hnewstro@x102c.harris-atd.com (Harvey Newstrom) (01/15/91)
Help! A friend of mine had a bizarre experience trying to make a
collect call from an AT&T pay phone to an AT&T home phone, both here
in Florida.
The phone rings at home, and a recorded message says:
"You have a collect call from an <.....>.
Press one to accept the charges.
Press to to deny the charges."
The phone is a rotary dial and has no buttons. The woman at home
dials "0" and gets an operator. She describes the situation, and the
AT&T operator could not tell her how to accept calls. She suggested
that the woman subscribe to touch-tone dialing.
Meanwhile, my friend at the pay phone gets a recording saying that the
charges were denied. She immediately called home with money and asked
her mother why she refused a call from her!
Any idea how to accept collect calls from a rotary phone? And a
rhetorical question: Why couldn't the AT&T operator help?
Harvey Newstrom (hnewstro@x102c.ess.harris.com)
[Moderator's Note: Well *supposedly* rotary phone accounts are listed
in the data base as such, and touch tone accounts as such. I know that
when making outgoing calls billed to calling cards, after the tone
signal we interpret to mean 'enter your card number now', if you are
on a rotary dial phone the AT&T operator will come on the line and
take the card number. If you are at a tone phone and simply do not
enter the card, she will likewise come on, but it has to time out
first. I think on incoming collect calls or bill to third number calls
where the (proposed to be) billed party is expected to press something
the same rule applies: for rotary, within a second or two the operator
will intercept it, otherwise lack of pressing something will
eventually time out to the operator anyway. It sounds like something
went wrong in the case you describe. PAT]klong@sura.net (Kim Long) (01/18/91)
I had a similar experience while trying to receive a collect phone call. My touch tone phone either does not emit the correct frequency or the tone is not long enough to register with the telco's equipment. It would appear that this new service still needs a little work. klong@umd5.umd.edu