KARACHI, Feb 4: The Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL) has launched ill-prepared “premium rate services” whose various system errors are costing its more than 800,000 subscribers dearly.

Informed sources in the PTCL told Dawn on Monday that the phone utility was leaning over backwards to provide facilities to two firms which had been allowed to set up what the PTCL calls premium rate services having telephone numbers beginning with 0900.

The two firms running premium rates services are ZRG, with the telephone number 0900-10111, and ARY, having the telephone number 0900-27936.

“Under the terms stipulated in the agreement that the PTCL has signed with these firms, the phone utility nets 40 per cent of the total revenue earned by them. This is a lot of money and if this requires looking the other way for a while as these firms make a killing, the PTCL is more than willing to do that,” the sources said.

A large number of customer services divisional engineers at various telephone exchanges told Dawn that they had been inundated with complaints and inquiries regarding the premium rate services.

“Holding highly inflated phone bills in their hands, people ask why they were not properly informed of the fact that the premium rate services are far more expensive than the local calls. When they are told that the advertisements of premium rate services mention that they are costlier than local calls, the complainants point out that most advertisements mention this fact in the smallest possible type face,” they said.

The vexed divisional engineers said it was beyond them why the PTCL had itself placed advertisements in the national dailies announcing the rates of premium services when it could have easily made it mandatory for the firms running the services to publicise the rates.

Recently, the PTCL announced the rates of premium services. The service provider in the country, ARY, charges the following rates: For social info, Rs6.93 per minute; for legal info consumer service, Rs13.86 per minute; for financial info, chat line, Rs27.73 per minute; for sports, Rs41.60 per minute; and for interactive sports via TV, Rs25.42 per minute.

The service provider in the city, ZRG, charges the following rates: For social info, Rs6.93 per call; for legal consumer survey, Rs13.86 per call; for financial info chat line, Rs13.86 per minute; and for sports, Rs18.49 per minute.

Oddly enough, even the seemingly well-intentioned advertisement omits to mention the telephone numbers to which these rates are applicable.

Insiders told Dawn that the PTCL had been using the complaints as feedback to improve the system without compensating the subscribers. “For instance, initially there was no code barring facility on premium rate services. When the PTCL was deluged with complaints of misuse of telephones for these services, the phone utility, willy-nilly, opened the code barring facility. But all those subscribers who had reason to suspect that their telephone numbers had been misused to dial premium rate services had to the pay the bill.”

They added that the reason why the PTCL had not opened the code barring facility initially was that the firms running the premium rate services had opposed the idea. “Their prediction that a code barring facility on premium rate services would restrict its use was right. Before the introduction of the code barring facility, at least 40,000 calls were made every day. Now the number has come down to 10,000.”

They said the PTCL was currently working on other complaints. “According to one complainant, his bill shows that he made three calls to 0900-10111 in one second which is practically impossible. Similarly, another complainant says that his bill shows that he was charged Rs10.60 for using a premium rate service for 10 seconds. But for using the same service for seven seconds he is charged Rs20.30.”