I live on the North Shore in Auckland and have a residential connection with Slingshot on TNBT plan which includes a home phone line.

I noticed that when I made toll calls, I didn’t need to dial the area code before the 7 digit number. This means, I can never tell if I’m making a toll call or a local call.

I made a test toll call to MAHURANGI TECHNICAL INSTITUTE by only dialing 425 8493 . The call is connected and is charged as a toll call, despite the fact I never dialed the area code (09)

This happened on several occasions last month and the fact is, if I knew these calls were toll calls, I wouldn’t have spoken for as long as I did

Telecom NZ have always played an automated message to callers if they attempted to dial a toll number without the area code. The message would tell them that they were attempting to make a toll call and if they wanted to complete the call, to hang up and redial the number with the area code in front of the number

Is Slingshot in the wrong here or are they able to connect toll calls through without an area code entered? Surely there are some ethical telecommunication guidelines, if not legal guidelines that telecommunications companies have to abide by? I would expect this to be one of those guidelines

This has been briefly discussed on the Slingshot forums but I thought I’d bring it out to the masses as I haven’t received an official word from Slingshot through their forums. I attempted to ask a CSR about the issue but it was obviously way over their head and they had no idea what I was talking about. The CSR’s recommendation was to check each number I dialed through the local directory to find out if it’s a toll call or not.