Received: by bu-cs.BU.EDU (5.58/4.7) id AA03186; Thu, 26 Jan 89 01:47:47 EST Message-Id: <8901260647.AA03186@bu-cs.BU.EDU> Date: Thu, 26 Jan 89 1:03:29 EST From: The Moderator Reply-To: TELECOM@bu-cs.BU.EDU Subject: TELECOM Digest V9 #29 To: TELECOM@bu-cs.bu.edu TELECOM Digest Thu, 26 Jan 89 1:03:29 EST Volume 9 : Issue 29 Today's Topics: Wrong Number Stories Re: Victims of Wrong Numbers Another Wrong Number Story Re: Annoying Phone Calls Re: Annoying Phone Calls Re: Fraudulent use of 900 #'s Re: Fraudulent use of 900 #'s Re: How To Locate Your Ringback Code [Moderator's Note: This is *part one* of two parts for the Digest for 1-26. The second part, on the topic 'Is there life after PC Pursuit?' will follow in a few minutes. P. Townson] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To: TELECOM@bu-cs.bu.edu Cc: gonzalez@BBN.COM Subject: Wrong Number Stories Date: Wed, 25 Jan 89 16:31:27 -0500 From: gonzalez@BBN.COM I once had trouble with a phone number. It happened that a business in a neighboring town had posted an ad in a trade journal with a botched exchange. I got calls every few weeks for nearly a year. Once I had figured out what had happened, I contacted the company, and passed the customer contacts along to them. They never repeated the ad, the calls dwindled, and then I moved and got a different phone number. A former co-worker had a place in Boston with a number very close to one for a phone sex service. Needless to say, she got several amsusing calls from men who fat-fingered (a piano player's term) the number. Some of these guys apparently got quite annoyed when she refused to accept their credit card numbers and call back as promised in the ad. To make matters worse, her mom was visiting one week, and reportedly had a long (30 minutes or more) conversation with some guy. Her mom didn't take his credit card number, but did coyly advise my friend that a guy had called for her, and left his number. Recent grumblings about the decline of US phone service, particularly with regard to hotel add-on charges, inspired a cute thought. In Europe, hotels have been ripping people off for years on long distance. Also, the general opinion and personal experience has been that phone service in Europe is inferior to ours. With the all the fawning over Euro-style, European formula, and European engineering, I suppose it's only logical that we also aspire to a European-quality phone system (:-). Having grown up with the offspring of Murray Hill types, and learning phone tricks from the Jersey Bell repair guys, I must admit to a certain nostalgia. Paying 60 cents for a domestic long-distance directory assistance call also contributes to my sense of loss. I miss Ma Bell. -Jim. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Jim Gonzalez AT&T: 617-873-2937 BBN Systems and Technologies Corp. ARPA: gonzalez@bbn.com Cambridge, Massachusetts UUCP: ...seismo!bbn!gonzalez ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ To: uunet!bu-cs.BU.EDU!telecom@uunet.UU.NET Subject: Re: Victims of Wrong Numbers Date: 24 Jan 89 19:55:37 EST (Tue) From: cucstud!wb8foz@uunet.UU.NET (David Lesher) The classic had to be Mike Royko, columnist for the [Chicago Tribune]. AT&T had new 800-xxxxxxx customer service number. Alas, Mike's home phone was 312-xxxxxxx. He wrote a nice piece about how he was going to tell all the people calling they didn't deserve service and he would see to it they were disconnected, and various other threats. Seems to me Ma ended up taking out an ad in his paper, next to his space to beg forgiveness. [Moderator's Note: Actually, it was his office telephone. The [Chicago Tribune] centrex is 312-222. His private number 312-222-3xxx was commonly dialed by people wanting AT&T at 1-800-222-3xxx. These were people who failed to dial the 1-800 first. AT&T frequently advertises in the Chicago papers, but their ad in this instance was to remind people to 'dial 1-800 first, when calling a toll-free number.' I think the easiest telephone number to remember in the world must be the Tribune classified ad-takers: 312-222-2222. P. Townson] ----------------------------- Date: Wed, 25 Jan 89 02:41:34 EST From: Miguel_Cruz@ub.cc.umich.edu To: telecom@bu-cs.bu.edu Subject: One More Wrong Number Story Just one more wrong number victim story. My next-door neighbor in the dorm some years ago had a number that was exactly the same as the local power company except that he had a 4 where they had a 1, two digits that are right on top of each other on a TT pad. In the beginning of the year, he would just tell people that they had a wrong number, but as the year went on, he started being quite mischievous with callers who refused to admit to having dialed a wrong number. He would apologize, and ask them to describe their electricity problem. Billing inquiries he would refer to the proper number, but he came up with some incredibly bizarre responses to service/repair questions. I still feel sorry for the woman he told to unplug all her appliances and unscrew all of her lightbulbs and wait for the truck that would be there in "half hour to 45 minutes". Not such a good story in the retelling, I guess. Oh, well. ------------------------------ From: unknown - id lost in transmission To: telecom@bu-cs.bu.edu Subject: Re: Annoying Phone Calls Date: 20 Jan 89 13:08:32 GMT Organization: Bellcore In article <106@yamnet.UUCP>, gn@yamnet.UUCP (Greg Noel) writes: > > I just moved from Greensboro, NC (*WHEW*), and as I was leaving > I received an advertising slick from Southern Bell promoting a > new multiplexing type service. > > The service provided you with up to three phone numbers, all > ringing on the same phone but with different "rings". Hence, > you could get a general (solicitor) number, and a number for > IMPORTANT people. Nice. > > I got here to LA, and was disappointed though not surprised to > find the service is not available here. What parts of the country > is the service is available in? New Jersey Bell is going to offer this service starting in the early part of 1989 - I think in April (from what I remember reading in the newspaper) Bill Mitchell [Moderator's Note: Bill Mitchell is with Bellcore. I am sorry that his network address got scrambled before it reached me. P. Townson] ------------------------------ From: johnl@ima.ima.isc.com (John R. Levine) To: telecom@bu-cs.bu.edu Subject: Re: Annoying Phone Calls Date: 21 Jan 89 20:23:22 GMT In article <106@yamnet.UUCP>, gn@yamnet.UUCP (Greg Noel) writes: > The service provided you with up to three phone numbers, all > ringing on the same phone but with different "rings". ... > I got here to LA, and [I couldn't get it] In the western part of L.A. GTE used to allow you to order both halves of a two-party party line which provides the same sort of service. It used to be popular when two people were living in sin and didn't want people to know about it. ("Who is that guy answering your phone at 7:30 in the morning?") You might try asking to see if that's still possible. Two-party service is usually cheaper than private line, so even with both halves it's not much more than a regular private line. -- John R. Levine, Segue Software, POB 349, Cambridge MA 02238, +1 617 492 3869 { bbn | spdcc | decvax | harvard | yale }!ima!johnl, Levine@YALE.something You're never too old to have a happy childhood. ------------------------------ Date: Sun Jan 22 19:40:47 CST 1989 To: telecom@bu-cs.bu.edu From: john@zygot.UUCP (John Higdon) Subject: Re: Fraudulent use of 900 #'s In article <296@serene.UUCP>, rfarris@serene.UUCP (Rick Farris) writes: > In article <400@swbatl.UUCP> rebel@swbatl.UUCP (root@swbatl.swbt.com > 5-9080) writes: > : Now exactly who do you think ends up paying for telephone fraud???? > : The telephone company. When a teenager runs up $2,000 in 900# calls > : and the parents complain, the phone company ends up footing the bill, > You gotta be joking. Where do you think the phone company gets it's > money? The RATE PAYERS pay for fraudulent phone calls. Actually, it's the 900 or 976 service provider who takes it in the shorts. If the phone company can't collect from a customer for calls to an information service, do you think that they are going to remit to the provider anyway? Also, if they have already remitted to a service provider, and the bill eventually proves uncollectable, they *charge back* the service provider. -- John Higdon john@zygot ..sun!{apple|cohesive|pacbell}!zygot!john ------------------------------ From: andrew@frip.gwd.tek.com (Andrew Klossner) To: telecom@bu-cs.bu.edu Subject: Re: Fraudulent use of 900 #'s Date: 15 Jan 89 03:07:19 GMT "Now exactly who do you think ends up paying for telephone fraud???? The telephone company ... Try to run a business that loses money and see how long it lasts." This is incorrect. When a customer refuses to pay for thousands of dollars worth of prefix 976 calls, the telephone company doesn't lose money. They just don't make more money. They end up with the same amount of money as though those calls had never been made. The account that runs the 976 service doesn't get their cut. It's not as though the telephone company buys telephone calls at wholesale and resells them at retail. Virtually all their costs are fixed costs. The incremental cost of placing a 976 call is zip. The newspapers are full of this "the phone company loses millions of dollars on fraud" stuff. It ain't so. (None of the above should be construed as support for perpetrators of telephone fraud. Especially when they bill to my phone number. Hang 'em high!) -=- Andrew Klossner (uunet!tektronix!hammer!frip!andrew) [UUCP] (andrew%frip.gwd.tek.com@relay.cs.net) [ARPA] ------------------------------ To: telecom@bu-cs.bu.edu From: cucstud!wb8foz@uunet.UU.NET (David Lesher) Subject: Re: How To Locate Your Ringback Code Date: 25 Jan 89 00:41:10 GMT I have found many, but not all BOC's use 55n-xxxx where xxxx is the last 4 of the ntbrb (thats nUMBER tO bE rUNG bACK) and n varied from CO to CO. I found 0,1,2,3 in various places. The operative prefix was one NOT in use in that local dialing area, of course. I have had cases where I could not easily get the dang thing to let go of the line when I was done;-{ Of more interest to me is the ANI number. In Cleveland, it was 200+any 7d, except the correct #. If you had a wrong # the ANI voice kindly told you which pair you were on. That was a godsent when you had 30 trunks and you wanted to figure which was where. It also gave out interesting numbers when used on out-WATS lines. ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest *********************