I’ve just been speaking to David Hickson (see recent articles) and he pointed something out about the BT privacy at home thing that could be interesting. Please understand that neither I nor David are suggesting that anything like this is actually happening; this is just theoretical.

One of the things that I highlighted was that BT are obviously concerned about the number of consumers who are moving to alternative providers for their call traffic. This is driven by the fact that it can be significantly cheaper to buy your minutes from elsewhere.

Most CPS/LCR companies rely on telemarketing to contact consumers and let them know that they’re being ripped off by BT.

How can BT stop it’s competitors from helping consumers to save them money? Get them all to sign up to the TPS list so they can’t call them.

That’s just one (strongly anti-BT) point of view that you could take. As I said before, I’m not suggesting for a minute that this is the reason that BT are doing this. I’m sure they’ve just got the interest of the consumers at heart.

Regards,
db

I’ve no need to tell you that this industry has concerns about the number of TPS registrations.

It’s obviously with concern that I read about BT (who aren’t afraid of making a few sales calls themselves) who are promoting a new service called Privacy at home. This is sold to consumers as a way of stopping cold calls. It gives the consumer free caller display and automatically subscribes them to the TPS list.

I’ve a few issues with this - mainly because it’s a crooked as a nine bob note.

One of the conditions is that the consumer continues to make some calls using the BT network. This is aimed at getting call traffic back from the CPS/LCR providers that offer a much better deal than BT.

This in itself I don’t like - BT are using the current concern over telemarketing as a way to market something unrelated.

Secondly (and this is the really dodgy one), regarding TPS registration BT say:
“Of course, we’d like you to give your consent for BT to contact you after registration with news of genuine savings and improvements to our services.”

Yes - although they subscribe you to the TPS, BT are still going to make telemarketing calls to you. In fact; you’re likely to receive more calls then before.

Regards,
db