In a few years, short numbers with 4 digits or starting with 08 have become commonplace. For the companies called, as well as the hosts of voice servers, it is the jackpot: according to the consumer association UFC-Que Choisir, they generate an annual turnover of 2 billion euros. But, for the users, the addition ends up being salty! In addition, when you call from its unbundled line (Nine, Freebox ...) or from your laptop, they are downright deducted out of package.

? How to avoid them? Behind each premium number is a "geographical" number, that is, starting with 01, 02 ... The problem is that companies refuse to disclose them. But by being smart, we still end by catching the right number!

If you regularly call a person , his banker for example, you do not risk to ask for his direct line so that you do not have to go back through the host vocal server. And we insist!

We will "snoop" a little on the sites of companies and do not stop at the first number (national and paying!) Passing. For example, on pizzahut.fr, when you activate the search engine to find the restaurant of his city, one finds his coordinates as well as on a "real number"!

The company is asked to call the number from abroad . Because this is usually a classic number, since those starting with 08 are not accessible outside the national territory.

We surf the forums that allow users to exchange non-surcharged numbers . The pioneer? www.geonumbers.com, which lists no fewer than 5,000 premium-rate numbers and their "free" counterparts.

And because we really want regulations to evolve in the direction of consumers, we sign the national petition on www.petitionsurtaxe.org