Premium line complaints drop by more than half UK punters are more than twice as happy with premium-rate services than they were last year, according to the industry regulator PhonepayPlus. The figures come with the regulator's quarterly report for the last three months of 2009, showing a major improvement over the same period of 2008 (pdf). Back in 2008, complaints about …
That wouldn't surprise me at all. Not many folk probably knew about ICTIS (or whatever that heck it was called) and now that the've changed their name something that what frankly sounds fourty-years out of date (I mean payphones? Who remembers those? Garlic bread? Bukaroo?) I'm not surprised no one complains/bothers to get refunds.
Or maybe its just that most people who have bad (i.e. un-horny) service on a hand shandy line are too embarrassed to complain! I mean, have they ever had a complaint from someone saying the women on the naughty-housewives line were crap?
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According to http://www.phonepayplus.org.uk/output/087-Number-Range.aspx 0871, 0872 and 0873 are now classed as premium rate so you can complain in the same way as for 09 numbers.
084 numbers don't seem to be covered.
0845 and 0870 are included in inclusive calls on BT landlines and some other providers.
Made a few myself to the various regulators - depending on which aspect of the operation was in breach of the various codes. Usually get a result.
There are even helpful websites out there that you can post news of the various scams to.
Sadly no one seems to be able/willing to bar the serial offenders from operating these lines which is what is really needed.
Phone users are not "twice as happy with premium-rate services than they were last year". I suspect that a majority then and now are not happy with premium-rate services at all, but are not using the services, so it doesn't become an issue. The regulator changing name - which I hadn't noticed myself, I would have been looking for the old one - also may have cut the rate of complaints. Maybe only half as many people are using premium services this year and the rate of dissatisfaction is unchanged.
The name change was over 2 years ago, October 2007, as mentioned in this very tome, http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/06/19/icstis_rebrand_phonepayplus/ so that is unlikely to be attributable to any downturn in complaints from 2008 to 2009.
That said you are on to something with the semantics, not so much phone users are twice as happy, probably closer to half as unhappy.
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