Premium Rate Phone and Text

As you know, Heart 106.2 uses premium rate telephone or text numbers on some of its programmes – sometimes for contacting a presenter, or for getting information, or for entering a competition.

You’ll have seen a lot of media coverage about concerns that have arisen to do with premium rate phone numbers used on some TV shows. These issues are being investigated by the regulator of premium rate services – called ICSTIS. Even if the allegations are found to be true, they are isolated cases and we believe that you can enter a premium rate competition on any TV or radio station and be confident that it will be fair and transparent.

When the media coverage of the TV problems started, we wanted to be absolutely sure that you could call our radio stations with confidence, knowing that you weren’t going to be ripped off. We immediately instigated a review of all the premium rate services we run on this station. We asked all the companies who manage those services for us to give us a detailed explanation of how they ensure that you only pay what we’ve told you you’re going to pay if you call or text us. And we checked our internal procedures to make sure that you’re given accurate information about the cost of a call or text to us, and that you’re not asked to call us to enter a competition when that competition has already closed.

You’ll be pleased to know that we didn’t find any problems.

Our aim is to entertain you. We know – because you’ve told us – that you love the competitions we run on Heart 106.2 and you enjoy taking part in them and listening to them. We want to keep it that way. That’s why we’re making these promises:

• Whenever we ask you to call or text us on a premium rate number, we’ll make sure you know how much you’ll be charged for that call or text.

• When we’ve told you how much a call or text will cost, that’s what it will cost. There are always going to be some small variations in cost depending on who your phone service is with (and we’ve explained a bit about that below), but you should still be able to look at your bill and match up the cost of the call or text with what we told you it would be.

• When we stop accepting entries to a competition, we’ll tell you not to call or text any more. If you still try and call or text, you will get billed for it and there’s nothing we can do about that. You should have listened!

• If you think we’ve done something wrong, or broken any of these promises, we want to know about it. You can contact us and we promise someone will get back to you within 48 hours. If we have done something wrong, we’ll fix it – including by paying you back for any amount you might have been overcharged. If we haven’t done anything wrong, we’ll explain to you why.

If you still think there’s a problem, all premium rate services are regulated by ICSTIS, so you can then take your complaint to them. They can be contacted at:

ICSTIS
FREEPOST WC5468
London
SE1 2BR

or they have an online complaint form at: www.icstis.org.uk

It’s worth going to their website before you make a complaint to check what information they need from you before they can investigate your complaint.

Remember that all of our competitions, whether they use premium rate numbers or not, have terms and conditions, which you can find on our website.

Why do you use premium rate numbers?
We invest a lot of money in making Heart the best radio station it can be. That means having the great presenters that you love, the news and information you need, and the innovative features and brilliant competition prizes that you expect. We use premium rate numbers as one way of helping us to pay for all this so that you can always expect high quality, entertaining radio from us. The cost of each individual call or text is not high, but when thousands of people call or text us, it adds up and helps us keep the station sounding as good as it does.

Where does the money go?
The charges for phone calls and texts on premium rate numbers are split four ways. Your own phone company will take some of it, as they do for every call you make or text that you send. Then there is another phone company running the premium rate number itself. On top of that, we use specialist companies to handle the calls and texts for us because they have expertise and equipment that we don’t have. We then get what’s left.

How do I know if a number I’m calling or texting is a premium rate number?
Because we’ll always tell you so! If you’re not sure, you can usually tell by looking at the dialling code. On a normal phone number, the dialling code will start with ‘01’ or ’02’, and you can tell from the dialling code which town you’re calling. Premium rate numbers usually start with ‘08’ or ‘09’ and they don’t tell you anything about where in the country your call is going to.

Some numbers aren’t premium rate but may look like they are. ‘0845’ and ‘0870’ numbers, for example, are charged at normal local or national rates. ‘0800’ and ‘0808’ numbers are free. Phone numbers are regulated by Ofcom, and you can find out more information on their website: www.ofcom.org.uk.

For texting, we often use what are called ‘short-code’ numbers – just five digits long, like 81062. We’ll always let you know if a text to this number is charged at premium rate.

Understanding how the costs work
When we ask you to call or text us on a premium rate number – that is, a number where the cost is different from phoning an ordinary landline (i.e. non-mobile) number – we have to tell you how much you will pay to make that call or send that text.

Most of the time, you will be charged a fixed cost per call. That means that, no matter how long the call is, the cost will be the same.

Sometimes, we’ll give you a call cost per minute. In these cases, the longer you’re on the phone, the more the call will cost you. When this happens, we’re not allowed to make the call last longer than it absolutely has to, so you know that we’re not prolonging the call just to make more money.

Texts are charged on a per text basis, so the more texts you send, the more you’ll pay. Sometimes, the way we charge for texts is by sending a text message back to you which you pay to receive. What you’ll see on your bill is the normal cost for sending a text – which depends on who your phone network is and what charges they apply – and then a separate cost for receiving the text back from us. It’s that second cost that we tell you about on the radio.

What does ‘network charge’ mean?
We know how much we’re charging you to call or text us. What we don’t know is how much your telephone service provider is also charging you. That depends on the telephone company and what kind of deal you have with them. That’s why you’ll hear us say that a “network charge may apply” or that “network charges may vary”.

When we tell you how much a phone call will cost, it’s on the basis that you are calling from a BT landline. Other phone companies may impose other charges for that call. And, of course, it may cost you more to call us from a mobile phone than from a landline. Those costs, imposed by the phone companies, are the ‘network charge’.

The same is true with text messages. You may be on a deal that lets you send texts for free. If you’re not, then you’ll pay your phone company a ‘network charge’ for each text you send. These vary from phone company to phone company, and they may also vary depending on the number you’re texting (some networks, for example, may charge less to text someone on the same network than they do for texting someone on a different network). The cost we tell you about is what you pay in addition to whatever charge your network applies. So, for example, if we tell you that your text will cost 25p and your network also charges you 10p per text, then you’ll actually pay 35p. You may see this on your bill as 10p to send the text, and 25p to receive a text back from us.

There are too many different networks, and too many different pricing packages, changing too frequently for us to keep up with them and read them out on air, or even put them on our website. That’s why we say “network charges apply”, so you know that your phone company may impose an additional cost on top of what we’ve told you you’ll pay for the call or text. If you want to know what the network charge would be for your phone, you should contact your phone company.

We hope that we’ve explained how premium rate charges work and reassured you that the way we use them is fair and transparent. We also hope that you will continue to enjoy listening to, and participating in, our features and competitions. If you have any questions or concerns, we want to hear them. Please feel free to contact us by filling in the form below.

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