Try this site

http://www.saynoto0870.co.uk/search.php

and never pay again!
In most cases you get a quicker reply and often without the "push this button" after all they're not making money by keeping you on the phone!!

0845 used to be 0345 and was advertised as lo-call, inferring it's cheap, I haven't come across an expensive 0845 number, unless I connect with my prepay mobile, looking at my landline phone bill it looks like 0845 numbers cost about 3.5p a minute.
I do object to the term 'local rate' as a fifteen minute call to my bank costs over 50p, but the same call to my friend on a 0208 number costs anything from 0p to 20p depending on the time of day, so there's nothing 'local rate' about it, though I don't think I would go so far as to call it a premium rate number, which I go out of my way not to call.
The only thing about 0845 number that you could possibly protest about is that it is advertised as a 'local rate', however there are now lots of telephone operators out there now and you would need to get an average price across the entire network of operators to determine what really is the average cost of local rate.

IMHO 0845 numbers are partly a carry over from when companies provided it to their customers as a benefit 'wherever you are in the country, you will all pay the same' which has never been revisited.

And to a certain extent this is still the case- not everyone has a package which includes free minutes (Mine doesnt, primarily as we only have the home phone line to receive calls and for Sky, so isnt cost effective for me to pay a higher rental to reduce the call charges).

Personally, I would say that you may be paying for an 0845 number, but wouldnt for an 01..., 02.... number. However if all the companies switched to this, the telecoms companies income would reduce, thereby forcing them to recover this lost revenue elsewhere - so you would probably end up paying for it elsewhere maybe less free minutes, higher tarriffs for other calls etc.)

Fiamold aka Dave

these numbers are supposed to help us, 0845 being local call rate and 0870 national ? however with all the FREE CALLS FROM EVERY LAND LINE PACKAGE THEY MAY AS WELL JUST GIVE OUT STRAIGHT LAND LINE NUMBER ! , but smaller SME's sound like big company you see and thats why some of them use it.

0845 number really, really annoy me. I do see them as an indirect charge, and a direct response to evolution of package phone calls. My solution is to call them from my mobile as i have so many bundled minutes that it makes no odds to me and 0845 numbers are included (actually, better check that, maybe). I'm not sure what happens with other numbers so perhaps I'd better check that, too.

It's the same old story - with one hand we are given the ability to save money, then with the other, conditions or restrictions on that are exploited so that we don't.

I try to avoid calling 0845 as much as I avoid calling 0870 - to me, they are the same (sorry, but couldn't avoid the mention of 0870).

Cat

Nowadays the vast majority of companies have customer service lines open to extend outside peak times. Therefore I think I am correct in saying that many of us can call 'geographic numbers' (01, 02 etc) for up to 60 mins or 70 mins 'free'. I know that 'moneysavingexpert' has waged a long standing war against 0845 numbers and others. If you agree with me that, on the face of it, 0845 is a cheek does anyone have any ideas on how 'we' could protest effectively? OR If I have missed something like 0845 is an indirect charge to the customer which would simply be slapped on somewhere else, please tell me. And finally, I have purposely left all other numbers out of this post and particularly '0870' because that is expensive and known to be so, so that is another post. I appreciate that people like to 'get off the point' and that is 'custom and practice' BUT I would like to request that no other numbers like 0870 are brought into getting off the point. Thank you, franc.