Forum Discussion
Re: [Announcement] BIG NEWS: You can now text shortcodes! 🎉
Hey all,
had a pretty scary incident today on the tube (but above ground). Wasn’t appropriate to call 999 as I didn’t want to alert the other person. And remembered “See it, say it, we’ll sort it. Text 61016”.
So I did exactly that. Unfortunately I got message sending failed. I couldn’t report this online as the BTP form was too cumbersome for a mobile. So I ended up being followed by someone until I could reach safety.
This really isn’t on, I’d understand if it was a premium shortcode but it’s a national police service I was trying to contact.
Please make your subscribers aware that this doesn’t work proactively! It really was relief when I remembered the number and fear when it didn’t work!
5 Replies
This is really pretty poor customer service from SMARTY RoCoUK.
Considering SMARTY allow use of these short-codes: 65075, 75075 and 85075 - hard to see why an SMS to 61016 would need to be blocked.
Perhaps make a complaint, to add weight to the community voice on short-codes, as MSF suggests.
#LessSMARTY, #MoreMalarkey 🤔
Turns out this is a common thing (and not just limited to Smarty) in that '61016' is deemed a premium rate number. It's not the BTP that sets this rate but the mobile networks (something around ~13p or so; similar to a standard text). I guess its because although 101 is the non-emergency number, the 6's are commonly used for texts.
The BTP also don't advertise it as having a charge, because it shouldn't ... but on the other hand they could have chosen to use a number that was free? Down to the networks if they should be waiving fees for this and make it accessible. I did note the BTP site does mention the following as an alternative if you can't reach them via text:
However, you can email us at first_contact@btp.police.uk or call us on 0800 40 50 40 if you do not want to text us.
