Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!gatech!mcnc!decvax!ucbvax!think.UUCP!johnl
From: johnl@think.UUCP (John R. Levine)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: BOYCOTT COCOTS!
Message-ID: <8804080400.AA01497@ima.ISC.COM>
Date: 8 Apr 88 04:00:48 GMT
References: <8804051448.AA23908@decwrl.dec.com>
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: ima!johnl (John R. Levine)
Organization: Not enough to make any difference
Lines: 27
Approved: telecom@xx.lcs.mit.edu

In article <8804051448.AA23908@decwrl.dec.com> covert@covert.DEC.COM (John R. Covert) writes:
>When the Massachusetts DPU authorized Customer Owned Coin
>Operated Telephones (COCOTs), it was done to permit competition
>with New England Telephone's monopoly on coin service.  The DPU
>is not likely to have realized that the current anti-consumer
>situation would result.

Boy, you're not kidding.  I've had COCOTs ask me to pay for 800 calls, and
one asked 90 cents for a 950 call.  Needless to say, I didn't pay.

It seems to me that the current behavior of COCOTs borders on fraud.  Most
of them are made from AT&T pay phones and have instruction cards that in
type style and color closely resemble those used by telco.  Since they so
closely resemble telco payphones, consumers could reasonably expect them to
provide service comparable to that from telco payphones, which they don't.
I certainly never expected that these phones ripped you off for calling
card calls as well as for coin calls.  They don't say anything about it.

A recent flyer in with my phone bill mentioned COCOTs and said in passing
that they're all supposed to identify the provider of the phone on the
phone itself.  I've never seen one that does, so it's time to call the DPU.

John Levine, ima!johnl
-- 
John R. Levine, IECC, PO Box 349, Cambridge MA 02238-0349, +1 617 492 3869
{ ihnp4 | decvax | cbosgd | harvard | yale }!ima!johnl, Levine@YALE.something
Rome fell, Babylon fell, Scarsdale will have its turn.  -G. B. Shaw