What is Premium Rate?
Premium Rate services are those for which you are charged through your monthly phone bill or through credit on your mobile phone. These services tend to cost more than a normal phone call or text message.
How Do I Know If A Number Is Premium Rate?
Premium Rate numbers are accessed from your landline (starting with 09, 118, 0871, 0872 and 0873) or by sending a text from your mobile phone to a 5 digit number called a shortcode (e.g. 82122 or 83958). Not all services running on a shortcode are Premium Rate and we will tell you if there is a charge associated with a specific service.
What Kind Of Services Are Premium Rate?
The types of services available on Premium Rate can include:
- Competitions or voting by phone or text
- Recorded information lines or text alerts, such as news, sport or traffic updates and horoscopes.
- Live and virtual chat services
- Mobile ringtones, videos, images and games downloads
- Charity text donations
What Does ‘Standard Network Charge’ and ‘Network Extras’ mean?
We know and will always tell you how much we’re charging you to call or text us. What we don’t know is how much your phone service provider is also charging you. That depends on the telephone company and what kind of deal you have with them. That’s why you’ll hear us say that you will be charged your ‘standard network charge’ or that ‘network extras may apply’.
Every time you send a text, you pay your phone company a fee for doing so. These vary from phone company to phone company and may also vary depending on the number you’re texting to (some networks, for example, may charge less to text someone on the same network than they do for texting someone on a different network). This is known as ‘standard network charge’ and is usually around 10p to 12p. The cost we tell you about is what you pay in addition to whatever charge your network applies. So, for example, if you text to us costs 50p and your network also charges you 10p per text, then you’ll actually pay 60p. This should appear on your bill as two separate texts, one that you’ve sent to us charged at 10p and another that you’ve received back from us charged at 50p. In the case of Premium Rate services, texts sent at standard network rate are not included in any bundles you may have as part of your deal with your phone company and will always incur a charge.
The same is true when you call from your landline phone. When we tell you how much a phone call will cost, it’s on the basis that you are calling from a BT landline. BT and other phone companies may impose other charges for that call. And of course, it may cost you considerably more to us from a mobile phone than from a landline. These costs, imposed by the phone companies are the ‘network extras’.
There are too many networks and too many different pricing packages, changing too frequently, for us to keep up with them and read them out on air, or even put them on the website. That’s why we say “standard network charges” or “network extras”, so that you know that your phone company may impose an additional cost on top of what we’ve told you you’ll pay for the call or text. If you want to know what the network charge will be for your phone, you should contact your phone service provider.
What Is A Premium Rate Block?
Some phone companies have a Premium Rate Block installed on their lines as standard. You will recognise this as a long, continuous tone if you are trying to call us on one of our Premium Rate numbers. You can request for the block to be removed by calling your phone service provider.
Can I Access Premium Rate Services From Abroad?
Premium Rate services will not work if you are calling or texting from outside of the UK. Unfortunately if you are on holiday or away on business you will not be able to interact with our stations. Outside the UK includes the Channel Islands.
Our Premium Rate Promise
Our aim is to entertain you. We know – because you’ve told us – that you love the competitions we run and you enjoy listening to and taking part in them. We want to keep it that way. That’s why we’re making these promises:
- Whenever you call or text us on a premium rate number, we’ll make sure you know how much you’ll be charged for that call or text
- When we’ve told you much a call or text will cost, that’s what it’ll cost. There are always going to be some small variations in cost depending on who your phone service is with and the deal you’ve got with them (we’ve explained more about that above), but you should still be able to look at your bill and identify the call/text.
- When we stop accepting entries to a Premium Rate service, we’ll tell you not to call or text any more. If you still try and call or text, you may get billed for it and there’s nothing we can do about that. You should have listened!
- We will never sell your personal information to other companies. We may, from time to time, send you text messages or email communications with offers or services that may be relevant to you but these communications will always come from Global’s Make Some Noise or a carefully selected partner (if you have expressly opted in to receive messages from our partners). You will never be charged for receiving these messages and can opt out of receiving them in future by replying with the word STOP.
What If I Have A Query About Your Premium Rate Service?
If you think there is a problem with our Premium Rate services or would like to make a complaint, please call our customer service line on 03333 212196.
Calls to 03 numbers are charged at the same rate as calls to 01 and 02 numbers and count towards inclusive call allowances on landlines and mobile phones. Neither Global Radio or Global Charities make any profit from calls to this number.
Alternatively, you can write to us. Please send your query to: Premium Rate Manager, Global Radio Limited, 30 Leicester Square, London, WC2H 7LA
Regulation Of Premium Rate
Global Charities is registered with Premium Rate Services regulator PhonePay Plus. Our registration number is ORG831-51159-55647
We hope that this has explained how Premium Rate charges work and reassured you that the way we use them is fair and transparent. We also hope that you will continue to enjoy listening to and participating in our features and competitions. If you have any questions or concerns, we want to hear them, please feel free to get in touch.