NJS@ibm.com (Nicholas J. Simicich) (02/17/91)
There was recently a set of articles on personal 800 service, comparing Cable and Wireless's 800 service with MCI. I called C&W, and then decided to shop around. Sprint's 800 service also had the installation fee waived, had just about the same per minute rates as C&W (funny how that works) but didn't allow you to get 800 calls from Puerto Rico or the Virgin Islands. Sprint did, however, allow you to get 800 calls from Canada (an option that you select) and also included a listing in 800 Directory assistance for the base fee of ten dollars. Thus, I decided that for my purposes, Sprint was a better deal, as I could get a listing for my base ten dollars per month, whereas with C&W, a number and a listing would have cost me twenty dollars per month. And since Sprint will reprogram your 800 number to a different line without fee if your phone number changes or because you want to add an additional line for the 800 number to ring on, it wasn't worth it to me to have reprogram on demand. I guess it depends on what is more important to you? If being able to remotely reprogram your 800 number target is more important than being able to get calls from Canada, C&W might be better. If having an inexpensive listing is more important, go with Sprint. Compared to my past experiences in dealing with Sprint, I found that this was right pleasant. All except for the people who were going to tell me my 800 number after it was turned up. They left me a number to call, so I called it. It was evening, and I got a recording telling me the correct hours, and asking me to leave a message. I called again the next day, during the indicated hours, and got a "all available customer service representatives are busy, please hold" and then music on hold. Then, after holding for a couple of minutes, the m-o-h changed to a ring, and it picked up, and lo! it was the same answering machine that I had gotten the previous night, letting me know that their hours were (while I was calling). I tried this a couple of times and finally got a person. I suspect that the answering machine was just getting one of their trunks. I never got calls back from the two or three messages I left. Nick Simicich (NJS at WATSON, njs@ibm.com) -- SSI AOWI #3958, HSA #318