.......by unscrupulous businesses and fraudsters

• Numbers beginning with 09, 087, 070 and 118 are charge premium rates
• Heart Communications is the latest firm to be punished for misleading callers
• It has been fined £165,000 by the Phone-paid Services Authority

Millions of people are making calls to costly phone numbers every year - unaware of the price. Those beginning with 09, 087 and 118 are premium rate numbers, while those starting 070 – commonly mistaken for mobile phone numbers - are also more expensive rates. Unscrupulous businesses and fraudsters use these prefixes to turn a profit from unsuspecting callers.

The latest to be punished is Heart Communications, which lured job seekers online and led them to dial a premium rate number at £2.50 a minute.It has been fined £165,000 by the Phone-paid Services Authority. Visitors to the paidpeople.co.uk and ukassignments.co.uk websites thought they would be given details of opportunities for work. After providing personal details, they were told to call an 09 number and asked questions by an operator. Calls could last more than 15 minutes. Prices were not labelled clearly on the website and complaints were not dealt with fairly, the authority said. The regulator has banned Heart from offering these services until it has tidied up its act and told it to refund customers with legitimate claims.

oanne Prowse, PSA chief executive, says: 'The firm misled consumers and failed to resolve complaints quickly, easily or fairly.' Parent regulator Ofcom has also capped the cost of 070 calls. These were designed to be 'follow me' numbers, where calls can be diverted to another number. But fraudsters are using the 070 prefix in fake job adverts and in deliberate missed calls. They count on people not spotting the trap and simply phoning back Dialling can cost between 45p and £1.10 a minute. Last year there were 2.6 million calls to 070 numbers – a fifth involving fraud

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