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How One Man Turns Annoying Cold Calls Into Cash
First time accepted submitter georgeaperkins writes "A man targeted by marketing companies is making money from cold calls with his own premium-rate phone number. So far he's made £300 profit following a £10+VAT initial investment. The premium rate regulator has 'strongly discouraged' the practice, as it violates the code of practice. Nevertheless, the novel idea is sure to resonate with everyone worn down by mindless cold calling!"
Premium numbers must always be accompanied by pricing information (consumer protection laws). This guy probably just puts his premium number into forms without giving pricing information.
For landline phones in the US, the recipient does not pay unless they have a toll-free number (e.g. a 1-800 number). There's no connection fees for receiving a call.
Mobile phone numbers in the US are no different than landline phones for the calling party: there's no extra fee or anything for calling a mobile number. Calling a mobile costs precisely the same amount as calling any other phone number in that area code. The person with the mobile phone will be charged on a per-minute basis (unless they have an unlimited calling plan or it's during the "free nights and weekends" time that many plans offer) regardless of whether they are making or receiving a call.
This is different from, say, Europe, where mobile phones are assigned numbers in special mobile-only prefixes. The person calling a mobile phone pays a slight premium, while the person receiving a call on their mobile pays nothing.
Since the "From" address rarely is the true spammer's address, the answer mail will not inform the spammer about anything. If the mail address works, it will likely go to someone completely unrelated.
I joined the Telephone Preference Service. I get almost no cold calls; those who do call me are generally breaking the law and don't tend to call back when they are told that. I do get a few calls from companies dodging TPS by calling from outside the UK, mind you, but maybe once every week.
I like this guy's style but it's scarcely necessary.
It's just a shame he could only make 7p/minute from it. What happened to £1/minute premium rate lines?
This isn't a new trick to me since I work for a telco that provides the infrastructure for a lot of these cold callers, I've seen it before.
The premium rate 09 lines you are talking about are separately regulated and abuse is prosecuted. However the guy missed an opportunity here. He should have actually chosen an 070 number which is allocated by Ofcom for use of Personal Numbering Services, these can cost 50p - £1 to call. But since they start 07 most people think it's just another mobile number.
It's just a shame he could only make 7p/minute from it. What happened to £1/minute premium rate lines?
Actually, going for a cheaper rate is a smart move. A lot of companies block outgoing calls to >=£1/minute numbers, but something in the region of 10p/minute could slip through those filters....that allows him to get - and make money from - calls that he might not get if he'd gone for a more expensive line. And yes, I agree - epic win
Your mobile numbers have geographic area based prefixes?...what part of "mobile" did you guys not understand?
People in the US generally aren't getting charged for calling different area codes. I suppose some people still get "long distance charges", but most people are in a plan where they only get charged for calling a different country, and even then sometimes they can call Canada for free or something. To a large degree, the "area codes" are being used now just to allow for more numbers.
In fact, lots of younger people don't have landlines, and only have mobile phones, and they try to keep their number throughout their lives. If you live in a major city, a lot of people you meet will have phone numbers from all over the country. The "area code" is no longer a good indicator of where you actually live.
The FCC set aside areacodes for mobile phones, but somewhere along the line, they were discontinued as "prejudicial".
There was also a block of areacodes set aside for non-geographic personal numbers, but there was zero interest in them, because they gave you and your callers the worst of all worlds... you were charged for incoming calls as though it were a toll free number, and people calling you were charged as through they were making the most expensive domestic long-distance calls possible.
I remember that sometime around the mid-90s, there was a bug in the ESS switching software used by BellSouth (probably others too) that allowed you to create a chain of adhoc-forwarded numbers that began with a toll-free 800 number, and ended with a local premium-rate 976 number, because there was no control in place to stop you from doing it, and the 976 billing logic charged the originator of the call rather than the forwarder.As far as I know, the practice was never actually approved, and people who did it ended up getting the money taken away from them.
In the US, a leading '1' has ALWAYS signified your understanding that the number dialed isn't a local call, and might not necessarily be free. Back when areacodes always had 0 or 1 as the second digit, never as the first digit, and exchange codes (the 3 digits after the areacode) could not have 0 or 1 as the second digit, it worked something like this: Assume two Miami phones having numbers 305-222-2222 and 305-333-3333 and a Key West phone having number 305-444-4444:
Back when 7-digit dialing was allowed, 305-222-2222 could cal 305-333-3333 by simply dialing 333-3333. No 0 or 1 within the first 3 digits, so 305 areacode was implied, as well as its status as a free call. However, if 305-222-2222 called the Key west number, he had two choices: 1-444-4444 or 1-305-444-4444 (leading 1= non-free, no 0/1 second digit implies 305 areacode)
When 10-digit dialing was implemented to allow 786 areacode to be overlaid on Miami, 11-digit permissive dialing was enabled to avoid breaking compatibility with software and dialers that automatically added a leading '1' to any 10-digit phone number (yes, there were quite a few). So, 305-222-2222 could dial 305-333-3333 by dialing EITHER 305-333-3333 OR 1-305-333-33333. However, for calls to Key West, the 1 was absolutely required, so 305-222-2222 dialing 305-444-4444 would get a recording that the number was not local & required a 0 or 1 before dialing.
Cell phones threw a new monkey wrench into the equation, because they (usually) had much larger "local" calling zones. For example, if you were a Sprint customer, everything from Orlando south to Key West was classified as a "local" call, including numbers outside your area code. So 305-222-2222 could dial 407-934-7639 without the leading 1, since to a Sprint customer who was present within the switching area of the number being called, it WAS a local call. It technically incurred per-minute airtime charges, but didn't incur additional long-distance.
Where things got ugly was when you called people who were visiting with a mobile phone from another area. I don't think many people really understand what the billing logic was, because it wasn't a common scenario until the point when most mobile phones started to have the entire US as a local calling zone anyway. As I understand it, behind the scenes, if a Sprint customer in Miami called a Sprint customer from California who was in Orlando, Sprint's network would recognize that the caller and target were both handled by the Orlando switching center and complete it as a "local" call (even if the caller didn't have free long-distance anyway), but a landline phone (or non-Sprint mobile phone) in Miami would have gotten charged for the call to California, because their carrier would have terminated the call to Sprint's switching center in California, and Sprint itself would have transparently connected it to their Orlando switching center behind the scenes.
ObXKCD: http://xkcd.com/1129/
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
The optional "1" at the start of a US phone number is the country code. It's generally written as "+1" outside the US, but we just slap a "1" onto the front of the number. It is no longer required when dialing from within the US for any reason. It used to be the "long distance" digit, and used to be required if you were calling outside your local area (as defined by your regional Baby Bell). Largely, the leading 1 is ignored.
The area code is a geographically allocated set of ten million phone numbers. It is 3 digits. It is only required if you are dialing a number outside of your current area code. The area code cannot begin with "1". Special "toll free" or "WATS" (Wide Area Telephone System) lines use area code 800. Due to huge growth in the use of WATS line usage in the 1990's, 888, 877, and 866 are also used. Special "toll collect" lines use area code 900.
The exchange is the first 3 digits of the 7-digit phone number. It is generally allocated to a specific phone company exchange office that serves a particular area. Each one allots 10,000 phone numbers. It has been a required part of dialing since the early 1960's, when automated switching became the norm. Before that, you could dial with either a 4- or 5-digit number (5-digit dialing included the last digit of the exchange, and was only used in some large metropolitan areas). The extension cannot begin with "1". In olden times (the 1950's and 1960's) these were often represented as two letters and a number, and pronounced as a word and a number. My grandparents talked about having a number in the "Taylor-1" exchange. That's TA1, or 821. I suspect this was a mnemonic used to get people used to 7-digit dialing requirements. Internal ILEC and CLEC services use "010", as used in the old "10-10-whatever" toll services they used to advertise. Those are actually "1 ({your area}) 010-{internal *LEC extension}". The other reserved exchange is "555" which is never assigned for anything external to the carrier, with the exception of Directory Services, which is always 555-1212.
The extension is the last 4 digits of the 7-digit phone number. This is, was, and always will be a required part of dialing a number. The only way to escape dialing entirely is to have the operator connect you, which is still available... for a price.
Accepted dialing formats:
country-area-exchange-extension (11 digits, only required outside of the US, but allowed within it)
area-exchange-extension (10 digits, required when crossing an area boundary, otherwise allowed)
country-exchange-extension (8 digits, the old "long distance across town" dialing format, allowed, but not used anymore)
exchange-extension (7 digits, allowed ONLY when calling another number within the same area, currently the minimum number of digits allowed for a valid point-to-point call)
Special-case numbers (not an exhaustive list):
"911" (emergency services in most areas)
"811" (some areas use this for construction site utility marking)
"*55" (roadside assistance in some areas)
"0" (operator assistance)