clive@x.co.uk (Clive Feather) (03/03/91)
In v11i160m3, John Higdon, talking about stored value cards, says: > For the plan to work, there would have to be one card > that would work in any card phone nationwide. With the zillion COCOT > owners, not to mention many different local utility coin phones, the > prospects for a universal system are slim. In the UK, we have two major telephone companies: BT (the former government telephone system) and Mercury. Both provide public payphones. Each produce a stored value card, and have phones that take them. Neither will accept the other's card. For information, the BT card holds 10p units, and whole units are always used at a time (they are literally burnt out of the card when used). The Mercury card deducts 1p at a time, with a minimum call cost of 5p. (I posted a list of BT charges a while ago; I don't have Mercury charges to hand). A Mercury phone will not accept 144 (the access number for BT credit card calls). Clive D.W. Feather | IXI Limited clive@x.co.uk | 62-74 Burleigh St. Phone: +44 223 462 131 | Cambridge CB1 1OJ (USA: 1 800 XDESK 57) | United Kingdom
jimmy@icjapan.info.com (Jim Gottlieb) (03/03/91)
In article <telecom11.160.3@eecs.nwu.edu> John Higdon <john@zygot.ati. com> writes: > If you stop to think about it, why have there > been no attempts to establish a stored value card system for public > telephones? They are found in a number of other countries, including > Japan. Most Americans that I talked to there liked the system and used > it. I do not believe that it would be rejected by the American public. I must admit that I find the public telephone debit cards to be convenient, and for tourists and other transients they are great. But I disagree that America should try to emulate them. First of all, I have problems with the whole idea of stored-value cards. The fraud potential is way too high when you leave the balance in the hands of the consumer. I even saw a TV program here in Japan about a year ago that showed exactly how to beat the system. Telephone cards have been extremely successful here, but I would say that other stored-value cards have not. There are now cards for several of the convenience stores (7-11, etc.), department stores, and even cards that work only in Coke machines. I don't think I have ever seen anyone using any of the other cards. Telephone cards worked because telephones only take one or two types of coins, no bills, one must continually dump coins in while one talks, and they don't make change. Having a telephone card prevents this hassle. Why would one want to have a 7-11 card? 7-11 stores take any coin, any bill, and they give change. And the whole idea of having to carry around a different card for each store or vending machines starts to undermine the idea of a universally accepted currency. I heard a while back of an effort to create a card that would be accepted by a variety of merchants. They talked of the problem of how to disperse the payments. I have not heard any mention of this plan since. In the U.S. we already have such a system. It's called the banking system. Even if we exclude cash and credit cards, one can pay with a check (bank draft) or one can pay with one's ATM card. Japan would do better to allow the use of ATM cards as has been done in the U.S. The system is in place and would work, but probably only after 24-hour ATM operation was established (ATMs in Japan close at 7 PM and only recently started operation on Sundays) because the system must always be on line. And of course, your bank account balance isn't stored on your ATM card. Which brings us back to the call for such a stored-value card system for use on U.S. phones. Just like the above, I would say that we already have a better system in place; credit cards and calling cards. Stored-value telephone cards are also popular because using one costs no more than using cash. I call on U.S. telephone and long distance companies to eliminate calling card and credit card surcharges. Almost everyone has a credit card or has (or can get) a calling card. I would never put cash in a phone again if there were no surcharge to use my calling card. There is no reason to start a whole new currency when we have a far superior system already in place. It just needs to be properly implemented. Jim Gottlieb Info Connections, Tokyo, Japan E-Mail: <jimmy@denwa.info.com> or <attmail!denwa!jimmy> Fax: +81 3 3237 5867 Voice Mail: +81 3 3222 8429 [Moderator's Note: It is a little-known fact that 60-75 years ago, there was an unusual way of handling pay phone calls: the merchant slug, which you purchased from the clerk in the store for use in the pay stations ONLY in that store. If a store was part of a chain, then the telephone slug would work in any of the payphones in any branch of the store, but never in the payphone of a competing store. The Walgreen's Drug Store chain started here in Chicago. In 1920, they had about a dozen outlets here, all of which had convenient payphones for public use. The telephones would not work on coins, and had to have slugs puchased from the Walgreen's cashiers. Local payphone calls were five cents each, which was the value of the individual slug; but you could buy a packet of ten slugs for 45 cents, and use them for any combination of local or long distance calls. Both Sears, Roebuck and Montgomery Ward, two large chains with their roots here also used the slug-style payphones, and their phones would not accept Walgreen slugs. Neither would Walgreens accept slugs from Sear, Wards or the Boston Store. Most merchants discounted the slugs, selling a packet for 45 cents. Some sold them for 44 cents, etc. The payoff to the telco (Chicago Telephone Company in those days, the predecessor of Illinois Bell, which came along in the middle twenties) came when the collector came to empty the coin boxes. He would empty the box and take all the slugs back to the cashier. The cashier paid four cents each for them, meaning a one cent profit or commission per payphone call, or nine-and-a-half / ten cents profit per ten calls, depending on if the merchant chose to sell several at a slight discount. The idea was if you needed to make a phone call and only had Walgreen slugs you had to go to Walgreen's to make the call, and while you were there you might as well do some shopping, etc. The same slugs kept circulating over and over, the customer buying them; using them and the telco selling them back to the cashier for re-use. They finally quit using slugs sometime around 1930. PAT]
halldors@paul.rutgers.edu (Magnus M Halldorsson) (03/04/91)
In article <397@icjapan.uucp> jimmy@icjapan.info.com (Jim Gottlieb) writes: > I must admit that I find the public telephone debit cards to be > convenient, and for tourists and other transients they are great. > But I disagree that America should try to emulate them. Well, I disagree with you. Your first sentence has already stated one important reason. > First of all, I have problems with the whole idea of stored-value > cards. The fraud potential is way too high when you leave the balance > in the hands of the consumer. A while ago, somebody overheard my wife giving her card number to an operator. Somebody and his friends went on a major phoning spree, including Moscow and Ivory Coast, rolling up a $6000 bill. I didn't have to pay a dime, but the fraud potential argument of phone debit cards somehow doesn't impress me. > Stored-value telephone cards are also popular because using one costs > no more than using cash. I call on U.S. telephone and long > distance companies to eliminate calling card and credit card > surcharges. Good. That's argument number two. Yes, if the long distance companies would eliminate the surcharges that wouldn't hold, but I don't see that on the horizon. Some more disadvantages of telephone credit cards: - You need to apply for it. Whereas you could buy debit cards in a store or an automat, you must wait for your snail mail. - You need to have a fixed residence with a phone. The times when you don't have a phone, are exactly the times when you really could use a phone card. - It's a credit card. It has all the disadvantages of "spend-first-pay-later" mentality; plus you must be in good credit standing. - It requires long keystrokes. Given Murphy's law, the phones you find always use the other long-distance carrier, and you must therefore type in between six and nine digits before entering the nine digit number, followed by the thirteen digit card number. Of course, we could agree on allowing the advantages of both. Magnus
msb@sq.com (Mark Brader) (03/08/91)
> I must admit that I find the public telephone debit cards to be > convenient, and for tourists and other transients they are great. And I must disagree with the last part. One thing I know, as a tourist, is that when I go to a new country I will be unfamiliar with the charges for telephone use. I also often have very little idea of how many calls I will have to make, or how long I will be put on hold then I make them. Consequently, I have no idea of how many pounds, yen, or francs I want to spend on a phone card! So long as the country's non-card phones accept a reasonable range of denominations (*), I will always prefer to get a suitable quantity of coinage and use that. If I don't spend it on phone calls, I can spend it on something else. I will use a phone card only if I know I am likely to use it up -- e.g. on an expensive overseas call. (*) Something that is not the case in North America. In the US, there is the excuse that there is no commonly circulating coin above 25 cents anyway. But why don't Bell Canada pay phones take $1 coins? Do other Canadian phone companies' take them yet? If I was a tourist from another part of the country, *then* a phone card might be all right, because I could use any leftover value later -- but then, I could also charge the call to my home number. > [Moderator's Note: It is a little-known fact that 60-75 years ago, > there was an unusual way of handling pay phone calls: the merchant > slug, which you purchased from the clerk in the store for use in the > pay stations ONLY in that store. ...] Reminiscent of the token (jeton) system used a lot more recently than that in France. Are there still some of those phones in use there? Mark Brader, SoftQuad Inc., Toronto, utzoo!sq!msb, msb@sq.com
brendan@otc.otca.oz.au (03/08/91)
In article <telecom11.176.5@eecs.nwu.edu> jimmy@icjapan.info.com (Jim Gottlieb) writes: > In article <telecom11.160.3@eecs.nwu.edu> John Higdon <john@zygot.ati.com> > writes: >> If you stop to think about it, why have there >> been no attempts to establish a stored value card system for public >> telephones? They are found in a number of other countries, including >> Japan. Most Americans that I talked to there liked the system and used >> it. I do not believe that it would be rejected by the American public. > I must admit that I find the public telephone debit cards to be > convenient, and for tourists and other transients they are great. But > I disagree that America should try to emulate them. In Australia, we've have Credit Card/Debit Card payphones for over three years, and only now are Stored Value card phones being introduced. Due to Australia's widespread EFTPOS (X.25/X.400) network, Credit/Debit Card Phones have become quite common, with a penetration rate of about 10% of payphones. Hence the need for Stored Value card phones has not been great. The Creditphones are great because anyone from anywhere in the world can use them if they have an acceptable card (eg American Express and Visa). You don't need to call an operator or key in 27 digits. You just swipe your card through the reader, key in a PIN number (if your card has a PIN number) and then dial away! That also means you don't need to have a fixed phone in order to have the call billed somewhere. It's billed directly to your card. These phones also accept ATM cards from many Australian state and national banks for those who don't like using credit. Also, there is no surcharge for using these phones. There is a *minimum* charge of $1.20 per call, but it is *not* in addition to normal call charges. If the call normally costs 30c, you would get charged $1.20. If the call would normally cost $2.15, you would get charged $2.15. Hence for calls you think would cost less than $1.20, you would use a coin phone. > Telephone cards worked because telephones only take one or two types > of coins, no bills, one must continually dump coins in while one > talks, and they don't make change. Having a telephone card prevents > this hassle. In the USA, where the largest denomination coin is 25 cents, I can understand this is a problem. Australia's largest coin in $2. When you can get around 10 minutes of long distance callng time on one coin, the problem is reduced greatly. Payphones in Australia accept at least four different coins (10c, 20c, 50c and $1) and sometimes six (5c and $2 as well). > Which brings us back to the call for such a stored-value card system > for use on U.S. phones. Just like the above, I would say that we > already have a better system in place; credit cards and calling cards. I'd say the Oz system is even better - you don't need to tell an operator your credit card number over the phone to make a call. It's all done electronically via EFTPOS. Much simpler, quicker and much more secure. > Stored-value telephone cards are also popular because using one costs > no more than using cash. I call on U.S. telephone and long distance > companies to eliminate calling card and credit card surcharges. > Almost everyone has a credit card or has (or can get) a calling card. > I would never put cash in a phone again if there were no surcharge to > use my calling card. As mentioned before, Australia has no surcharge on the use of Credit Card Payphones. Brendan Jones | ACSnet: brendan@otc.otca.oz.au R&D Contractor | UUCP: {uunet,mcvax}!otc.otca.oz.au!brendan Services R&D | Phone: (02)2873128 Fax: (02)2873299 |||| OTC || | Snail: GPO Box 7000 Sydney 2001, AUSTRALIA
cmoore@brl.mil (VLD/VMB) (03/30/91)
A case where law enforcement agencies used long distance phone records was a few years ago in Delaware when a couple was killed and their baby kidnapped. Detectives looked over phone records, expanded their search to include the slain couple's relatives, and found a long distance call from the Houston area (using Harrington 302-398 prefix) to a parent of one of the slain couple (this was on the Hartly 302-492 exchange). Even though the prefixes are in the same county, this was a toll call (probably became local recently when Diamond State was ordered to set up "county-wide" local calling); had such call been local, the phone company probably would not have been able to help (according to newspaper article at the time). As it was, however, this discovery put detectives on the road to recovering the baby and making arrests in the case. And in a different matter: Yes, I have also read that overheard credit card numbers are a common source of phone fraud. Touchtone pay phones make it possible to punch in the credit card number instead of having to recite it to a human operator. (Here I do not intend to discuss such things as: COCOT disabling keypad; putting rotary dial back in place of touchtone in drug-infested areas; etc.) John Higdon <john@zygot.ati.com> writes: > Except for collect calls, which are becoming increasingly rare, all > long distance calls are ticketed to an account that can be used to > identify a caller -- even if that caller uses a coin phone. "Cash" calls also? A call billed to a third number does not necessarily point to you; but notice that it leaves a lot of clues: the phones called from and to, and the number the call is charged to. Several years ago, I believe at least in the Wilmington (Del.) newspaper, phone company security pointed out that third-party fraud could be eliminated by getting rid of third-party billing, but that a lot of people want such billing; therefore, there are strict verification rules in use of such billing.