Both in the UK and now France there are a lot of businesses using premium phone lines for their customer services telephone number. This is quite out of order if you need to call customer services because they have let you down somehow and then you have to pay for the call.
Luckily there are usually normal geographic numbers that you can call instead of the premium rate lines and still get the same service.
In the UK check out SayNoTo0870.com
If France have a look at GeoNumbers.com
It looks like GeoNumbers have had the frightners put on them by the big French telco’s there is an alternative site called Radins which is a bit clunky and doesnt have a massive set of numbers, but might get better with use.