libove@libove.det.dec.com (Jay Vassos-Libove) (12/18/90)
In several articles seen here discussing whether one should pay for services rendered but unsolicited we've seen an interesting opinion come from the Moderator - that you are entering in to a contract, that is, soliciting service, just by picking up the telephone and dialing. Quoth: >[Moderator's Note: The point is, your long distance connection through >the public switched network was NOT unsolicited. You solicited the >service as soon as you went off hook and started dialing the number. Now the problem comes in here: When you pick up the telephone and start dialing, you are soliciting service from the vendor that you expect to be connected to your dial-1 service. You requested that vendor and that is the vendor you expect to get. If someone else, anyone at all, changes that vendor on your dial-1 service, then that someone is indeed providing an unsolicited service. When I pick up my telephone and dial 1 ... I am soliciting an AT&T call. If MCI slams me and I pick up my phone and dial 1 ... and get MCI, they have provided an unsolicited service. Look at it this way: you drive up to a McDonald's restaurant drive-thru window and order some food. The competitor has tapped in to the wires running from that drive-up ordering station and promptly fills your order, shoves the McDonald's employee out of the way at the order-fulfillment window, and expects payment. Would you take that Hardees' hamburger and pay that Hardees' employee? Of course not! You ordered McDonald's food from a McDonald's employee! But in the case of telephone service slamming, you aren't told that Hardees' has just usurped your dial-1 service at the order-taking station, and by the time you figure it out, you are ten miles down the road having taken the first bite of that hamburger ... which you didn't order and don't want. I don't see why this is any different? If you didn't contract with XYZ to carry your long distance, and they place theirself on your dial-1 service without your permission, they have provided unsolicited service, and you need not pay them for it. To quote one more message giving an example of this: | minutes on ATT and pay less than that!!" "Sorry, our records show you | requested our service. The moment you picked up your phone and | dialled `1` you entered into a voluntary contract for long distance | service with us. Now send us the check for last month's charges of Yeah, right. Jay Vassos-Libove libove@libove.det.dec.com Digital Equipment Corporation decwrl!libove.det.dec.com!libove Detroit ACT/Ultrix Resource Center Opinions? They're mine, mine, all mine! Farmington Hills, Michigan and D.E.C. Can't have 'em!