From: "Steven J. Sobol" <sjsobol@nacs.net> Ameritech offers the same service, and I've only been charged for the times I've actually used the feature. If I hang up, I don't get charged. I have to believe BellSouth works the same way, although I could be wrong.
Ameritech doesn't offer it here in Michigan, so I don't know what problems there are. In Mississippi, it works like this: Busy tone is replaced by a voice message saying something like "Your party is currently busy. If you would like to call again, press 1 or hold the line." If you hold the line too long (30 seconds?), or you redial a number with a 1 in it (several of our hunt groups have a 1 in them), you get charged $.75... But nobody has gotten phone bills yet, so we don't know how bad the financials are. The support calls are all folks trying to kindly tell us that our phone lines have stopped working, because of the messages shown by the modem software, which expects a busy signal. And if you call BellSouth to complain, they tell you to signup for BellSouth.Net :-( WSimpson@UMich.edu Key fingerprint = 17 40 5E 67 15 6F 31 26 DD 0D B9 9B 6A 15 2C 32
At 09:42 PM 1/27/99 +0000, William Allen Simpson wrote:
From: "Steven J. Sobol" <sjsobol@nacs.net> Ameritech offers the same service, and I've only been charged for the times I've actually used the feature. If I hang up, I don't get charged. I have to
The support calls are all folks trying to kindly tell us that our phone lines have stopped working, because of the messages shown by the modem software, which expects a busy signal.
And if you call BellSouth to complain, they tell you to signup for BellSouth.Net :-(
So they break the tele for modems and tell the customer that the only solution is to use them as their ISP? If SBC tried this, with pacbell.net, I'd be on on the phone to the FCC, the CPUC, my congress-critter, and my lawyer, not necessarily in that order. I think they call that anti-competitive practice by a monopoly. This is pretty egregious, why haven't we heard more about this, is it a new thing? More curious, how can an RBOC be that dumb? ___________________________________________________ Roeland M.J. Meyer - e-mail: mailto:rmeyer@mhsc.com Internet phone: hawk.lvrmr.mhsc.com Personal web pages: http://staff.mhsc.com/~rmeyer Company web-site: http://www.mhsc.com ___________________________________________________ KISS ... gotta love it!
On Wed, Jan 27, 1999 at 04:28:39PM -0800, Roeland M.J. Meyer wrote:
So they break the tele for modems and tell the customer that the only solution is to use them as their ISP? If SBC tried this, with pacbell.net, I'd be on on the phone to the FCC, the CPUC, my congress-critter, and my lawyer, not necessarily in that order. I think they call that anti-competitive practice by a monopoly. This is pretty egregious, why haven't we heard more about this, is it a new thing? More curious, how can an RBOC be that dumb?
You work in the industry - why do you even feel the need to ask that question? You know the answer :) (Yes, that was a cheap shot.) -- Steve Sobol sjsobol@nacs.net (AKA support@nacs.net and abuse@nacs.net) "Can you look out the window, without your shadow getting in the way" --Sarah McLachlan - "Building a Mystery"
Ameritech started to do something like this. If you dial and get RNA, after a certain number of rings, it will say "press 1 if you want to leave a message" - jared On Wed, Jan 27, 1999 at 09:42:11PM +0000, William Allen Simpson wrote:
From: "Steven J. Sobol" <sjsobol@nacs.net> Ameritech offers the same service, and I've only been charged for the times I've actually used the feature. If I hang up, I don't get charged. I have to believe BellSouth works the same way, although I could be wrong.
Ameritech doesn't offer it here in Michigan, so I don't know what problems there are.
In Mississippi, it works like this: Busy tone is replaced by a voice message saying something like "Your party is currently busy. If you would like to call again, press 1 or hold the line."
If you hold the line too long (30 seconds?), or you redial a number with a 1 in it (several of our hunt groups have a 1 in them), you get charged $.75...
But nobody has gotten phone bills yet, so we don't know how bad the financials are.
The support calls are all folks trying to kindly tell us that our phone lines have stopped working, because of the messages shown by the modem software, which expects a busy signal.
And if you call BellSouth to complain, they tell you to signup for BellSouth.Net :-(
WSimpson@UMich.edu Key fingerprint = 17 40 5E 67 15 6F 31 26 DD 0D B9 9B 6A 15 2C 32
-- Jared Mauch | pgp key available via finger from jared@puck.nether.net clue++; | http://puck.nether.net/~jared/ My statements are only mine.
On Wed, Jan 27, 1999 at 07:35:27PM -0500, Jared Mauch wrote:
Ameritech started to do something like this.
If you dial and get RNA, after a certain number of rings, it will say "press 1 if you want to leave a message"
- jared
Yes, but. Getting a no-answer message from the modem, when the other end isn't answering, is fine. Getting a no-answer message from the modem, when the other end is busy, isn't cool. And it will confuse a lot of customers who do not know better. -- Steve Sobol sjsobol@nacs.net (AKA support@nacs.net and abuse@nacs.net) "Can you look out the window, without your shadow getting in the way" --Sarah McLachlan - "Building a Mystery"
On Wed, Jan 27, 1999 at 09:42:11PM +0000, William Allen Simpson wrote:
From: "Steven J. Sobol" <sjsobol@nacs.net> Ameritech offers the same service, and I've only been charged for the times I've actually used the feature. If I hang up, I don't get charged. I have to believe BellSouth works the same way, although I could be wrong.
Ameritech doesn't offer it here in Michigan, so I don't know what problems there are.
In Mississippi, it works like this: Busy tone is replaced by a voice message saying something like "Your party is currently busy. If you would like to call again, press 1 or hold the line."
This is how it works in Cleveland. You dial and get a busy signal. Computer voice plays over the busy signal, saying "Let Automatic CallBack redial for you. To use this feature, at a cost of seventy-five cents, press 1."
If you hold the line too long (30 seconds?), or you redial a number with a 1 in it (several of our hunt groups have a 1 in them), you get charged $.75...
Yeah. That's stupid. Ameritech doesn't give you that option, thankfully. And... you get the busy signal *first*, a couple seconds before the voice, which should be enough time for modems to detect a Busy. -- Steve Sobol sjsobol@nacs.net (AKA support@nacs.net and abuse@nacs.net) "Can you look out the window, without your shadow getting in the way" --Sarah McLachlan - "Building a Mystery"
participants (4)
-
Jared Mauch -
Roeland M.J. Meyer -
Steven J. Sobol -
William Allen Simpson