Sad fact in people get divorced and facts are a very high percentage of us males are less than shall we say generous when it comes to child maintenance. That is why the Child Support Agency have been in existence for a while now..to make those less willing to errr…cough up. We have been campaigning for a while now to stop companies profits from these types of calls with their so called “directory services”.
Well it seems like google / PPP have taken action and put a stop to the advertising for search like child support agency, csa phone number and the majority of these “directory services” have ceased to take advantage of those struggling single mothers or penniless fathers at least attempting to settle their obligations. The last thing they need is being ripped off calling an expensive premium rate phone line to be told they have to call their local agency.
So its pleasing to see our work is finally starting to yield results and a search on google now for csa phone number etc looks very clean on the cockroach front….well we were pleased until we searched Yahoo. It seems those service providers with less morals have found a way to flout this and are clearly still profit from others miserable situation and suffering. Well we say to Psychic Media Ltd (owners of fastphonenumbers.co.uk ) and Square1 Communications Limited the telco also profiting from this and continuing to do so …shame on you.
If we did a little more research you will find The Register have already run a story about fastphonenumbers.co.uk and Square1 Communications Limited along with another company called RedPlay Media Ltd who it seems have been fined £50,000 in November 2012 by PPP the regulator and made to be compliant (the rules or guidelines as they like to call them were released early in the year for all operators of this service)
The Guardian also ran a feature on fastphonenumbers.co.uk outfit back in March and here is the link about the NHS phone scam they ran and also child benefit which they also continue to advertise on. We have some questions for http://www.phonepayplus.org.uk/ and well let you know how they respond.
You will see below the screen shot of our Yahoo search and the advert quite clearly prominent at the top of the search results. You will also see quite clearly the page on fastphonenumbers.co.uk promoting their Child support helpline on a premium rate number.
or you could even try MSN….
and then you can click through and find yourself here
or maybe you’d like to be really double unlucky that day and go and renew your child tax credits to top up your child maintenance that has just costs you £12 for 6 minutes on hold like we did to be told we had to call another number. So this what you get on Bing which is Microsoft search engine and this is what you get.
so we thought we would just keep taking screen shots because we thought a picture does paint a thousand words…or in this case just one question. Why has this companies activities not been investigated by PhonePayPlus when so many others have already been fined and had the error of their ways corrected? We will let you know if PPP give us our answer!
We found this one for Serious Fraud Office and Trading Stanards quite amusing and ironic but i’m not sure they do? Email them and ask them we have and somebody is investigating. It is shame PhonePayPlus are not investigating the activities of Psychic Media Ltd (owners of fastphonenumbers.co.uk ) and Square1 Communications Limited.
So lets take a breath for a minute my head is spinning with all these vulnerable people being exploited. What do PhonePayPlus think of advertising on vulnerable brands?
How about pensioners?
No us either…seems fastphonenumbers.co.uk are laughing for the last few years. Well we say its about time they were stopped, and made to take a more ethical approach to their business and we have been asking for an investigation for quite sometime now but nothing seems to happen.
How about EMA..thats Education Maintenance Allowance to you and me pocket money from the goverment for 16-19 year old students. Are they fair game for upto £3 per minute from mobiles (a bargain £1.54 from BT) And you wonder why your kids are always asking for money for mobile credit?
so when you think vulnerable people certain words of advice spring to mind that you want to know they could call and get advice..social services, local councils, citizens advice. Well no because they are even advertising on on citizens advice
How about sick or injured animals…and charity.
How about the unemployed …yeap thats right they are fair game as well according to fastphonenumbers.co.uk and PPP
As the final piece of evidence we having misleading pricing. The About Us page of http://www.fastphonenumbers.co.uk has incorrect pricing information. It states its 1.53 per call when it should state that it is £1.53 per minute.
Consumer Investigations 