Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!know!sdd.hp.com!usc!apple!bionet!hayes.ims.alaska.edu!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request From: john@bovine.ati.com (John Higdon) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: A New Way to Get Slammed Message-ID: <13539@accuvax.nwu.edu> Date: 14 Oct 90 05:14:43 GMT Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu Reply-To: John Higdon Organization: Green Hills and Cows Lines: 26 Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 736, Message 7 of 9 portal!cup.portal.com!John_David_Galt writes: > I saw the same news stories I think you did, but I read them more > carefully. No one got service they hadn't asked for, but lots of > telemarketing calls were made to offer Custom Calling -- and a few > elderly people thought they said "customer calling" or some such > thing and agreed to it without understanding it. My acquaintance with the matter came not from the media but from the PUC releases concerning the affair. In truth, there were many cases (regardless of the media account) in which services that were unordered were connected and charged for. In addition, there were occasions where service was ordered disconnected and Pac*Bell failed to comply and continued charging for it. This worked well on business accounts where harried bookkeepers would be faced with many bills for many lines and not know that some other department had ordered service disconnected. My clients had a few of these. Pac*Bell is still somewhat slow about disconnecting some types of service (notably WATS lines), but they are now very good about stopping the charges on the day of the disconnect order! John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 723 1395 john@bovine.ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o !