forrette@cory.berkeley.edu (Steve Forrette) (02/16/91)
As our Moderator indicated in a previous message, there is a big danger in giving out your AT&T and/or BOC "one number" calling card number - some carriers will allow it to be used to complete a call to *any* destination. The charges will appear on your local phone bill. And if you have an unrestricted calling card on the same account, it will be difficult for you to dispute the calls. One carrier that is notorious for this is ComSystems. I have been quite involved in trying to get them to enforce the "one number" card restrictions, but haven't gotten anywhere. What makes it worse is that they have a 10XXX access code, so someone can use a one number card to call to anywhere from *any* phone they might be using. Note that it isn't that they just aren't verifying the PIN, as a PIN that's neither the normal nor the "one number" one will be denied. As a side note, the first test call I made to confirm the above was to an out-of-service number. Despite the lack of supervision, the call was billed for three minutes, at a rate of $3.50 or so. What a bargain! I stumbled upon a packet that ComSystems had sent my living group regarding our payphone - they wanted us to switch it to their service. The packet is two years old now, but probably not much has changed. Our comission for the first three months was a full 50% of all 0+ calls, and 20% thereafter. They sure must be marking up the cost of the calls in order to provide such a handsome commission! Steve Forrette, forrette@cory.berkeley.edu [Moderator's Note: I of course would not tolerate that sort of thing on my bill for a minute. *Any* 'part three' on my IBT billing which comes from some AOS *always* gets denied immediatly with a warning not to pull that stunt again on me if they know what is good for them. PAT]
john@zygot.ati.com (John Higdon) (02/17/91)
Steve Forrette <forrette@cory.berkeley.edu> writes: > What makes it worse is that they have a > 10XXX access code, so someone can use a one number card to call to > anywhere from *any* phone they might be using. Note that it isn't > that they just aren't verifying the PIN, as a PIN that's neither the > normal nor the "one number" one will be denied. Not that I would advocate anything improper, but (in the style of Jack Lord's Hawaii Five-O character) suppose, just suppose... You happened to dial a call to a supervising busy test or the Bell Canada newsline and used as a calling card the phone number of the corporate headquarters of ComSystems followed by XXXX (your choice). Do you suppose that the company might be encouraged to close that hole if enough people caused bogus charges to appear the firm's own phone bill? Just wondering. John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 723 1395 john@zygot.ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o !