Post by account_disabled on Feb 22, 2024 5:46:28 GMT -5
The Ministry of Consumer Affairs is preparing a law to eliminate premium rate telephone numbers , such as 902, for involving "abuse and extra costs" for the consumer , especially in a context governed by COVID-19 in which customer service receive more inquiries than ever. The holder of the portfolio, Alberto Garzón , thus fulfills a historic demand of consumer associations such as FACUA, which have been demanding the end of customer service telephone lines with additional charges for more than a decade .
"They cannot be a cost to the pockets of consumers and a business for a few companies ," sources from the Ministry assure Business Insider Spain . In principle, 902 was created so that companies could provide telephone service to those who needed it . Since national calls were too expensive, these numbers balanced the balance so that calling a company based in Lithuania Mobile Number List another province had an affordable cost, but over time the rates have changed. Not so the prices. "Today, where all operators offer flat rates for calls from landlines and mobiles, 902 have become obsolete [...] and represent high surcharges on households' monthly bills," the same sources specify. Read more: Numbers with special rates: How much does it cost to call 901, 902 and 803, 806 and 807? With this on the table, the prefixes 901, 902, 807, etc.
They are numbers not included in bonuses or flat rates whose amount is higher than that of normal calls; In this way, their original function would have been outdated in favor of a lucrative business for telephone companies and the companies that continue to use them to make money with each consultation. "That is why they are reluctant to replace it with numbers that do not represent an extra cost," FACUA denounces . The Ministry falls into the same approach, which proposes the prohibition of numbers as a measure of "social justice" in which telephone attention is not conditioned by the economic resources of the consumer nor does it represent an extra charge for their monthly bills, "whether they are customers or not".