[comp.dcom.telecom] An Embarrassing Retraction

John Higdon <john@zygot.ati.com> (07/30/90)

Boy do I have egg on my face. Less than twelve hours ago I submitted
the following:

> Now, if the rates are actually lower than AT&T, can someone think of a
> reason not to use Sprint in this application?

After a night of "login failed" from a site in San Diego, I called the
administrator and asked if he was still having problems. Not aware of
any. A test revealed the "Sprint/Telebit" incompatibility noted some
time back in the Digest. So I looked over the records for that site
for the past month. It seems that all night long conversations would
fail until after 8AM when the calls would then be routed over my AT&T
WATS.  This problem did not show up in my throughput reports since the
systems never even had attempted to transfer data over the failed
Sprint connections.

An attempt was made to report this to Sprint and I was connected to
their "computer and modem" person. I got the usual questions such as,
"are you sure your parity is correct?" and "what communications
package are you using"? (He had never heard of HoneyDanBer UUCP!)

The long and the short of it was that he wanted me to go through this
protracted session with a repair person "whenever I noticed the
problem". Sitting on the phone with Sprint in the middle of the night
is not my idea of fun. I have data that needs to be moved. I told him
that the easiest fix is to take '10333' out of my dialing script and
the problem will go away.

An aside: When I reported an identical problem to AT&T regarding
connections to Kansas, the person that took the report was familiar
with UUCP and Telebits. Technicians immediately went to work on the
problem and I got calls every few hours advising me of the progress.
In the meantime, they rerouted the calls to allow communications and
within 48 hours they announced that the problem was corrected. Other
than advising me of their progress, they did not require my services
as an unpaid consultant, as apparently Sprint was requesting.

I don't care how offensive AT&T's ads are as long as they keep
providing their exceptional service. When will I ever learn not to
fool with alternate carriers?

        John Higdon         |   P. O. Box 7648   |   +1 408 723 1395
    john@zygot.ati.com      | San Jose, CA 95150 |       M o o !