root@joymrmn.UUCP (Marcel D. Mongeon) (07/09/90)
I administer a hotel PBX (please no flames about hotel charges until
you read this whole posting). The hotel is located in Ontario Canada
which means we have only one long distance supplier - Bell Canada (A
first cousin of AT&T). With the proliferation of long distance
companies in the United States and the large number of guests that we
attract from the states, we have been getting a *lot* of inquiries
concerning accessing alternate long distance companies.
In a few cases (MCI and Sprint to be exact), we do let the guests know
about the 1-800-950-1022 and 1-800-877-8000 telephone numbers to
access these two services. However, I would like to provide our
guests with a much more complete list. Therefore I would appreciate
e-mail or postings to this group of such numbers (remember they have
to be accessible from Canada! - a lot of US 800 numbers will not work
from Canada). In addition to the American long distance providers, I
would also like as many of the "Overseas" 'Direct' numbers, including
AT&T's USA Direct.
Finally, as to the charges that we levy: some of you will recall a
posting some time ago on this subject from myself. AFter overcoming
the shock of the vehemence of some of the replies, I examined what
people were saying and then ran a test period of a new charging
scheme. That scheme is the following:
Local Calls -- No charge.
Directory Assistance -- $1.00 (after all every room has a
telephone book and we have to pay $.75 for these calls).
Credit Card Calls -- No charge.
Operator Assisted (not charged to the Hotel) -- No Charge.
Operator Assisted (charged to the Hotel) -- Actual charges
plus a $1.00 surcharge (if you don't want to pay the
surcharge put it on your credit card).
800 Calls -- No charge (This includes 800-950-1022 and any
other LD access numbers).
Guest Dialed Long Distance (charged to the room) -- Actual
DDD charges plus 50% plus a $1.00 surcharge ($2.50 for
international calls) (see description below).
900 and 700 Calls -- Blocked in the switch
Generally the policy is simple, if the hotel doesn't have to pay for
the call (notwithstanding monthly trunk charges etc.) neither does the
guest. In the case of Guest Dialled Long Distance, I am sure that
there are some people who might start screaming "Rip-Off" with the 50%
and $1 surcharges. However, before you start doing this, let's
compare the cost to making a credit card call: My telephone book tells
me that all station-to-station credit card calls completed by an
operator have a surcharge of $1.50 and $3.75 for a person-to-person.
In addition, there is a minimum 34 cent charge for the call on top of
that. Charges are rounded up to the next whole minute whereas our
call detail recorder only charges 10ths of a minute.
Therefore, the surcharges we tack on are in keeping with those placed
on a credit card call. Finally, for those who think that these
surcharges still leave us sitting on a mountain of money we have to
take into consideration what the inavailability of answer supervision
means for the charging of short calls.
Answer supervision is what makes a pay phone grab your quarter when
the other party answers and give it back to you if they don't. If the
phone company can provide it to every blessed pay phone, you wonder
why they can't make it work for a call detail recorer in a hotel. The
bottom line is they can't (or maybe they won't?).
Therefore, in charging calls to our guests, we have to program two
additional numbers, the minimum time that a call must continue before
it is eleigible to be charged and the time to be deducted from the
total length of the call which represents the setup time (the
switching and the ringing). If these numbers are set too low, then a
lot of calls that were never made will get charged with a lot of guest
complaints to boot. Set the number too high and a lot of calls that
were made and completed properly will not get charged with the
attendant loss of income to the hotel even though the phone company
will charge us for those calls.
Our philosophy has been to set up the numbers on the high side. Since
doing so, we have almost eleiminated complaints of calls being charged
that were never completed. On the other hand, our comparisons of what
was charged to guests versus what was charged by the phone company
indicates that there is a small revenue loss. We make up for this
loss with the surcharge. In other words, all people who make long
duration long distance calls end up subsidizing thos who make short
calls which are not charged for. If anyone can convince the phone
company to provide us answer supervision no problem, we can get rid of
the surcharge. Until then, it's the best solution that I know of.
||| Marcel D. Mongeon
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