides me with a 0800 free number for insurance renewals; all the rest are 0845/0870 right now which are about to become free of charge from August onwards if phoned within your call package time, which I will do of course.