Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!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: Turning Off Call Waiting Remotely Message-ID: <14166@accuvax.nwu.edu> Date: 31 Oct 90 05:06:24 GMT Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu Reply-To: John Higdon Organization: Green Hills and Cows Lines: 41 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 777, Message 7 of 10 On Oct 29 at 23:21, TELECOM Moderator writes: > [Moderator's Note: What you say is all well and good, but *why* would > a telco extend new dial tone by flashing the hook when there is no > place to go with it? Surely not just for suspending call-waiting ... > or is it just for that reason? What happens when you attempt to dial > an actual number against that flashed-in dial tone rather than just > dialing *70? Does your new call go through or get denied? PAT] If it had been Pac*Bell, it could have been something like this: (From the Pac*Bell Slameroo Dept.) A friend of mine who writes for a crackpot audio magazine moved a few years back from Sunnyvale to Mountain View. We were talking and he got call-waited. When he returned, he commented, "This is so confusing. Call Waiting works differently here in Mt. View than it did in Sunnyvale. It's much more complicated." Bzzzt! What??? I inquired further. "In Sunnyvale, when I got a call-wait, I simply flashed the hook and got the second call. Now, I have to flash, get dial tone, then dial '*9'." "What other features do you have?", I asked. "None." So then I told him the bad news. He had been "upsold" into Commstar (mini-Centrex). He didn't even realize that he had three-way calling, which is intregal to Commstar. I told him that he was paying about 8 dollars too much and told him what to say to the rep. If you flash during the call with Commstar (without being call-waited) you will get second dial tone which can call the world. BTW, the "Commstar Slam" was accomplished by implying to the customer "that's the way it works now". The customer was led to believe that Commstar was prerequisite to custom calling. John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 723 1395 john@bovine.ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o !