carols@husc6.harvard.edu (Carol Springs) (09/18/90)
The insert in my Sprint bill this month contains a couple of items of
interest. To quote from the first:
Beginning October 1, US Sprint will offer Sprint Select
Interstate Evening/Night/Weekend, a custom plan that
charges a flat $8.10 a month for the first hour of
interstate calling from 5 p.m. to 8 a.m. and on
weekends. Additional hours within that period are
billed at $6.50 per hour, prorated per minute used.
And with Sprint Select Interstate Evening/Night/Weekend,
you'll receive a 10 percent discount off the regular
Dial 1 service rates for your interstate daytime long-
distance calling. Plus, you'll receive 5 percent off
all direct-dial intrastate and international, as well as
interstate FONCARD, calls....
[I don't think this deal sounds like a win for me over
Sprint Plus. My Sprint Plus rates are already in this
price range, and it appears that I'd lose the volume
discounts on my evening/night/weekend interstate Dial 1
calls.]
And also beginning October 1, we'll have a special option for our
California customers called Sprint Select Intrastate
Evening/Night/Weekend. You can select a plan that lets you pay a flat
monthly rate of $7.90 for your first hour of in-state US
Sprint-carried calls. National calls cost $6.50 an hour, prorated per
minute used, and you can receive the same discounts for daytime Dial 1
service and other direct dial calls as you do with Sprint Select
Interstate.
The other item I found interesting was about Sprint Express, Sprint's
answer to AT&T's USA Direct. "You can charge your calls [from the six
enumerated countries] to your FONCARD, call collect, or charge calls
on your local telephone company calling card." Presumably this means
that non-Sprint customers can use their AT&T cards, uh, local
telephone company cards, with Sprint Express. A Sprint operator
completes the call. The access numbers are as follows:
Argentina 001-800-777-1111
Australia 0014-881-877
*
France 19 0087
Japan 0039-131
Singapore 800-0877
United Kingdom 0800-89-0877
*
Wait for tone
Incidentally, I called Sprint customer service this evening to request
credit for both a long distance directory assistance call and a
one-minute call to the number D.A. had erroneously given me, which was
not the number of the party I'd asked for. The Sprint rep said she
could credit me for the one-minute call, but not for the call to
directory assistance. When I asked why, she said that it was because
directory assistance is handled by the local phone companies and that
therefore I'd have to go through the company responsible to get the
credit [fat chance]. Now, I can understand this denial of direct
responsibility, but it makes me wonder: Does AT&T likewise refuse
credit for directory assistance calls in these cases? How about MCI?
Funny thing is, the Sprint rep said she was crediting me with both the
75-cent surcharge for the FONcard call and "78 cents for the first
minute of your call." Now, I'd given her the number I'd reached, the
call to which had cost only 87 cents including the surcharge. And
I've made no daytime calls in the last couple of months for her to
have mixed up with the cheapie call. Can you say "pacification"?
(This was before I'd even asked about the reason for the "no D.A.
credit" policy, and I never acted irritated during our conversation.)
Or maybe she couldn't quickly find the call in question, and just took
the daytime rate as a default.
One final thing I noticed in both my bill insert and the bill itself:
"Effective July 1, 1990, US Sprint discontinued monthly complimentary
credits for interstate directory assistance." Thanks, folks.
Carol Springs carols@drilex.dri.mgh.com