Dishonest Phone Company policy...

[dalecosp]

Hey all...

    This won't affect many of you, I suppose, being it seems most of us 'round here are big city types and on cable or DSL (or bigger!!)

    I'm going around with a company who says they offer "unlimited" local/LD telephone service, but won't let a modem dial (1-xxx-xxx-xxxx). Read more here. (http://www.daleco.biz/articles/ztel.html)


Hey, now, it's not a shameless plug for my own site....you weren't gonna let me post it on yours, were you?

[Elizabeth]

IMHO, they could have easily foreseen someone using the Internet and having to dial a 1-xxx number to access their ISP. It's not like the Internet is something NEW. And here in Cincinnati, you have to dial "859" to get across the river to Northern KY (about 15 minutes away). It's not considered long distance, but in your case it probably would not be "allowed."

Surely you can't be the first or the only customers with this type of access to their ISP.

And I'm always a big fan of the little guys challenging the almighties :)

Good luck with it!
-Elizabeth

[largo]

If it wasn't part of their policy when you signed up and you have documentation which shows this, you shouldn't have to pay for the claimed charges.

Policy changes however are up to the company, provided their original contract allows for updates without notice and makes it your responsibility to be aware.

hope this helps a little help bit :)

[BuzzLY]

Actually, I can see the point of the company. Someone has to pay for long distance charges... it will cost them a pretty penny if they allow people to connect using a modem (which typically would last longer than most long distance phone calls). It would have been nice if they would allow a limited number of calls, with surcharges after that, rather than completely disallowing modem calls.

Elizabeth, I understand your point about us 'Natians having to dial 859 to get across the river, but you forget that because it's not a long distance call, we do not dial a 1 first. So, I believe such a call would be allowed with modem, wouldn't it?

[dalecosp]

Yes, BuzzLY (and, welcome back, BTW haven't seen ya in a while)

It's easy to see WHY the "fraud department" called me --- 7000 plus minutes to a number not on the local exchange in about 2 weeks. However, the issue we had was that it was dishonest to say "Unlimited Service anywhere" and then call us with a limit.

I need to update the article at the above ref'd link with further information...the good news is that we are coming to an understanding; the bad is that they acted like terrorists in the meantime. I'll log into the server for update purposes soon, I expect. Hopefully, this thread would just serve a few folks "in the country" (yeah, the boondocks, sticks, whatever) to be forewarned that if they don't fit some TelCo's profile of the "average user," they're setting themselves up for persecution despite any advertising by the TelCo to the contrary.

Thanks all for responding to my beef, though...I appreciate that I'm not totally off the deep end on this from an "outside" point of view.....