John Higdon <john@zygot.ati.com> (08/08/90)
In June of 1988, I put a client on Sprint dedicated ProWATS. These
lines double as intraLATA WATS, with Sprint billing for the interLATA
and Pac*Bell billing for the near-in stuff. These lines are reliably
selected by the PBX which has ARS. I left AT&T as the default on the
local trunks, primarily for ease in routing "0+" calls over AT&T.
Today, August of 1990, a salesperson from AT&T called the client. This
is the first contact from anyone at that carrier since more than two
years ago. My client turned the gentleman over to me. His message was
that a "Reach Out America" plan on the local trunks had gone for some
time without any use. Somehow he had learned that my client had "gone
with Sprint" and he used the opportunity to tell me that Sprint had
obviously been negligent for not cancelling the ROA plan.
I asked him why that was Sprint's responsibility, indicating that it
was more of an oversight on the part of myself, or, since I don't
review those phone bills, my client. He said, "Your carrier should
really sort of take care of you and point those things out." Then I
dropped the bomb on him. "Actually, AT&T is our carrier as far as
those lines are concerned. I never changed the default for those
trunks. Using your logic, AT&T was negligent in not notifying the
customer in over TWO YEARS on an apparently abandoned ROA plan."
He quickly recovered, and offered me "a helluva deal". If we would
"switch" to AT&T, he would pick up all the costs PLUS refund all of
the unused ROA monthly charges going back two years.
I told him to discontinue ROA starting herewith and then told him to
consider taking better care of his customers in the future. Then I
told him to put his offer in writing and send it to my attention.
John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 723 1395
john@zygot.ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o !