Premium rate number adds up.

 If you are trying to book your seats for the FA Cup replay against Manchester United this week, it is perhaps best you don't use your mobile phone, or before you do perhaps check what your phone companies access charge is on top of the 13p per minute the club are charging.

Most mobile networks charge an access fee of between 44p and 45p on top of the 13p per minute charge. 

After the recent Liverpool FA cup game, many were caught out with huge mobile phone bills as the queue to get tickets led to some supporters  spending hours on the phone only to receive bills of between 40 and 100 pounds. The club get a revenue share of the 13p element of the call for every minute that a fan spends on the phone.

Do the club need to be charging 13p a minute by using a premium rate ticket line just to be able to buy tickets, especially when you consider that the club’s ticketing website regularly crashes under the strain of fans trying to buy tickets this season. Why would the club change from its old 0207 number that would generally be included in fans mobile phone tariffs, well perhaps the answer lies in the clubs accounts of 2015

Yes thats right, the company that provides the premium rate phone system is in part owned by the two Daves.

Telecoms2 paid the club over £63,000 as it's share of income from the ticket office  phone number. Money which is taken from the fans ringing up to

buy tickets. Not bad income really on both sides of the coin for the club owners but do they really need to get the fans to pay extra on top of the already inflated ticket prices, not forgetting if you're ringing up the club, you're paying a booking fee for the tickets as well.

This is not a new charge though, just go back last year and Claret and Hugh ran a story asking the club to end this phone line rip off

http://www.claretandhugh.info/the-hidden-west-ham-tax/ 

On West Ham till I Die, another article from 2014 points out the times he has to phone the premium rate number when the ticket office made mistakes, so in fact he was earning the club money off the back of the constant mistakes the club made. https://www.westhamtillidie.com/posts/2014/10/01/the-farce-that-is-the-west-ham-united-ticket-office

Perhaps this is one cost the club could easily scrap to win back some goodwill with the fans that have run up bills trying to just buy tickets..

 Though by the look of the testimony found on

Telecom2’s website it may not be forthcoming, especially as it has doubled revenues the unnamed club received from its partnership.

 Reference from a co-owner of an unnamed Premier

League club

So I will  repeat the call of Claret and Hugh last year which I am sure would be supported by any fan that uses the phone system. It is time to end this hidden tax in buying a tickets and come clean. Some things are worth more than money and the goodwill it will generate will far outstrip the £60,000 income the receive from fans just wanting to buy tickets.

Update, 
having checked the other 19 Premier League clubs ticket phone lines i have found that 6 other clubs have 0871 numbers, 
Chelsea, Newcastle, Sunderland, Norwich City, Swansea and Crystal Palace.
Two clubs have 0344 local call charge numbers, all others have a phone number local to the area they play in.