What are premium rate services?
Premium rate services (PRS) are goods and services that you can buy by charging the cost to your phone bill. You can charge these costs whether you have a landline or a mobile phone - whether you pre-pay your phone bill by buying credit or pay a regular, monthly bill.
Premium rate services typically offer information and entertainment services, which can be accessed through landline phones, mobile phones, fax, interactive digital TV, the Internet or an auto-dialler on a computer. Premium rate services are promoted in newspapers and magazines and on television, radio and the Internet. They can also be promoted directly to mobile handsets.
Examples include:
- Competitions
- TV voting (for example, The X Factor)
- Sports alerts (for example, goal alerts)
- Weather forecasts
- Ringtones and wallpapers
- Quiz television services
- Chatline services
- Donations to charities
- Mobile subscription costs (where there is a recurring cost)
- Games
- Horoscopes
- Psychics or other entertainment services
- Sexual entertainment services
- Business information (e.g. some technical support lines)
How do you recognise premium rate services?
Premium rate services are provided on premium rate telephone numbers. Premium rate voice services begin with 15 e.g. 1515 or 1530. There are also premium rate text services which are 5 digit short codes, beginning with the number 5 i.e.5xxxx.
Calls to Premium Rate Services cost more than ordinary telephone calls (see the charges section of this website for more information) and the cost depends on the number prefix. Please be aware that call charges from mobile phones generally cost more.
