Does calling an 809 or 0809 number charge you £1500? Fact Check

Messages are spreading via email or social media that claim crooks are tricking victims into calling an 0809 phone number, which is actually a foreign phone number that will charge callers £1500 (or $1500) a minute at a premium rate.

An example of the warning, collected in 2014, can be seen below.

809 Area Code
We actually received a call last week from the 809 area code. The woman said “Hey, this is Karen. Sorry I missed you- get back to us quickly. I have something important to tell you.” Then she repeated a phone number beginning with 809. We did not respond. Then this week, we received the following e-mail:
Do Not DIAL AREA CODE 809, 284, AND 876 from the UK
THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT INFORMATION PROVIDED TO US BY AT&T. DONT EVER DIAL AREA CODE 809
This one is being distributed all over the UK … This is pretty scary, especially given the way they try to get you to call. Be sure you read this and pass it on. They get you to call by telling you that it is information about a family member who has been ill or to tell you someone has been arrested, died, or to let you know you have won a wonderful prize, etc..
In each case, you are told to call the 809 number right away. Since there are so many new area codes these days, people unknowingly return these calls.
If you call from the UK you will apparently be charged a minimum of £1500-per-minute and youll get a long recorded message. The point is, they will try to keep you on the phone as long as possible to increase the charges.

The messages – which have been circulated online in various forms since the 1990s – are loosely based on a real scam, but contain too much inaccurate information to be of any real use.

Over the years, the messages have claimed to come from Greater Manchester police, Sussex police or even US telecoms giant AT&T. However none of those organisations were responsible for this message. (AT&T even debunked the warning here.)

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Such messages describe the “one ring scam”, which is where crooks trick victims into calling premium rate numbers by either ringing them and hanging up straight away waiting for a callback, or by leaving them a recorded message with a premium number to call back on. This scam is real, and readers should be wary of it, especially if the phone number seems unusual. But messages like the one above contain plenty of inaccuracies.

The main inaccuracy, for example, is the claim in most of these messages that purport an instant £1500 per-minute fee, which is simply false. No telecoms company, local or international, promote such outlandish charges. The costs of International calls are regulated, and most will be around a few pounds or dollars per minute, depending on your country, country being called and phone company. For example, at the time of writing, a call from the UK to the Dominican Republic using British Telecom (BT) costs £1.20 per minute to a landline or £1.50 per minute to a mobile. A £1500 purported fee is simply absurd, and impossible.

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Many versions of this message also make the claim that calling a number beginning with 809 or 0809 from a UK phone will result in the scam taking place, since this is the prefix for the Dominican Republic (or other foreign country.) However this is not accurate, since to connect to a Dominican Republic phone number, a UK caller could need to first dial the international access code of 00, followed by the Dominican Republic code +1 – so ‘001’ in full, followed by the rest of the number. Simply typing 809 or 0809 would not connect you.

It’s also inaccurate for messages to claim or imply that this is an emerging, trending or popular type of scam, since it’s not. It’s a real type of scam, but it has been around for many years, even decades, and this warning (or close variants of it) has been circulated for decades as well.

Of course, don’t call unrecognised numbers and be wary of suspicious recorded messages that want you to call a phone number. But also don’t fall for this inaccurate (and ancient) tripe.