On 7/5/07, gary hildebrand <wa7kkp@gmail.com> wrote:


On 7/5/07, kclug-request@kclug.org < kclug-request@kclug.org> wrote:
Message: 1
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2007 12:31:16 -0500
From: Jonathan Hutchins < hutchins@tarcanfel.org>
Subject: Re: Web services "in" the KC area.
To: kclug@kclug.org
Message-ID: < 200707051231.17057.hutchins@tarcanfel.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-6
 
 

I've had phone service here for 17 years from Bell, now AT&t (again).  I've
called them once, to find out when they'd have the lines back up from the big
ice storm.  There may be things I don't like about them, but service
availability ain't one of 'em.  I laugh at the cable guys every time they try
to sell me phone service.
 
 
There are good and bad things about Ma Bell, and they have always had the supercillious business attitude with their customers.  In my case:
 
Charged almost a dollar a minute for a phone call to Vancouver, BC, and charging $0.75 per call to their 800 "customer service" line SEVERAL times.
 
Overcharging a cellphone customer $1500 in one month . . . (girlfriend)
 
Bait and switch practices on cellphone plans.
 
I'm sure there are others.  YMMV.  I just avoid them whenever and wherever possible.  Just expect less and less, and pay more and more for nothing.
 
Gary Hildebrand
ST. Joseph, MO



The part of Ma Bell's good side now a relic  from a better vanished time was monopoly integration granting certain efficiencies. Example being in 1985 I could request a "ringback on FX" phone line from a hotel to the Taxi company dispatch board, and have it live the same day! New lines of that type became NLA in 1988. IIRC there were no such lines left after 1990. Yet with ESS providing such functions should have been trivial.


Oren

"Ma bell is really Pa bell in drag"