galen@toad.com (Galen Wolf) (03/22/91)
It used to be that it was always chancey to run into various COCOT's in
the SF Bay Area, so I'd always look for the PacBell payphones to place
my 950-0488 calling card calls, but as of a couple weeks ago, every
PacBell payphone I can find in Marin County is blocking touch-tones
after completing the connection to ITT/MetroMedia. If I understand
correctly from reading here, this is illegal blocking of equal access,
and should be reported to the PUC, no?
galen@toad.com {amdahl,pacbell,pyramid,sun,ucsfcgl,uunet}!hoptoad!galen
(Galen Wolf, Anu, POB 2010, Sparks, NV 89432-2010)
(800)SKY-PAGE, PIN:234-0000#, your (AAA)NNN-NNNN#
[Moderator's Note: It may be some technical problem instead, so before
reporting it to the PUC, why not ask PacBell what is going on? PAT]peter@taronga.hackercorp.com (Peter da Silva) (03/25/91)
galen@toad.com (Galen Wolf) writes: > [Moderator's Note: It may be some technical problem instead, so before > reporting it to the PUC, why not ask PacBell what is going on? PAT] I would humbly like to note that when I made a similar comment about more traditional COCOTs I was widely flamed as pandering to slimy AOS-COCOT ripoff artists. If tactics like calling the PUC and sticking labels on the offending phones are reasonable anywhere, they are all the more reasonable for a phone compnay who (I must presume) would be expected to know more about programming the things than the local chinese take-out place. peter@taronga.uucp.ferranti.com [Moderator's Note: The difference is, we don't usually expect this sort of response from Bell payphones ... with COCOTS it is old hat: refused connections and outrageous prices, etc. We know complaining about COCOTS does very little good. No so with Bell payphones. PAT]
peter@taronga.hackercorp.com (Peter da Silva) (03/29/91)
> [Moderator's Note: The difference is, we don't usually expect this > sort of response from Bell payphones ... with COCOTS it is old hat: > refused connections and outrageous prices, etc. We know complaining > about COCOTS does very little good. No so with Bell payphones. PAT] I don't know about you, but I've always found payphone prices outrageous. Even worse was being charged "operator assisted" rates for using my AT&T phone card -- no operator involved. No, COCOTs are at worst just a bigger dose of the same medicine. Plus, just because it's a Bell phone doesn't mean it's not a COCOT. (peter@taronga.uucp.ferranti.com)