John Higdon <john@bovine.ati.com> (08/15/90)
From time to time, someone posts how the local telco seems to have
the hots to upgrade someone's residence service to business. In
Pac*Bell land no one seems overly eager to do this. It took five
minutes to convince a Pac*Bell rep that a friend's voice BBS was
strictly a non-business enterprize. In fact, I once had the goods on a
telemarketer who was using residence lines and got nowhere.
In non-rural California, measured service is mandatory for business
lines while residences can opt for flat-rate local calling. Some of
the telemarketing slimeballs will go to some lengths to stash a couple
of harassment machines in someone's house connected to residence
circuits.
One of these machines called me one evening without the mandatory live
person introducing it. For the express purpose of nailing these guys,
I answered the machine's questions and indicated that I wanted to have
a callback. Then I listened to the machine drop off. To my ear, it was
unmistakenly a call from another line in my crossbar's marker group.
For those unfamiliar with this sound, it is essentially no sound --
the call just goes away. It can only do this with a call originating
from the same switch.
When the live person called I made up some excuse to have to call her
back. She was very hesitant to give me a call-back number, but when I
indicated that it seemed strange doing business with someone who
refused to give out a number she gave it to me. It was 265-something.
Sure enough, my switch.
I reported this to the Pac*Bell business office, telling them that
this particular machine had given me the spiel without a live person
introducing it. I was later told that I must have some wrong
information because the number I provided was residence service so it
couldn't possibly be used in telemarketing -- "that would be against
tariff!"
"Besides," she told me, "the woman who answered the [residence] phone
assured me that all the solicitation calls [pertaining to the business
she apparently wasn't doing??!!] were made from Wisconsin."
Yeah, and I'm Ronald Reagan.
John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 723 1395
john@bovine.ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o !