Consumer magazine Which? has named and shamed companies that use costly helplines to make money at the expense of consumers. Over 30 organisations are named in their 'hall of shame', including Tiscali, AOL, Barclays, British Gas, TV Licensing and the DVLA - a government agency.

They all use higher-charging 0871, 0870, 0844 or 0845 numbers for customer service or technical support lines. Organisations that use these numbers often share the revenue from calls with the phone service provider. That means that the longer a customer stays on the line, the more the organisation earns.

The telecoms regulator, Ofcom, introduced 03 numbers last year, which cost the same as calling a geographic (01 or 02) number, and it plans to stop organisations making money from 0870 numbers. But none of the organisations checked by Which? had switched to 03, and some have just switched from 0870 to other high cost numbers.

AOL Broadband, British Gas and the DVLA kept people hanging on longest, with average waiting times of around three minutes. One call to AOL Broadband was held for more than 15 minutes, at a cost of 75p from a BT landline:


The DVLA made £3.4 million from its 0870 number in the last financial year. It says it plans to switch to a cheaper number but it hasn’t said when. Naturally Which? wants all companies to switch their helplines and technical support from expensive numbers to cheaper 03, 0800 (freephone) or geographic numbers.