rfarris@serene.UUCP (Rick Farris) (12/17/89)
I followed the recent discussion on hunt-groups vs busy-forwarding, and agreed with the sentiment that a 37 month payback was about forever, so called my local PacTel business office to order busy- forwarding. According to several sources here in c.d.t, hunt-groups were $20 per number, ($40 for a 2 number group), to install, and then $0.50 per month maintenance. Busy-forwarding, on the other hand, was a $5.00 installation charge, and then $1.50 per month, hence the 37 month payback. Well, somebody let the cat out of the bag at PacTel, because by the time I called, the install charge for busy-forwarding was $10.00 and the monthly fee was $3.50! Needless to say, the economics of the situation was considerably skewed, so I ordered a hunt-group. I don't know why I didn't do it sooner, it works like a charm! I asked the business attendant what was the difference in the services, and she claimed there were no differences, other than the fact that busy-forwarding could forward to a business number. That doesn't make a lot of sense to me, but I suppose they're just trying to gouge the person that needs a personal and a business number forwarded to each other. Are there a lot of those people? Rick Farris RF Engineering POB M Del Mar, CA 92014 voice (619) 259-6793 rfarris@serene.uu.net ...!uunet!serene!rfarris serene.UUCP 259-7757
john@bovine.ati.com (John Higdon) (12/19/89)
rfarris@serene.uu.net (Rick Farris) writes: > Well, somebody let the cat out of the bag at PacTel, because by the > time I called, the install charge for busy-forwarding was $10.00 and > the monthly fee was $3.50! Needless to say, the economics of the > situation was considerably skewed, so I ordered a hunt-group. I don't > know why I didn't do it sooner, it works like a charm! Oops! I may have a red face over this one. You have to understand that I have had Commstar since 1981 (formerly Premiere--home Centrex) and sometimes forget that the custom calling features pricing for Commstar lines is different than for "stand-alone" lines. The price for practically any optional custom-calling feature is $5.00 to install and $2.00 per month. Call waiting, call forwarding, speed call, busy call forwarding, etc., etc. are all that price on Commstar. What you confronted was "real world" pricing of the feature. Sorry 'bout that. > I asked the business attendant what was the difference in the > services, and she claimed there were no differences, other than the > fact that busy-forwarding could forward to a business number. That > doesn't make a lot of sense to me, but I suppose they're just trying > to gouge the person that needs a personal and a business number > forwarded to each other. Are there a lot of those people? From a tariff standpoint the difference is significant. Hunting may only occur between lines with the same prefix, with the same class of service (business or residential; measured or unmeasured), billed to the same party. In mechanical offices, there are even additional restrictions concering the "hundreds" group. Busy forwarding effectively drops all of those restrictions. However, busy forwarding is not available from a mechanical office, either. When my business was considerably more complex than it is now, I had a salesman in Concord who had a listed number in my company's name. We had busy call forwarding on that number such that if it he didn't answer it within about 3 or 4 rings, it would forward to our 800 number in San Jose. It took them days to make it work, but it finally did. You can't do that with hunting. (Busy forwarding is actually busy/no answer forwarding, with the number of rings predetermined at installation.) John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 723 1395 john@bovine.ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o !