Path: utzoo!telecom-request Date: Mon, 15 Apr 91 07:39:53 EDT From: "Joel B. Levin" Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Experimenting With AT&T's Account Management Message-ID: Organization: TELECOM Digest Sender: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 11, Issue 294, Message 9 of 10 Lines: 38 I have forgotten the name of AT&T's plan, but I refer to the account management plan whereby each user of a phone (roommates, for instance) dial all long distance calls with 0+ and then enter a personal four digit code beginning with 15 instead of a calling card number. I have reported here before that when I dialled calls using 10288+0+ (Sprint is my default carrier) and entered 1511# or 1512# after the boing I heard the "thank you" and the call went through, this when calling from my home phone on a Nashua, NH central office. I have received my first billing since I began making these calls, and I have some good news and some bad news. The good news: first, as I said, the calls went through. Second, I was charged the straight station-to-station direct dialled rate with no surcharge for use of any 0+ services. The bad news: the calls, listed on the AT&T page of my New England Telephone bill, are shown as if they had been dialled with 1+; they are listed in chronological order with no indication that any group were distinguished in any special way from any others. So I can dial them that way, but without making prior arrangements with AT&T it has no effect. Aside: this experiment cost me a small amount of money; except for the day AT&T was having its eleven cent sale, these calls cost me 20% to 30% more than they would have on Sprint before the Sprint-plus discount. Now, before you get excited about that, I should say that these were all one minute night rate calls forty miles to Boston, and cost me $.12 or $.13 where Sprint would charge $.10. JBL nets: levin@bbn.com | BBN Communications or: ...!bbn!levin | M/S 20/7A POTS: +1 617 873 3463 | 150 Cambridge Park Drive FAX: +1 617 873 8202 | Cambridge, MA 02140