Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!mailrus!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request From: STEVEF%WALKER_RICHER_QUINN@mcimail.com (Steve Forrette) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: One-armed Bandits Message-ID: <2542@accuvax.nwu.edu> Date: 3 Jan 90 04:59:00 GMT Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu Organization: TELECOM Digest Lines: 117 Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 3, message 1 of 8 The topic of COCOT's has been popping up here lately, so I thought I'd offer my comments on the matter: IMHO, COCOT's provide nothing but a disservice to the calling public. The vast majority of callers have trouble enough with all the dialing sequences and choices we have today, and adding misprogrammed and faulty equipment to the problem is in nobody's interest. I have *never* heard of someone who had anything positive to say about them, and almost everyone has had nothing but bad experiences. These one-armed bandits seem eager to eat your money at the drop of a hat, and overcharge you when they do work. I was surprised to see someone *defending* a COCOT owner who had not properly programmed their phone for the refund number. The excuse that the person that owned the phone probably knew nothing about telephones doesn't cut it. Someone not in-the-know about telephones should not be operating what amounts to their own telephone company. [How does GTE get away with it? :-) ] When the phones charge what amount to *illegal* rates, ignorance is no excuse. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for competition in the telecom industry. The competitive marketplace in long distance carriers has brought substantial rate reductions and improved quality (if you pick the right carrier) over the past few years. But COCOT's are a different story. Most of the time, they charge MORE than "real" payphones, and for this added cost, you get LESS service and quality. Is this what competition is supposed to bring? Here's my list of gripes that I've run across at various COCOT's (mostly in California): - No call completion detection (a timeout instead). - No incoming calls. - No address posted. - At least in CA, they are allowed to charge up to 10 cents for calling card calls, collect calls, and 800 calls. That's right, you must deposit 10 cents cash to use your AT&T card if the owner chooses to require it. - Having the internal time-of-day clock set wrong so you get billed daytime rates at night or on weekends for coin long distance. - Blatant tariff violations, such as requiring local call deposit for 950 numbers charging long distance for "special" prefixes (such as to cellular phones) that are local from a real payphone. - Charging for directory assistance. - Passing to their own operator (as opposed to the BOC operator) upon dialing of "0". - Blockage of DTMF after call completion, so you can't use interactive services, answering machines, pagers, etc. The one that really gets me is the 10 cent deposit for calling card and collect calls. We spend 100 years developing the technology to allow coinless calls, and it is undone by an act of law by the PUC so that someone can make 10 cents off a call that costs them nothing. What about the kid that's stuck at the mall and needs to call home collect for a ride? Or how about me when my car breaks down, need to call AAA, and don't have any change? Granted, I am using someone else's equipment, but it seems like the traditional purpose for businesses for having payphones is for customer convenience and to bring new customers into their establishment that would not otherwise have come. Clearly, there is a public interest in having kids being able to call home in an emergency or me being able to call a tow truck, and the PUC does not seem to be looking after this very well. And a substantial number of the COCOT's are replacements for old BOC sets, so they are not "adding more convenient locations" as some would say. So by not allowing free collect/calling card calls, the replacement phones have removed what I consider to be a substantial service in the public interest that the phone network had previously provided. It's not that much of an issue for me since I got a cellular phone, but most people don't have one, and most people use payphones when they are in the least opportune position to deal with problems. Most people don't know the difference between real payphones and COCOT's, and blame the proverbial "phone company" for the problems they have. Pacific Bell's attitude to problems is "fill out this form, send it in, and if we get 3 complaints on the same phone, *maybe* we'll disconnect it." I can understand 3 complaints for money-eating, poor quality, etc., but for blatant tariff violations? If a phone is charging 60 cents for a call which by law can cost at most 25 cents, why does it take 3 complaints to have it shut off? Granted, they will probably look into it on the first complaint, but for something as serious and reproducable as that, why three before guaranteed action? Actually, I believe that the PUC has set the 3 complaint threshold; and they're the ones that are supposed to be looking after us in the first place? My beef is with the COCOT operators and the PUC for letting them get away with it, not with Pacific Bell. And these tariff violations are not as uncommon as you may think. A couple of years ago, I got a copy of all the rules from Pacific Bell (so I would know what I was talking about), and did a little testing. Out of the 20 phones I tested, NOT A SINGLE ONE was compliant. (Yes, by the way, I usually *do* have something better to do with my time, but I'm sure we'll all had pet peeves with the BOC or whomever that we've spent a couple of hours looking into. Besides, if nobody takes the time to uncover tariff violations, these cheesy companies will continue to operate they way they do now.) I say feed these folks to the lions along with the AOS people (probably the same in many cases!) And I thought one-armed bandits were only allowed in Nevada and Atlantic City...