Blake Farenthold <blake@pro-party.cts.com> (08/07/90)
I received my Southwestern Bell Long distance bill today :-( and
discovered that the Vice President in charge of page three is not speaking
to the Vice President in charge of page four! At the bottom of page
three the following message appeared:
STARTING SEPT. 9, 1990 YOU WILL BE REQUIRED TO DIAL "512"
WHEN CALLING LONG DISTANCE WITHIN THE 512 AREA CODE. THIS
CHANGE IS NEEDED BECAUSE THE COMBINATION OF AVAILABLE
TELEPHONE NUMBERS IN THE 512 AREA CODE IS RUNNING OUT.
YOU MAY BEGAN DIALING THE AREA CODE ON ALL LONG DISTANCE
CALLS TODAY.
At the top of page four the following message appeared:
DO YOURSELF AND YOUR FAMILY A FAVOR. GET AN ADDITIONAL
PHONE LINE WITH A SEPARATE PHONE NUMBER. GET PEACE OF MIND
FOR LESS THAN YOU THINK. CALL YOUR CUSTOMER SERVICE
REPRESENTATIVE TODAY.
... well I thought it was kinda funny..
My two other phone bill observations.. Why all caps? and Why can't
AT&T/SWBell bill tell me how much EACH Reach Out America costs instead
of giving me the FULL AT&T rate with asterisks, percent signs, and
octothorpes to indicate it is a ROA call.
UUCP: ...!crash!pnet01!pro-party!blake
Internet: blake@pro-party.cts.com
Blake Farenthold | Voice: 800/880-1890 | MCI: BFARENTHOLD
1200 MBank North | Fax: 512/889-8686 | CIS: 70070,521
Corpus Christi, TX 78471 | BBS: 512/882-1899 | GEnie: BLAKEla063249@zach.fit.edu (Bill Huttig) (08/08/90)
In article <10510@accuvax.nwu.edu> blake@pro-party.cts.com (Blake Farenthold) writes: ...stuff about Ringmaster deleted. I wonder how many Ringmaster numbers exist now? I think that the LEC's are pushing it as their cables are approaching full usage. otherwise they would be pushing a second line. (New NPA's will be come more frequent because of RingMaster type numbers..) >AT&T/SWBell bill tell me how much EACH Reach Out America costs instead >of giving me the FULL AT&T rate with asterisks, percent signs, and >octothorpes to indicate it is a ROA call. I think the LEC's should include two prices for each call the cost under the plan and the regular cost. Then they could say at the bottom that you saved $xx.xx this month. They could do this for each customer if they were on a plan or not. Bill [Moderator's Note: Illinois Bell (when billing for AT&T Reach Out) shows the regular cost of the call with the # symbol and the number of minutes. At the bottom of the bill, they tally the total minutes, charge the hourly rate for ROA and add the note "Total Was: xxxx" You Pay: zzzz". Obviously if there is more than about $7 difference, then you have paid the monthly Reach Out fee and started to save money. The catch is, here in the midwest, very few late night calls cost more than about 12 cents a minute anyway ... and some cost less! My use of ROA about breaks even. It becomes cost effective on calls from the east to west coast, or anywhere more than about 2000 miles away. I do not call the west coast all that often. PT]
heiby@mcdchg.chg.mcd.mot.com (Ron Heiby) (08/18/90)
I looked very carefully at my bills before signing up for ROA and figured out that I would probably end up paying something like two to four dollars per month more for the Night/Weekend calls than I otherwise would, but since the vast majority of my calling was during Evening hours (despite urgent pleas to my wife), I would save far more from the evening rate discount that I get with the plan. I signed up for whatever ROA plan gave me the biggest evening discount. Ron Heiby, heiby@chg.mcd.mot.com [Moderator's Note: Mr. Heiby is the Moderator of Usenet's comp.newprod newsgroup. Welcome to telecom! PAT]