Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!lll-winken!netsys!vector!nobody From: john@jetson.UPMA.MD.US (John Owens) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Victims of Wrong Numbers Message-ID: Date: 28 Jan 89 18:35:22 GMT Sender: chip@vector.UUCP Lines: 54 Approved: telecom-request@vector.uucp X-Submissions-To: telecom@bu-cs.bu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@vector.uucp X-TELECOM-Digest: volume 9, issue 35, message 2 When my wife and I moved into our apartment in January, we got a number that had been recently given up by Jartran truck rental, who had closed their local office. To make things worse, the number had been Jartran's recently enough to be in the current phone book, published in January, just *after* we moved in. So, naturally, we got large numbers of calls asking if we could rent trucks. After we moved into our house (the apartment was temporary), we decided to go ahead and get the redirect intercept, so people could find us. [We had moved four times in four years; at one point, I could follow a chain of three old numbers where all the redirects were still in place.] Naturally, we still got calls for Jartran truck rental. Typical conversations: Caller: I'd like to rent a truck. Me: I'm sorry, you have the wrong number. Caller: Is this xxx-xxxx? Me: Yes it is, but that's the wrong number. Caller: But I got it from the recording. Me: Well, actually, the number you called to get the recording was wrong. Caller: How do you know what number I called? Me: It used to be our number. [Of course!] Caller: But it says right here in the phone book that yyy-yyyy is the Jartran number. Usually, of course, I wasn't this patient. One day, my wife was sick and stayed home from work. She got almost twenty calls for Jartran that day! [She said she doesn't know why they closed the office; they had plenty of potential business!] So she decided to do something about it, and called the local telco. They suggested redirecting to the special operator, who would ask who was being called and play either the redirect or a disconnect message. This worked out well, and we stopped getting calls for Jartran. A few months later, I got a call from an old friend who said he had had a terrible time trying to get my number. Every time he'd call the old number (long distance), he'd get the special operator, who'd ask who he was calling. He'd try to tell her, but she couldn't hear him, and would hang up. He finally got a local (to him) operator who knew what was happening: the LD company wouldn't open the voice path in the other direction until it got answer supervision and could start charging. She was able to force the path open, and he finally got the number.... One Bell System: it worked. -- John Owens john@jetson.UPMA.MD.US uunet!jetson!john +1 301 249 6000 john%jetson.uucp@uunet.uu.net [Moderator's Note: It sure did work. If they wanted to open the market to a variety of long distance companies, that's fine with me. But why the judge felt he had to bash the smithereens out of the Bell System in the process is beyond me. PT]