DREUBEN@eagle.wesleyan.edu (Douglas Scott Reuben) (05/13/91)
Hello again, Recently, Mark Seiden posted a meesage about "*" calls from Cellular phones. He noted: > I am curious (yellow) about * prefixed calls on cellular phones. > Has anyone got a list? Are they uniform across service providers? (fat > chance) ... I noticed that some of the California providers have > traffic information lines, etc. > Doug Reuben recently pointed out that although *611 is free, one > *might* be charged a roaming charge, which is then removed when one > complains. Are all of the *-prefixed calls free (and supposed to be > free of roaming charges?) I *think* the case I was referring to was with Vanguard/Cell One of Eastern PA. As usual, no doubt, I failed to make things clear. (Sorry, Mark). Vanguard/Cell One does NOT assess any airtime charges nor any roamer ($3/day) charges on calls to *611. The problem was between Metro Mobile/CT and Vanguard. Apparently, they never got their billing settled, and Metro read the "tapes" incorrectly. I'm not sure of the method used to encode calls on billing tapes which are sent from one cell co. to another, but what I was told by Metro (and who knows how accurate THEY are?) was that the "*611" call was tagged by Vanguard as "Free", yet Metro didn't recognize this. Metro's computer (or it's billing company's computer) didn't see any *airtime* charges, but figured that since a call was placed in the Vanguard system, I should be assesed a daily charge, since all Metro/CT customers are assesed daily charges while in the Vanguard system. After I called about this, Metro, as usual, tried their usual line "you roam, you pay" (I'm sure they have this phrase inscribed in Latin over their terminals or something.) After the usual series of explanations, I spoke to the Roam coordinator, who then called the Vanguard coordinator, and they corrected the problem about two months later. It is no longer a problem. So ... currently, I know of no system, A or B, that charges either airtime or roam charges *intentionally*. You may, of course, have such charges appear on your bill. Rather than take YOUR cell co.'s word for it, call the company in which you had roamed, and ask them what their policy is. If they assure you that they do not charge for *611 calls, then tell your home system about it, and hopefully you won't have to worry about such erroneous billings again, at least not from the specific systems in question. > Does anyone know how these are implemented? When they translate to a > real phone number, is there any way of determining the translation? Generally, yeah, they do go to a real phone number, usually the same thing as their cusotmer service number. So in the case of CT, *611 on Metro Highbill will get you the same thing as dialing (800) 346-0508. Dialing *611 from GTE/SF will get you the same thing as (800) 366-5665, etc. You should also note that USUALLY 611 is like *611, ie, they do the same thing. Some companies allow both, some do not. Thus, in Connecticut, you can use *611 to call cusotmer service on Metro. However, if you roam into the NY system, *611 will NOT work, and you need to use 611. I suspect they do this to avoid problems with calls near cell boundaries, as the two systems "bleed" into each other a lot, especially along Long Island Sound. SNET in CT is weird: In Southwestern CT, 611 gets SNET repair, while *611 gets SNET Mobile; eslewhere (like Harftord), they both get SNET Mobile, and recently 611 was just plain blocked. No charges for either, though. (BTW, the Metro One/NY 611 number is new. I dunno how Metro Mobile will "react" to it ... it would be interesting to see if they bill airtime for it. The Metro 611 system is also set up well -- automated roam info, custom calling features, etc. Very well done. Previously, NY had *no* airtime-free customer service number -- you had to call the 800 number, and when the bill came get the charges removed. Pretty pathetic ... this new system is a great improvement.) So basically, 611/*611 calls are free. > When I was recently in New Orleans, Bell South Mobility advertised > that 911 was "always free." (It was unclear whether roamers would be > charged a roaming fee.) Is this typical practice? Seems so. I've never been in a system where it wasn't. Sometimes you need to dial *911, but in any case, it has always been free. > [Moderator's Note: In many large urban areas 911 won't work correctly > from cell phones -- at least the dispatchers cannot get a reading on > your location. Here in Chicago, *999 gets the Minutemen, a division of > the Illinois State Police who handle expressway and interstate highway > duty. ... ] Many similar implementations elsewhere: for example, in Mass, it is "*MSP", which is a free call. (I think *33 also works, or used to, from Cell One phones.) Although everything other than 611/911 is not standardized, GENERALLY, *711/711 is a free call. It is either used for roamer info (a recorded message as in the case of Metro Mobile), or to "tag" your phone at the switchroom in order to help diagnose a problem which a customer reports. (Metro uses this for both, actually, although I think they can use *611 as well ... I'm not sure, but I don't see any reason why they can't "tag" any call.) But it is not always free. US Cellular/Poughkeepsie uses *711 (or perhaps *511, see below) as their "Infoline" number. US Cell also "bleeds" into Western Connecticut, around the Cornwall area. (Near the NY line). If your phone shows "home", ie, you are using Metro, and you dial *711, you may instead get the US Cell system, and a nice fat $3 daily charge and a $.90 cent per minute charge for what you thought was a free call. So you have to be careful in situations like this. *511 is used in a FEW systems to directly call the roam port for free. Instead of calling XXX-XXXX and paying just to have the port answer with a dial tone, using *511 will allow you to call a roamer (or any customer) in the system and pay only when the party answers. But again, this is by no means universally adopted, and many systems will use this for "Info" services which you will pay for. (US Cell/Poughkeepsie may use *511 instead of *711..it has been a while sine this has happened.) *111 is a free call in GTE Mobilnet/SF, and (I think) in their other CA systems as well. It allows you to call "Technical Repair" directly to report a technical problem and bypass their endless wait for *611 customer service. Basically, 611/*611 is the only "safe" number to call, and even then there can be billing irregularities between systems which will result in false charges. This is one of the main reasons I roam on the "B" carriers, which RARELY, if ever, have such problems. (I'm not sure if it will be posted because it was entirely too long, but I submitted a post on California and "A" roaming in general, and the above is only PART of the problem which I attempted to discuss in my longer post). All other "*" numbers may incur a charge. Check BEFORE you call to see what the charges will be. *INFO or *22 or *MAP or whatever are almost ALWAYS charged. Be careful of slogans that say "Call *MAP to get help anywhere in the Bay Area. This call is free, and you will be billed only for the actual airtime you use." (Call 800-366-5665, GTE/SF, and wait a while. You should hear this if they are busy.) In my book, "free" = no charge at all. I guess GTE sees it differently. Finally, make sure to check your bill. There may be problems in billing which result in charges that shouldn't be there. Usually, mobile companies are glad that you point these out to them (GTE always is; Metro, well, what can I say? :) ) I was once assesed a $3/day roamimg charge for calls in the New York system on my bill. This amounted to over $25. Metro took it off without any problem, but since there isn't SUPPOSED to be a charge for CT customers in NY, I usually ignore the "NYC Roaming" section of my bill. I've got other non-free codes for Mass, NH, CT, RI, NY, NJ, DE, MD, DC, VA, PA, CA and NV systems, but rather than submit another monster post, and since this is long enough, I'll leave that for some other time. Hope this helped ... Doug dreuben@eagle.wesleyan.edu // dreuben@wesleyan.bitnet
Tony Harminc <TONY@mcgill1.bitnet> (05/15/91)
> Plus in some city (I can't remember which now), there was a radio > station that advertised it's Cellular Traffic number as *WXXX (or > what-ever its call letters were), this rang at the main switchboard > for the radio station (used to report accidents and traffic jams). It > was free from all Cellular telephones, don't know about roamers. Not > surprisingly, the radio station advertised the two Cellular carriers > constantly (I assume in trade for this *-number). Around here (Bell Cellular and Cantel territory) the radio stations tell you to dial #nnn where nnn is their frequency (or some variation). So Toronto station CBL at 740 AM tells you to dial #740, while CHFI at 98.1 FM has #981. I had assumed this was some sort of standard. No so ? These calls are not free. Tony Harminc
David Lemson <lemson@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> (05/16/91)
TONY@mcgill1.bitnet (Tony Harminc) writes: >> Plus in some city (I can't remember which now), there was a radio >> station that advertised it's Cellular Traffic number as *WXXX (or >> what-ever its call letters were), this rang at the main switchboard >> for the radio station (used to report accidents and traffic jams). It >> was free from all Cellular telephones, don't know about roamers. Not >> variation). So Toronto station CBL at 740 AM tells you to dial #740, > while CHFI at 98.1 FM has #981. I had assumed this was some sort of >stand ard. No so ? These calls are not free. Champaign-Urbana has one station , WLRW 94.5 FM with a free dial-in ("only from Ameritech" (the wireline carrier) phones) as *945. David Lemson University of Illinois Computing Services Consultant Internet : lemson@uiuc.edu UUCP :...!uiucuxc!uiucux1!lemson