What type of companies & organisations use 087s?

087s quite often gain a bad reputation for ripping people off and charging customers a premium rate for using them. They are generally used by large organisations and can sometimes cost more than a standard call to any landline, however, this is not the only purpose of companies and organisations that use them. There is actually another very valid reason, aside from the fact that they can make money by charging a premium and this is the fact that these numbers are not geographically based. This allows the freedom from more than one person to call from the same number from many different locations which can be helpful for call centres of large organisations that will perhaps move on more than one occasion, but the number will never change which is more convenient not just for the company but also for the customer, who will not be confused and will know exactly who is contacting them even if the location has changed.

Why use 087s?

There are a few uses for the numbers and they are used by many companies buying 0870 numbers today, the first and perhaps most prominent use is for information and support lines for customers to ring should they have any questions about a company and the service or goods they provide. For example, Admiral car insurance and many other insurance providers use an them for customers to contact for information about policies and services provided. Using this allows more than one location to operate the phone line and it will be chargeable for the customer to use. Another use is as a safe, secure booking service for any travel or event tickets that somebody may have bought. An example of this would be ticket master who provide an this kind of contact number for customers to call and make reservations and book tickets for things and also many holiday operators and travel agents will use these numbers to book holidays for customers. Companies may use these numbers internally as well in order to create a safe and secure environment for conference calls to be made.

As well as commercial and serious use of the 087 numbers by companies, there is also another side where numbers are often used in the entertainment industry, such as for dating sites, like match.com and many other uses, for adult chat and adult entertainment, many chat lines exist for this kind of thing. The other side to the numbers uses can also be things like horoscopes for the more superstitious, even through to things like fortune telling and psychic readings, which can now all be done through the phone on one of these.

Buying 087s

It is also worth mentioning that in this day and age, calls to these types of numbers are now included in both home phone landline phone subscriptions as well as mobile phone contracts, so the customer can interact with 087 numbers like any other number. However, this will vary from contract to contract and company to company. This is something that needs to be checked as if it is not included as part of the bill, then in fact the customer will be charged a premium to ring these numbers. From a BT landline for example, calls will cost 12 – 25 pence per minute, with an additional 13 pence to make the call in the first place, which doesn’t seem too bad, however from a mobile phone with O2, customers may be charged anywhere from 45 – 68 pence per minute and another 13 pence to make the call in the first place. When considering the fact that many of these numbers will slowly give out information and calls could last up to a couple of minutes, just to get through to an advisor, it is easy to see how these can and have been annoying for customers, which is why many plans now include calls to these numbers free of charge.

On top of this, many companies have seen a decline in the use of these numbers, because of these complaints about being charged extra and more and more companies are referring back to free help and support lines without taking advantage of the customer.