gnu@hoptoad.UUCP (John Gilmore) (06/17/87)
I have been using the AT&T Reach Out America plan which is a night distance-insensitive billing plan. You pay $8.40/mo and get an hour's calling, and are billed $7.55/hr for time over an hour. Coupled with the plan is an option for an extra $1.10/mo which gives you a 15% discount on evening calls, but does not make them distance-insensitive. We originally got it with the evening plan but it became clear that we weren't using the evening discount. I called up to cancel the evening part and got the plan changed. Unfortunately, AT&T treated it as if I had canceled the whole plan and then subscribed to the $7.55 plan. For the first or last month of your plan, they pro-rate the hour's worth of calling and the monthly charge. In this case I got ".77 hours" on the old plan and ".23 hours" on the new plan. However, I had made all of my night calls in the first part of the month, so the ".23 hours" allotment on the new plan was unused, and I had to pay extra for .23 hours of my usage in the first part of the month. AT&T was nice enough to check the situation and decided that it really was billed correctly but they also gave me a credit for the difference. I recommend that when you change calling plans, that you tell them to have it take effect at the end of your billing period to avoid this lunacy.