Trying to buy football tickets by phone cost me £200 Clearly I had absolutely no idea that each call of around one or two seconds each would be charged at a minimum rate of 29p. This meant a bill of £194. I was offered 15pc off the bill but this is a tiny fraction and does not really help. PS, Bucks Vodafone said information about call charges was available on its website. It takes, it said, two clicks from the home page to find the cost of calling non-geographic numbers. It said you could have checked also by calling in. Vodafone stressed that, while it makes revenue from calls to these numbers, a significant proportion of the charges go to the providers of the service. Such organisations are not duty-bound to advise in the recorded message about charges to the number, and it is their decision if they choose not to. Ofcom, the telecommunications regulator, confirmed there is no requirement for a pre-call announcement to detail the costs to the consumer of the call except in the case of 0800 numbers being rung from a mobile. This is because they will be free from a landline but not a mobile. However, there are rules applying when such a number is published. A price indication should be given and then say, for example, that calls from a mobile "could cost considerably more." New rules on communicating pricing for all 08 and 09 numbers are to be enacted in June 2015. These will split costs into two elements, for the service provider and the telephone operator, and so make for a more transparent service. Meanwhile the communications ombudsman to whom you took the complaint turned it down. I suggested you write to the football club, of which you have been a supporter for 40 years, to see if it or its agents might consider reimbursing that part of the proceeds that it made out of this. Being a fan of the club might just add some strength to your bow. Also you might reconsider the 15pc off offer from Vodafone. You report that the football club ignored this appeal at first but that, when you mentioned you had approached it at my suggestion, it apologised for the delay and said it did not have a full-time legal department and your letters had been sidelined. It is a small club and uses intermediaries to sell tickets. But there is a positive result in that the club has offered four match tickets as a gesture of goodwill. These are worth about £72.