Friday 2 May 2008

BBC Northern Ireland Ticket Unit

The BBC in Northern Ireland organizes and sponsors many musical events in partnership with the Ulster Orchestra. I support these Invitation Concerts. The BBC deserves a lot of credit and gratitude for this. Indeed, it is a wonderful service to the local community. I keep a close eye on their web page for forthcoming concerts.

If you wish to attend the concerts, you either phone the Ticket Unit on the rip-off 0870 number, 0870 901 1227, or you could write to them. I usually write to them.

I sent them a message by email the other day, asking a perfectly innocent question: How much do they charge, per minute, if you phone them? So far, I have had no response.

Why can licence-payers not apply for tickets online? Why is BBC Northern Ireland reluctant to disclose, or take seriously, my query as to the cost of their rip-off 0870 line?

Why don't they simply admit that it's a means of making a profit? How much does BBC Northern Ireland earn from calls to the rip-off 0870 Ticketline number?

4 comments :

Alan in Belfast (Alan Meban) said...

Their Contact us page says it's charged at national rate. For BT customers, that's currently 6p per minute (6am-6pm) and 1.5p per minute (6pm-6am) if I can correctly interpret the complicated pricing webpages.

Timothy Belmont said...

That's not too bad. 6p per minute is fairly reasonable. It might even be cheaper than a postage stamp :-)

Tim

Anonymous said...

Have a look on www.saynoto0870.com and see if you can connect to the Ticket Unit via the BBC Switchboard.

Timothy Belmont said...

Hi Mike,

I tried that awhile ago. They refused to transfer me. :-(

It shouldn't be beyond their capabilities to have online booking, if they wanted to.