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From: wb8foz@mthvax.cs.miami.edu (David Lesher)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: Broken Phone While Out of Town
Message-ID: <14328@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 4 Nov 90 03:16:20 GMT
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Reply-To: David Lesher <wb8foz@mthvax.cs.miami.edu>
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 790, Message 4 of 13


Ohio Bell went one better!

They discontinued "611" and installed all manner of intrastate 800
numbers to reach repair. UNLISTED 800 numbers, that is. Sure they're
in the front of your phone book, but if you don't have one, for
whatever reason, you are up the creek.

I called and raised hell. Their answer was 'Call 411." My retort: "You
charge for that. I was at a neighbors, and HE should pay because *you*
screwed up?" {They had disabled my TT detection, and I was not about
to waste an hour looking for my old rotary butt-in.} Silence ensued.

Several calls later the truth emerged. OBT has to PAY to get their 800
numbers listed. They wanted to save their money. {I understood the 800
DA service to be a contractor, but never could get details.}

Unlike the clerks I was talking to, I have heard why they went to the
INWATS. It seems the beancounters wanted centralized afterhours repair
centers. Sound familiar, PAT? But the union had a fit that all the
calls went to one place, and thus those folks got all the premium pay.
So the responding center had to rotate nightly. Thus, you needed to
collect all the local 611 ringdowns, and send them halfway across the
state, but somewhere different every night! But the people in charge
did all this without getting any transmission engineering done. Net
result -- it didn't work. Word soon came back to the Transmission
Engineering Dept. THEY asked the folks who had set it up, and their
reply was:

  "Well, we figured that if we asked you first, you'd say
  it would not work. So we went ahead anyhow, and thought
  you could fix it up after we installed it." 

{Or words to that effect}

Your telephone dollars at work....


wb8foz@mthvax.cs.miami.edu        (305) 255-RTFM