rdsnyder@MIT-CCC (02/23/86)
A few days ago, I received my monthly bill for my 950-1033 service from US Telecom. On the bill were two calls which I had made to an exchange in NPA 303 (Colorado), but which only rang and were never answered. One call was for 5.1 minutes and the other was for 1.6 minutes. When I called US Telecom customer service, the representative FLATLY REFUSED to give me credit for the calls. She said that they would not give credit for calls of that length. When I had her supervisor call me back, he also refused to consider giving me credit. I had heard a rumor that only ATT and MCI actually get answer supervision from the BOCs, and that the other LD carriers simply use a time-out method to determine whether a call is answered. Since the phone I was calling was located in a somewhat remote location, I let it ring quite some time before hanging up. This caused the US Telecom timer to time out, making them believe I had been connected. When I asked the US Telecom supervisor whether they got answer supervision, he said, "No, we don't get call supervision, but we have programmed our computers so that they VIRTUALLY never make this sort of error."(emphasis added) He told me that I let the phone ring too long. He said that US Telecom suggests to only let the phone ring "8 to 10 times." He seems to be admitting that they occasionally do bill customers for unanswered calls, but remaining unwilling to give credit (which totalled only $1.12). I would hate to think what would happen if they incorrectly billed a customer for several dollars or tens or hundreds of dollars... I would appreciate it if someone verify this rumor about which LD carriers actually get answer supervision. I STRONGLY DISCOURAGE doing business with US Telecom if customer service means anything to you. As soon as I got off the phone with US Telecom, I called MCI to get 950 service from them, since they are the only LD carrier that offers it and presumably gets answer supervision. In the past, when I used ATT in a non-equal-access exchange, I used to let the phone ring for 10 minutes or so without being charged. ATT seems to have the right attitude: Why try to save a few erlangs if it means losing a lot of customers? -Ross Snyder