grl@drutx.UUCP (LymanGR) (01/17/86)
AT&T offers their Personal Computers to employees for more money
than we can purchase them outside the company. We can also buy
AT&T telephones cheaper at Service Merchandise than through our
own "employee discount program". So is it any wonder that when
AT&T calls me at home to offer their "Reach Out America" <discount>
long-distance service I am suspicious that it will cost me <<more>>
money than their basic long-distance service?
Well, I fell for the sales pitch and signed up for Reach Out America
a few months ago. (The salesperson asked, "What makes you think
it will cost you MORE with Reach Out America?" I spared her the
information contained in the first two sentences of this article.)
Guess what... Reach Out America has cost me $0.27-$0.32 per minute
on my last two phone bills. Three previous bills which used their
plain-old basic long-distance service cost from $0.24-$0.26 per
minute. And I got stuck with the $10.00 "sign-up" fee for Reach
Out America on top of this all. Looks like I've been taken to the
cleaners by my own employer.
In all fairness to AT&T I should mention that Reach Out America
probably would have saved me some money if I only called during
their "low-rate" times. But I prefer to call whenever I please,
and this is not 2:00 a.m. in the morning. I called AT&T today
and had my Reach Out America service terminated.
C A V E A T E M P T O R
Randy Lymanscott@hou2g.UUCP (Mr. Berry) (01/18/86)
When offered this service, I decided that with the calls I make and the rates I pay, I'm better off without. However, this brings up another topic. Now that divestiture has occured, AT&T (my primary carrier--one discount that WORKS from AT&T is to work FOR them :-)) is no longer allowed to use the phone book to publish their rates, the way they used to--sample rates, at least. Where can I get information on their long distance phone rates? For that matter, where can I find out what ANY of the long distance companies charge? They all make these sweeping claims to have the cheapest service (except AT&T, but they're REGULATED, which explains why *they're* not cheap :-( ) but how do you "check up" on 'em? Truly one of the few products I buy where I can't tell how much it cost, sometimes even AFTER I've paid for it. ========================================= "Uncle Dick, are any of the kids in your books named Mitch?" "Uh, actually, most of my characters tend to be hand tools." Scott J. Berry ihnp4!hou2g!scott
ix21@sdcc6.UUCP (David Whiteman) (01/19/86)
Mr. Berry stated in a previous article that it is impossible to find out the rates of the various long distance phone companies. He cited that because of deregulation ATT can no longer post their rates. When I was working for Calpirg, which is a consumer research group at UCSD, I found that it was quite easy to obtain the rates of the various long distance companies; all you had to do was call them up and ask. With one exception every company was willing to both give the rates over the phone of a call place between two given cities and mail to us their "official" rate chart. Two companies even were willing to offer a discount rate to UCSD students when they heard about this survey. The one exception was ATT; they only gave out the discount the Reach Out America plan offered, but they were not willing to mail their current rate schedule. -- ---- David Whiteman, University of California, San Diego