Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!mailrus!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request
From: wmartin@stl-06sima.army.mil (Will Martin)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Phone Frustration (from Risks)
Message-ID: <2343@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 21 Dec 89 21:00:12 GMT
Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu
Organization: TELECOM Digest
Lines: 60
Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu
X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu
X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu
X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 9, Issue 586, message 6 of 9

The following item was in the latest RISKS Digest; thought Telecom should
have a copy, too...

  RISKS-FORUM Digest  Thursday 21 December 1989   Volume 9 : Issue 56

  Date: Mon, 18 Dec 89 15:09:01 PST
  From: slm%wsc-sun@atc.boeing.com (Shamus McBride)
  Subject: Frustrated With Phones

The Bellevue, Washington, Journal American ran an article on
telephone glitches collected from its readers.

   o "... a dark stormy night, a desperate woman, a telephone from Kafka".
     Using a pay phone at a service station along the highway, she
     dialed 0 then the number and the phone went dead. She tried again
     and again. She finally reached an operator and found out that (a)
     the phone was owned by a private company (not AT&T), (b) collect
     calls could not be made, and (c) she could not be connected with
     an AT&T operator.

   o Another woman received hourly calls with the recorded message
     "The maximum dollar amount is exceeded by the number 4-4-4-4-4-4."
     The problem was traced to a pay phone at a local gas station with
     a full coin box. The phone was programmed to call someone when the
     coin box was full. Unfortunately, it was programmed with the wrong
     number.

   o For six months a woman had long distance calls to Mexico City
     on her bill. The phone company finally discovered that the woman's
     line was cross wired with a neighbor's line. The twist in the
     story was that the neighbor had recently moved into the house and
     did not realize it had TWO lines (the phone company had failed to
     disconnect the second line when the previous owner moved out).
     The neighbor's bill looked normal since most of his calls were on
     his primary line. Only when he used a secondary phone were the
     calls billed elsewhere.

   o One family had phones that rang three times then stopped. 
     Friends said they called and let the phone ring 20 times
     and no one answered. "After extensive investigation [GTE]
     found an electronic glitch at a nearby central office."

The article concluded: "the letters we received showed that people are
dependent on the telephone and, when things go wrong, hardly in a mood
to hear a pitch about the values of consumerism. True phones don't go
wrong often, they said, But when they do ..."

***End of item***

[Moderator's Note: Will, thanks for sending this over to us. One of
the sad facts of post-divestiture phone service is that the consumer
is the last person to be considered. Unheard of -- indeed, almost
unthinkable -- problems with phone service prior to divestiture, of
the sort enumerated here, and lots more, became commonplace once the
judge signed off on the most tragic, and misguided legal decision in
American history.  Instead of merely giving equal-opportunity to all
new comers (and how could the Bill McGowans of the world survive in a
scenario like that?)  they had to bust up a century's worth of
finely-tuned procedures and practices due to the anti-AT&T bias so
prevalent in the court.  PT]