danj1@ihlpa.att.com (Daniel Jacobson) (01/07/91)
Here is something I posted in chi.general. Being ever so helpful, and to make sure my golden keystrokes get maximum bong-for-the-buck, I am posting it to TELECOM Digest, even though this might have been blabbed about very recently. "Why am I pestering you New Jersey people, etc. with this?" Because you might be able to do something similar with your local phone company to prevent one day perhaps getting "slammed" from e.g., AT&T to some other leading brand [---not that it ever happened to me much.] > On Thu, 3 Jan 91 12:34:08 CST, motcid!void!bond@uunet.UU.NET (Allan > Bond) said via e-mail: >I got a "Request for account restriction of long distance company >form" (form 681-3) to protect from getting my favourite telephone >company switched. "Call your service representative for yours." Allan> What is this? Is Illinois Bell switching people's long Allan> distance carriers at random? Please provide a brief background Allan> why I might want such a form. Well, there's the practice of "slamming" (often mentioned in newsgroup comp.dcom.telecom) where, say, Sprint might out of the blue tell Illinois Bell that you want Sprint for your long distance carrier, and next month you start getting bills from Sprint instead of say, AT&T, which you had previously selected. These forms are a way to protect yourself from this shady practice. Further questions on slamming in general you probably want to direct to newsgroup comp.dcom.telecom. By the way, I tried to get a whole ream of these forms for my pals at work (we all chose AT&T, and getting an employee discount probably being a significant factor, we don't want to be "slammed"), but I was informed that each person has to call their Illinois Bell service representative individually. By the way 1-700-555-4141 is the number to dial to see who's your current long distance carrier. Dan_Jacobson@ATT.COM Naperville IL USA +1 708-979-6364