Date: Sun, 8 Nov 1992 08:19:11 GMT
From: stevef@wrq.com (Steve Forrette)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: AT&T Takes Away My Call Manager
Organization: Walker Richer & Quinn, Inc., Seattle, WA
X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu
X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu
X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 12, Issue 833, Message 8 of 9

In article <telecom12.822.3@eecs.nwu.edu> CRW@icf.hrb.com (Craig R.
Watkins) writes:

> Call Manager is a (free) service of AT&T that allows you to touch tone
> in an account code (of the form 15xx where you make up xx) where you
> would normally dial a calling card number when you place a 0+ call.
> Your bill then gets itemized and totaled by account code.

I ran into a similar problem with Call Manager on my secondary lines
as well.

 From what I was able to determine, there is some systematic problem
with multiple lines which are consolidated billed: adding the feature
to the primary line does not automatically pick up secondary lines
(most optional features such as calling plans do this automatically),
and entering individual orders for Call Manager for each secondary
line doesn't work either.  It took me over 30 calls and over a month
to get the problem resolved on my lines.  (After a certain point, it
became sort of a mission to see if I could get through to the right
people at AT&T -- I knew that there must be *someone* who knew what was
going on!)  In the end, they got special instructions to use this
"neat new service" called AT&T Mail to send a message to someone to
add my secondary numbers into the Call Manager database manually.  As
Craig said, don't let them tell you to call the Call Manager office,
as it's only for business service.  Also, Long Lines Repair is of no
help either.

The reason this was done was for fraud control purposes, which mostly
affected businesses.  Since the old default was that it was enabled on
all lines, customers which blocked 1+ but allowed 0+ (such as hotels,
etc.) could get stuck for a 1+ call by clever people who dialed it as
0+ then entered a 15xx format PIN.  To be safe, they now disable it
for everyone except those that specifically request it.  Residence
subscribers can request it over the phone (but you will need to have
special action taken if you have more than one line that's billed
together).  Business customers must fill out and sign a form and send
it back before they will enable it.

As an aside, I got the royal run-around in trying to get this problem
fixed.  Nobody seemed to know what was going on, and the assumption
was always that I just wasn't dialing the calls correctly.  One rep
tried to tell me that since Call Manager is a free feature, that AT&T
didn't place as high a priority on fixing customer problems with it as
they do with other features.  I countered that I used to have a
similar feature with US Sprint which cost me $5/month, but worked when
I wanted it to, and that perhaps another long distance company would
better serve my needs if AT&T didn't feel this feature was a "high
priority."  This changed her tune in a hurry, and suddenly my problem
was quite important to them!  It is unfortunate that things like this
happen, but it would not force me to switch carriers, as I've had
similar problems with Sprint in the past.  In my opinion, all of the
IXC's are going to have the "big company" customer service problems,
so I have to choose based on overall quality of service and price.


Steve Forrette, stevef@wrq.com