Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!bu.edu!cs.bu.edu!telecom-request
From: alans@hp-ptp.hp.com (Alan_Sanderson)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: Uniform International Dialing
Message-ID: <59796@bu.edu.bu.edu>
Date: 27 Jun 90 17:51:22 GMT
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 460, Message 5 of 11


While traveling in the San Diego area, I attempted to use a pay phone
to call into Mexico using a calling card.  Instead of a "bong", I was
connected to an operator, who informed me that I could not make a
calling card call to Mexico from a pay phone, because the pay phone
was located in a "high fraud area", and suggested that I find a
residence phone to use.


 Alan Sanderson      Hewlett-Packard AMSO    alans@hpams0a.HP.COM
 US Snail:           1266 Kifer Rd. MS102F      MaBell: 408-746-5714
                     Sunnyvale, CA 94086        FAX:    408-746-5571
 Disclaimer:  <Standard Disclaimer Applies> 


[Moderator's Note: I wonder what made the idiot operator think that if
you had had a choice of residence or payphone to use you would have
chosen to stand in their filthy phone booth instead of sitting in
comfort in your home?  This odious practice -- of denying credit card
calls willy-nilly from payphones, particularly after phone credit
cards were advertised as a way to use public phones without having to
worry about having change -- will only stop, eventually, once the
telco in particular has been sued often enough and had to answer
enough Federal Trade Commission and FCC complaints. 

Please note telcos have *no authority by tariff* to make a blanket
denial of credit based on the location or type of service (coin
phone). They are violating Federal Trade Commission rules everytime
they issue you a credit card and then refuse to honor it without
sending you a written letter of denial explaining why. Of course, they
are not about to explain in writing why they will serve the UK without
question and why they refuse to serve callers to (for example), Iran
on the same basis.

Telcos *hate* Small Claims Court (hint, hint). They consider it
beneath them. Take them there whenever you are denied credit in a
discriminatory way by an operator and inconvenienced as a result.
Force one of their attornies to have to spend the morning there, or
responding to an inquiry about illegal credit practices from the FTC.
AT&T has already settled with at least one customer on this.  PT]

P A T R I C K   A.  T O W N S O N  (The Cheerful Iconclast)
ptownson@cs.bu.edu   ptownson@chinet.ch.il.us    ptownson@eecs.nwu.edu
Unique Zip Code 60690-1570   MCI Mail: 222-4956   AT&T Mail: !ptownson