Path: utzoo!telecom-request Date: Mon, 10 Jun 91 13:44:32 CDT From: Ken Abrams Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: What Was the Real Reason For Change in AT&T Cards? 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 449, Message 2 of 8 Lines: 25 I think that this latest move on the part of AT&T will lose them an important competetive advangage, that is having the same card number for both local and LD use. In my case, it is certainly making me think long and hard about contacting one of the other companies, not only for credit card service but for 1+ service at home too. Another marketing coup in the mill. Wonder if some other carrier is paying AT&T employees to do these dumb things ... nah, probably would be a waste of money. Additionally I am upset by the misrepresentation of the reason for the changes in the AT&T card numbers. I am no lawyer and I may not know the whole story but I think that the statement something to the affect that the change is being made because of "government rules" is so misleading that it borders on an outright lie. I think the "government rule" that they are referring to is one that simply states "the RBOC must make available to the OCCs the database used for credit card verification and (here comes the important part) the OCC must ***PAY*** the RBOC for using that database." I believe that the main reason for the change is a cost cutting move on the part of AT&T. Simple as that; they don't want to pay the RBOC to share numbers anymore. Anybody at AT&T care to refute or clarify this "government rule" for me. I hope they save big bucks because they will probably lose me as a customer.