About the Author:
Chris Rand is a technical journalist and website publisher from Cambridge, England. His interests will become quite clear with a quick glance at this website, although as the site has been around for the best part of ten years now, there are a lot of historic artefacts too.
Here are the main things people come here for, apart from the rants...
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Cherry Hinton Blues
Occasionally Updated. Rarely Rated.
Thursday, August 21, 2003
Cheapest directory enquiries calls
Yet another example at the moment of the "all competition is good" mantra which our sadly-deluded successive governments have fallen for. This weekend the telephone directory enquiries service gets opened up to commercial alternatives. They've made the new numbers as unmemorable as possible (118 xxx, what's that all about?) so inevitably people are going to the one which advertises the most, and guess who pays for that? The price differentials are frightening and all I can say is, visit the brilliant Money Saving Expert website, where the guy who runs it, Martin Lewis, has gone through everything. He recommends: [1] Use the internet (like 192.com, which is free); [2] Sign up to One-Tel, which has a free directory enquiries service; or [3] use the cheapest services, 118 888 or 118 800, which will save a fortune on normal calls which he's tested. And never call connect which is hugely expensive.