As part of my occasional series on organisations which think they can tell you where and where not to link to them, I found a classic of the genre at easyJet’s website. Not only are they under the entirely mistaken impression that they can insist you only link to their front page, but they devote an entire page to utterly spurious conditions under which you are permitted to make that link.

Incidentally, the reason I discovered this page is because of a discussion in uk.legal.moderated about easyJet’s telephone number. On one of their websites, they present it as +44 871 244 2377, which, while technically the correct full international format, is somewhat confusing to UK-based customers who aren’t familiar with that format and try dialling it as presented, without the leading 0 necessary for national calls. As a result, many calls are going to a residential telephone line that happens to consist of the first six digits of easyJet’s number.

Obviously, that’s primarily the fault of the numpties who can’t understand a telephone number in international format, but, given that easyJet seem to want to make it hard to find (it doesn’t seem to be visible anywhere from a link on their main website, which may possibly be a reason why they don’t want people linking to it directly from the outside!), I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they’ve deliberately used that format alone in the hope that it will deter their less-intelligent customers from calling them. After all, it’s not as if they don’t have the space on the website to display the number in both national and international formats.

Incidentally, the number above is, of course, for easyJet Holidays, not the airline. The number for the airline is 0871 244 2366 – and please don’t forget that leading 0!.

Mark