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From: b_haughey@ccvax.ucd.ie (Brian J Haughey)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: Proposal: An Answering Machine I'd Love to Have
Message-ID: <5125@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 12 Mar 90 16:32:49 GMT
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 169, Message 6 of 10


 
In article <4901@accuvax.nwu.edu>, hplabs!hpda!morrell@lcs.mit.edu (Michael 
Morrell) writes:

>>Toll saver (answers after 4 rings first call 2 rings all other calls,
>>when you call remotely and it doesn't answer after 2 rings you know
>>you have no messages and hang up thus saving the toll charge).

> Do others think this is a bad feature?  I understand you can save
> money when you are trying to see if you have messages, but I (and the
> phone company) don't think it's right to get something for nothing
> (i.e., I now know I have no messages without paying anything).  Also,
> for everybody else who calls you that don't want to talk to a machine,
> they'll get stuck paying the fee after only 2 rings (but sometimes 4).
> This feature should be illegal.
 
Two quibbles : Why should it be illegal? I think it's perfectly valid
to see if you have messages. Why be charged for discovering you have
no messages - when you *do* have them and want to access them, *then*
the telco makes its money. You could extend the same logic to the
practice described by some guys on this list who use exchange callback
to allow internal calls. I guess you'd disapprove of that, too.  

But your other point strikes me as intriguing - you want external
callers to be able to hang up if they figure there's a machine on the
line?  Isn't that the same idea, that the caller gets information
from the number of rings to answering ? Why allow one and not the
other?
 

Regards, 

bjh