DREUBEN@eagle.wesleyan.edu (Douglas Scott Reuben) (03/24/91)
In early February, I posted a copy of a letter which I sent to GTE
Mobilnet's headquarters in Houston, dealing with NYNEX/Boston's
charging for FMR activations. The problem was, and still is, that
NYNEX/Boston charges airtime and a daily roam charge of $3 for every
FMR activation or deactivation which takes place in its New England
Service Area. This means that if I hit *18 to activate Follow Me
Roaming, yet do not receive or make any further calls in that system,
I will be billed $3.75. ($3 for the daily charge, and $.75 for the one
minute of "airtime", which is basically two seconds of confirmation
tone.).
What's worse, let's say I was in Connecticut and had FMR activated to
CT. If I were to roam into Boston, and decided to turn FMR off (so
that callers could get my GTE/San Francisco Voice Mail), I would also
be billed $3.75 for pressing *19! I've never been a fan any sort of
"daily roam charge", and I think that the cellular companies could
make a lot more money on roaming if they worked out less costly system
where the companies can share in the roaming profits, and thus
customers would be more inclined to use thier phones in other service
areas. Nevertheless, I am willing to pay the $3 charge at times, but
NEVER to simply activate or deactivate FMR. Moreover, when I signed up
for GTE/SF for service, I was told that there were no such charges,
which is why I was very surprised when the first bill came.
I then called GTE/SF, who removed the charges month after month each
time I had been in Boston. (There were some months when there was a
whole page of "*18 FMR ACTIVATION $.75 1MIN" on my bill, mainly
becuase FMR sometimes takes SO long to activate that I hit *18
multiple times.) In December, when I made my monthly call to get the
charges removed, the person who handled my call, Rudy Kadett, who was
the roam coordinator for GTE/SF, told me that GTE would no longer
remove the charges on my bill, and that I should write to Ilene
Sandrafield in Houston if I had any further questions. (This later
turned out to be incorrect, all inquiries SHOULD be handled at GTE/SF.)
I just got off the phone with Ilene, and after an hour-long
conversation to Houston, I can once again say that I made the right
choice in choosing GTE Mobilnet for cellular service. Ilene manages
all roaming agreements for GTE Cellular systems, and seemed quite
knowledgeable and interested in explaining the problem with NYNEX's
FMR and what they intended to do about it. Ilene had contacted the SF
office, explained that there was nothing that GTE could do to prevent
NYNEX for charging these activation charges, but said that GTE/SF
would continue to take these calls off my bill, and that Mr. Kadett
was wrong in saying that GTE/SF would no longer do so.
Basically, what this means, is that I will have to call GTE/SF each
time I got to Boston and use FMR. They will deduct the airtime charges
for *18/*19 calls, and if there were no other calls that day, the $3
roam charge as well. They were even willing to give me a number at
GTE/SF that I can call directly, without having to wait for the
Customer Service people to pick up. (GTE/SF has QUITE long waits at
times to talk to Customer Service.)
In my conversation with Ilene, I was told that the problem was that
NYNEX/Boston has decided to charge for FMR calls, and that every
company that deals with NYNEX is forced to bill their customers for
this. She noted that GTE as well as other companies had tried to get
NYNEX to stop this practice, but that NYNEX flatly refused. One
company, Bell Atlantic Mobile Systems, is even considering charging
NYNEX/Boston roamers the same FMR charge, as one of their customers
made a fuss about these charges as well. (I'd sign up with BAMS if
they did this ... just to make a (small) point to NYNEX! :) )
Overall, she felt, as I do, that this practice is very unfair, and
that in the long run it hurts the industry by creating a great deal of
annoyance and confusion to all "B" system customers, and that NYNEX
was taking advantage of the present state of the industry which
allowed it to levy such charges and get away with it. GTE can not
charge NYNEX/Boston customers for FMR activations unless they charge
everyone for this, and thus GTE can not "retaliate" without annoying
the vast majority of roamers who do not need to use the NYNEX/Boston
system. When I asked how Bell Atlantic can do this, she responded that
they are able (or will be able) to target individual outfits like
NYNEX/Boston, but that GTE as of yet can not, or that the process of
doing so is too cumbersome to enact throughout the GTE Mobilnet
system.
We also discussed cellular fraud. In my letter, I noted that the $3
per day daily roaming charge was, in my opinion, way too much to
charge for ESN validation. She responded that the $3 per day charge
was also designed to recover costs due to fraud, and then got into a
rather long discussion about how cellular *roaming* fraud takes place,
and what GTE was planning for the near future to reduce these losses.
(Much along the lines of the posting from March 14th from the {Houston
Chronicle}, although we discussed a few specifics about what was being
done, such as "IS-41", which is a "new" (?) ESN-validation system
which will not be subject to the delays which the present one is. I
believe that IS-41 is in place between GTE and Pac*Tel in CA and
Texas, but we didn't get in to many specifics as to where this new
system will be used. A good bet is in the high-fraud areas of NY and LA.)
Although I do appreciate that the Cellular Industry is plagued by
fraud, I'm not sure if the best way to prevent it is to charge roamers
$3 per day, especially when the roam rates are so high as it is. The
{Houston Chronicle} article mentioned that perhaps 20% of roam revenue
is lost due to fraud, yet I wonder if the $3 per day charge and the
high airtime rates do not go way beyond this 20% figure. That is to
say, does roaming actually COST the cellular companies money -- are
they LOSING any money which the $3 per day compensates them for? -- or
are they using the 20% "uncollectable" figure as a justification for
these charges, and ultimately end up making even more money?
I didn't press her on this issue, since that was not really what my
letter was about, but I got the impression that in actuality what was
happening was that the cellular industry was under immense pressure to
raise a good deal of money very quickly (so each company can expand to
fill its designated territory, as I believe the FCC requires after a
certain period of time), and thus, when someone says "Hey, we need to
get more money, we have lot's of bill to pay this month (including
some due to fraud, no doubt), and we need some extra revenue ..." the
end result is that roamers get soaked, as they are the easiest targets
and the ones who have the least ability to effectively alter company
policy. (ie, if GTE/SF were to raise its rates, I could go to Cell
One/SF; yet a roamer in GTE/SF's area is stuck using them, and if s/he
comes from some small Cell Co. where s/he is the only one who roams in
GTE/SF, there is little incentive for GTE/SF to take his/ her concerns
into consideration.)
Overall, though, a very interesting conversation, and an hour well
spent! GTE has repeatedly demonstrated that they ARE concerned with
their customers needs, and in many cases will bend over backwards to
retain their customers, including taking a loss of $3 or more per
month (which they have to pay NYNEX in Boston regardless of whether I
have to pay the charge or not) to cover for an irresponsible and
downright greedy cellular company which GTE has no control over. This
incident, as well as their receptiveness to my FMR activation delay
complaints and the speed at which they reinstated international
calling after it had been blocked for all GTE/SF customers, tells me
that THIS is the company I should be giving my cellular business to.
As a comparison to how bad things can be, let me mention my "favorite"
mobile company on the "other" coast, Metro High-Bill in Connecticut.
Of the two letters and fifteen phone calls I have made to them
regarding their most recent charge, that of charging customers airtime
charges for call forwarding (of course without letting us know about
this before the change was made), I received the following:
1. A letter from some office manager saying that the reasoning behind
Metro Mobile's charging airtime for call-forwarding was because it
was "allowed by law..." to do so, yet failing to mention why no one
was notified, especially customers such as myself who had relied on
statements as well as prior practice by Metro Mobile which clearly
indicated that there were no such charges.
2. A call (via cellphone? Heard static, so it was probably Metro..! :) )
by "Mr. Linderman", and 4:55PM, to my voicemail. I call back Metro
the next day, no one has heard of Mr. Linderman. Turns out this guy
in the chairman of Metro Mobile, so I call him, and he's not in.
3. After fifteen calls to his office to try to get Mr. Linderman when
he IS in, I get: "He's out of the country...", "He is sick today",
"He is at his doctor's office", "He is at lunch", "He has left for
the day" (at 11:30 am ?), etc. Maybe they think I am with "60
Minutes"? Something to hide, eh, Mr. Linderman?? :)
4. I sent a letter to Mr. Linderman requesting that if he is not able
to respond to me at this time, to please have someone else provide me
with an explanation of the charges. This was BEFORE I sent my letter to
GTE in Houston. It was a FOLLOWUP on my first letter from October. And,
of course, I have heard nothing from them.
So although many of you may think that GTE's response to my
NYNEX/Boston complaint is perhaps insufficient, and that GTE should be
able to correct the problem without my having to call for a credit
each time I use FMR in Boston, consider for a moment that I have grown
used to Metro's standard tactics (above) for over two and a half
years, and any minor improvement, or a more substantial one as in the
present case with GTE, is one which I will enthusiastically welcome.
Time now to write to NYNEX/Boston telling them what a bunch of rip-off
artists they are ... I *still* don't think *I* should be the one who
has to take time to do all this...! :/
Doug
dreuben@eagle.wesleyan.edu // dreuben@wesleyan.bitnet