clark@beaver.cs.washington.edu (Roger Clark Swann) (01/10/89)
First off, I hope that everyone is having a great 1989...
As many of may have heard/read, there was a bad oil spill recently
off the Washington state coast. As a result, there is much cleanup
work going on both at the beaches and at emergency wildlife shelters.
I was watching a story on all this during the evening news here in
Seattle the other night. I was surprised when they ended the story by
stating that one could donate to the cleanup fund, (didn't catch if
this was the state fund or a private fund), by just dialing a phone
number. Here is how it worked:
dial 1-440-xxxx = $5 to the cleanup
dial 1-440-yyyy = $10 to the cleanup
The donation would be automatically charged to caller's phone bill.
This is the first time that I have seen this done locally. I assume
that it is going on elsewhere in the country as well.
Roger C. Swan
uucp: uw-beaver!ssc-vax!clark voice: 206/657-5810
[Moderator's Note: What is the area code to call? Can this number be called
from outside the local phone company's area? I have not seen it done around
Chicago, but I think it is an excellent idea. We are billed by the phone
company for the various information services; we are billed $2 or more for
the various sexual gratification services we call on 900-xxx-xxxx; why not
something very worthwhile like Mr. Swan is describing? It might be worth a
letter to your local telco, or your state regulators, asking that such a
group of numbers be made available in your community, with the phone company
donating its services as collection agent for charitable groups. P. Townson]wmartin@ALMSA-1.ARPA (Will Martin -- AMXAL-RI) (01/10/89)
Re the "moderator's note" on the subject of donating by making a phone call: This looks to have enormous potential for abuse. Someone who gets access to a company office's telephones or those of a university, say, could make hundreds of phone calls, donating thousands of dollars to their favorite cause, with no way to trace the false donations back to the real caller. Traditionally, the potential for abuse of illicit access to someone else's telephone was limited by the fact that they usually could only call other people and run up a long-distance bill, but, after the abuse was detected, such calls could be eventually charged to the called party, or the actual caller could be identified by looking at the pattern of calls or talking with some of the called parties (and threatening them with being charged for those calls, sometimes! :-). Now, with 976 numbers and other such automatically-charged services, the abuse potential went up, but was still limited by time and (probably) boredom -- after an abuser gets into an office and makes ten 976 calls, he's probably bored by it and will stop. He has no incentive to continue, unless all he wants is to attack the company, and even then it gets tiring. Now, with this new option, though, there is an incentive. He can both hurt the company and direct thousands of dollars to some cause he supports, be it "save the baby seals" or "right to life" or "planned parenthood" or The Committee To Re-Elect The President or whatever... Even though some mechanism will probably be implemented to allow "backing out" of such donations, especially if such a pattern of abuse is detected, it will still be a hassle, be after-the-fact, and not all illicit "donations" will be detected or reversed. This gives the person with a grudge an incentive to make many many many calls; he doesn't even have to wait to listen to any spiel, but can just repeatedly make calls. With an autodialer device, a determined hacker could tap into a line and run up a multi-thousand-dollar string of "donation" calls in just a few minutes, if we want to get technological about it... Maybe it still is a good idea -- as long as the only people who get donations are causes I approve of, that is... :-) Will Martin [Moderators Note: I think the answer to this is that most telcos allow blocking of 900/976 numbers, to prevent abuse of any kind, which would presumably include the abuse described by Mr. Martin. I suspect also that there would be some cancellation clause in the telco's contract with the charity, which gives the telco total recourse for uncollectibles. P. Townson]
dgc@math.ucla.edu (01/18/89)
Will Martin called attention to the enormous potential for abuse
of donations by telephone. The moderator dimisses this problem
with the statement:
I think the answer to this is that most telcos allow blocking
of 900/976 numbers, to prevent abuse of any kind, which would
presumably include the abuse described by Mr. Martin. I suspect
also that there would be some cancellation clause in the telco's
contract with the charity, which gives the telco total recourse
for uncollectibles.
This cries out for a reply!
1. In fact, over their strong opposition, telcos were ORDERED to allow
blocking of 976 numbers by the State PUC's (and, at least, in
California, out-of-state 976 numbers cannot be blocked). Initially,
the telcos charged for the blocking! Now the FCC is going to permit
900 numbers with similar charging privileges to come on line and
there is no plan to allow blocking them.
2. Any sort of cancellation clause will be nothing but a major problem
for the subscriber.
3. There are services dedicated to providing charging and billing
services, both electronically and physically (e.g., Visa,
MasterCard, American Express, etc.). Numerous abuses by these
companies have caused Congress to pass rigid laws regulating them.
These companies already permit donating to charities by telephone
calls. Next time there's a telethon, call one of the 800 numbers
and you will be asked for a credit card number to charge your
donation to.
4. The key point is that as long as telephone service is an essential
public utility, without competition (and this is the case for local
service) the telcos' regulated services should be separated from
inessential other services. If they desire to provide charging
and/or billing services, these should be provided separately,
subject to the usual regulations that govern such services, with the
same power of enforcement of payment (civil suit), AND NO MORE. In
particular, in no way should failure to pay for these other services
be allowed to interfere with telephone service.
dgc
David G. Cantor
Department of Mathematics
University of California at Los Angeles
Internet: dgc@math.ucla.edu
UUCP: ...!{randvax, sdcrdcf, ucbvax}!ucla-cs!dgc
[Moderator's Note: A quick comment on a couple points Mr. Cantor raises:
He says the telcos were *forced* by the PUC's to allow blocking. Maybe his
telco was: Illinois Bell voluntarily implemented 900/976 blocking. They did
it after consultation with the Illinois Commerce Commission, but there was
no strong arm tactics involved; nor did they do it when it was apparent the
Commission would force the issue.
Mr. Cantor incorrectly notes that interstate 976 calls cannot be blocked. MCI
has always blocked them. Calls to AC-976-anything via MCI return an intercept
message saying 'at the present time, MCI does not complete calls to 976...'
It is true that AT&T does not block the calls; however it is also true the
charges billed to *intrastate* callers do not apply. 415-976-4297 costs 13
cents per minute at night via Reach Out. Callers within California pay $2 for
three minutes.
By 'telco having total recourse on collectibles' I was saying that when telco
cannot collect from a customer, a chargeback is made to the IP. Mr. Cantor
says the problems for phone subscribers would be horrible. What is so hard
about calling your service rep and saying you refuse to pay for something?
Patrick Townson]dgc@math.ucla.edu (01/20/89)
A few more quick comments:
1. In California, the state PUC did order the telcos to allow 976
blocking and initially they charged $2.00 per line for the
"service". I discussed this rather extensively with the PUC
attorney who handled the matter. The telcos didn't want to do the
blocking! I know nothing about other states.
2. When we had finally were able to have 976 numbers blocked, our local
telco (General Telephone) informed us, IN WRITING, that, pursuant
to Federal law, it was not blocking out-of-state, long-distance 976
numbers. Whether some individual long-distance services do so, I
don't know. At the moment, I have NO WAY of blocking 900 calls and
fairly expensive ones are now being advertised. Look at the TV
commercials around 4:00 am for the $1.00 per minute 900 party lines!
3. The reply to the comment, "What is so hard about calling your
service rep and saying you refuse to pay for something?" is easy.
a. You dial the 800 number for the service rep (General Telephone has
centralized the service).
b. You wait 2 minutes until someone answers.
c. You wait another 3 minutes until the call is transferred to a
person who handles your type of account.
d. You dither and bargain, get questioned, etc. and finally, maybe,
if you are trusted, the calls are deleted from the bill (in
the case when he had 976 calls deleted, we were asked to write
a Formal Letter of Request to a Mrs. X of the telco for this
deletion, and we did so). In some cases, occuring to close
friends of ours the telco has simply refused to delete calls,
and it has taken lengthy negotiation with the PUC to have that
done (turned out it was a "bug" in the billing system).
e. You get the next month's bill and find that it was done all
wrong.
It's easy to waste a great deal of time.
Once again I reiterate. If the telco's are going into the general
billing service, like Visa, Mastercard, etc.,
(And note that there's no particular reason that you
shouldn't be able to buy theater tickets, airline tickets,
automobiles, rent cars, reserve hotel rooms, etc., using
976 or 900 calls)
then they should be subject to the same regulations that these other
operations are, including the various kinds of recourse which protect
the customer--the card companies must refuse to pay companies when
the customer so requests, etc. and failure to pay charges for other
than telco services should have no effect on telco service. This
implies that the billing should be separate, so that the charges can
be distinguished.
dgc
David G. Cantor
Department of Mathematics
University of California at Los Angeles
Internet: dgc@math.ucla.edu
UUCP: ...!{randvax, sdcrdcf, ucbvax}!ucla-cs!dgcchuck@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Chuck Kollars) (01/21/89)
It is indeed true that the California Public Utilities Commision,
after being deluged with consumer complaints, had to _order_ the
local telcos to allow blocking of 976 numbers, and also that the
telcos originally were going to charge for blocking.
--
Chuck Kollars, Excelan, Inc. chuck@EXCELAN.COM
(or mtxinu!excelan!chuck@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU)
...!{mtxinu,leadsv,cae780}!excelan!chuck