blake@pro-party.cts.com (Blake Farenthold) (06/14/90)
I always figured if anyone hated COCOTS it was AT&T. Well I found what I'd call an AT&T COCOT. The card on the phone said the phone was OWNED by AT&T it looked like a 'normal' payphone (not one of their card phones) and took quarters for local calls ... thing is you dial a number and it locks out the keypad (it really was annoying as the one call I made on it was to my voice mailbox and I couldn't retreive my messages). Guess it makes a lot of sense as you don't normaly need the keypad after dialing an AT&T call. I wish I'd had time to play with the phone to see if it (now illegally) blocked access to other carriers. Next time I'm in the Officers club at NAS Corpus Christi I'll make time to fool with the phone. You guys at AT&T need to clean up your own phones before griping about other peoples. UUCP: ...!crash!pnet01!pro-party!blake ARPA: crash!pnet01!pro-party!blake@nosc.mil INET: 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: BLAKE
ceb@csli.stanford.edu (Charles Buckley) (06/26/90)
>blake@pro-party.cts.com (Blake Farenthold) writes: >I always figured if anyone hated COCOTS it was AT&T. Well I found >what I'd call an AT&T COCOT. I have encountered AT&T "Charge-a-Call" phones at an airport recently which cut off the keypad only when certain 800 numbers were called. I could call my paging service and use the keypad, but the keypad was turned off when I called U.S. Sprint. I can't blame them, but I was very surprised. Even worse, I recently made a call on a NY Tel payphone in Kennedy airport, which cut off the keypad *after* I had dialled in 0 vvv nnn-nnnn, so I couldn't dial my credit card number. We were all queued up as cattle, and people on either side of me were having trouble too. I learned quite a few card numbers to use, should I ever think of doing such a thing. I called up repair and asked why this was being done, and the first thing the person on duty said was "Are you a phone company employee?". I told the truth, and said no, so she wouldn't say why, but something funny was going on, for sure. I can't decide: drugs, espionage, or long distance competition (against AT&T). Any ideas?
schweige@cs.nps.navy.mil (Jeffrey M. Schweiger) (06/26/90)
Here's a question for our Moderator or other readers of the Digest: Do the AT&T 'Charge-a-Call' phones fall under the same (or similar) rules as COCOT's? It is not clear that they are customer owned, and they are obviously not "coin operated". Jeff Schweiger Standard Disclaimer CompuServe: 74236,1645 Internet (Milnet): schweige@cs.nps.navy.mil
Carl Moore (VLD/VMB) <cmoore@brl.mil> (06/27/90)
I don't understand this stuff about cutting off the keypad (I saw a note saying this happened on a NY Tel payphone in JFK airport in New York after 0-xxx-xxx-xxxx). That self-service credit-card-number- entry was put in in the first place because overheard credit card numbers are a prime source of fraud, right?
phil@wubios.wustl.edu (J. Philip Miller) (06/29/90)
In article <8955@accuvax.nwu.edu> blake@pro-party.cts.com (Blake Farenthold) writes: >number and it locks out the keypad (it really was annoying as the one >call I made on it was to my voice mailbox and I couldn't retreive my >messages). When I was on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon all of the Pay Phones were by Mountain West. Some were traditional old style, and a number had a LCD display attached. What I found fascinating was that the card on the phone indicated that since they did not provide long distance service you needed to consult with "your long distance carrier" for instructions about how to dial long distance calls - even the phone books carried no instructions about how to make long distance calls :-( In fact 0+ dialing gave me ATT long distance :-), but when trying to access an 800 service which required tone input, it would regularly disconnect me after entering tones :-( J. Philip Miller, Professor, Division of Biostatistics, Box 8067 Washington University Medical School, St. Louis MO 63110 phil@wubios.WUstl.edu - Internet (314) 362-3617 uunet!wuarchive!wubios!phil - UUCP (314)362-2693(FAX) C90562JM@WUVMD - bitnet P A T R I C K A. T O W N S O N (The Cheerful Iconclast) ptownson@cs.bu.edu ptownson@chinet.ch.il.us ptownson@eecs.nwu.edu Unique Zip Code 60690-1570 MCI Mail: 222-4956 AT&T Mail: !ptownson