Path: utzoo!telecom-request Date: 22 May 91 16:28:34 GMT From: "Fred R. Goldstein" Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: 50k Counts of Wire Fraud Message-ID: Organization: Digital Equipment Corp., Littleton MA USA 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 388, Message 6 of 12 Lines: 61 In article , nstar!bluemoon!sbrack@ iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (Steven S. Brack) writes... > Would you by a product, then give the clerk a blank check, without > ever checking how much your purchase cost before purchasing it? Of > course not. The situations are analogous. Of course, the telco could > still do something to end the confusion: require users to dial 1 > before any added-cost number. That's what Ohio Bell did for years. > It works quite well. It is not, of course, in keeping with the North American Numbering Plan, but was an artifact of stepper switches whiched used 1 as the access number to toll offices. Nowadays 1 may mean "area code follows". Time T is coming... >> 1) Which operator, 0 or 00? > If the call is intraLATA, "0," if not "00," just like the telcos tell > you. The NYC exchange has four area codes (516, 914, 212 and 718), and one of them (914) is in multiple LATAs. In any case, the price of a 540 call is not with the operator. >> 2) Don't we have dial-direct nowadays? Operators aren't "free". > Dialing the operator for dialing charges (and instructions) has always > been a free call. The only exception would be a COCOT, which may > require a "small" ($10-20 8) deposit. If everybody dialed 0 for every unknown number, then the rate of operator calling would skyrocket and they'd charge. Some telcos have already suggested dialing 0 should carry a charge. > The provider just asked pager users to call his number. He made *no > guarantee* as to the cost or nature of the service. Where's the fraud > in that? The fraud is that he was intending to sucker people into doing something that they had no intention of doing: Calling a pay-per-call number. As Pat even pointed out in another note (about the 900 number for info on 900 numbers), if the ad doesn't list the price, it's a no-no. At best you can say that the scam artist was "advertising" his 540 number on pagers. But by not divulging the price, he was violating the usual rules (I'm not positive it applies in NYS but it probably does) that ads for these services MUST state the prices. That IN AND OF ITSELF is a violation. Fred R. Goldstein Digital Equipment Corp., Littleton MA goldstein@delni.enet.dec.com voice: +1 508 952 3274 Do you think anyone else on the planet would share my opinions, let alone a multi-billion dollar corporation? [Moderator's Note: Thanks to everyone who participated in this thread, but like others, it has really gotten away from telecom, so we have to close it out now. PAT]