rmoonen@hvlpa.att.com (03/15/91)
When I was in the States a while ago, I learned to be careful of telephone calls from hotels. I was staying at a Hotel in Naperville, just near the AT&T plant there, and decided to give a friend who lives in Washington DC a call. I dialed a 0 for an external line, and dialed 1 NPA SN and the phone went on the other side, however, nobody answered the phone after about eight times ringing. I tried it again the next day, also to no avail. Finally I got through. I also placed a call to a friend in The Netherlands (where I live) and got through, and arranged for him to call me collect at work the next day. When I left, I got my hotel bill, and on the bill where _all_ the calls I made, including the ones that were never answered. This amounted to $7.00 of charges for calls that didn't succeed. When I asked them how this was possible, they told me that 'due to the equipment not being able to detect a call being answered, it starts billing automatically after 15 seconds.' I told them that the call had never gone through, and they instantly deleted the charges from my phone bill. The weird thing however was that the call to the Netherlands never even showed up on my bill. As if the billing equipment wasn't capable of detecting international calls.... Well, I will check my hotel bill every time now, to check for bogus telephone charges. Also I would like to know if a setup like this is legal. I mean, can they charge for a service not delivered? Ralph Moonen rmoonen@hvlpa.att.com (+31)2155-24356