Fri, Oct 3, 1997

I recently reviewed a series of bills for our company detailing roaming
charges in the Cellular One/Albany, NY (00063) system.

It seems that for ALL of our accounts, EVERY call, even unanswered calls
of a few seconds, are being billed! 

We have accounts with a number of "A" carriers from Boston, NYC,
Connecticut, Vermont, California, New Orleans, and New Jersey. All of them
reflected both incoming and outgoing calls which no one answered and were
significantly less than 45 seconds.

Additionally, I was billed a $3 (daily charge) and $.99 on our Boston
(CO/Boston, 00007 account, not to mention their "Pizza Fund" rip-off $4
"roamer administration charge" -- I've already cancelled two accounts with
them as a result of this outrageous charge and moved them over to Bell
Atlantic and AT&T), and $.99 on our Bell Atlantic/CT 00119 bill, for the
privilege of entering "*350" to turn on call delivery! 

(I had called Cell One/Albany about two years ago to ask them if they
billed for incompletes, both incoming and outgoing (incoming incompletes
are sometimes refered to as "ringtime"). There were similar problems back
then, and after a series of calls, CO/Albany took care of it. They also
told me that the do not bill for incoming/outgoing calls which are not
answered as long as they are shorter than 45 seconds.)

After a few months of just figuring that these bills were correct, I
decided to do some tests, since it recently seems to have happened over
and over.

I called non-working numbers from a variety of our accounts while roaming
in the Albany 00063 system. I also placed calls from the "B" side (Bell
Atlantic/Albany, 00078, which, like most responsible "B" carriers, does
not charge for incomplete calls) to the various "A" side carriers I
utilized while roaming on the 00063 system.

EVERY call to a non-working number, even ones where I hung up rgiht after
I pressed SEND, was billed airtime, taxes etc. It was not, however, billed
a toll charge, since the dialed number was not in service, and thus not a
billable call (Wow, they managed to get that part right...miraculous! ;) ) 

EVERY incoming call, even if I let it ring just once, was billed, but
again, there was no toll-delivery charge. Thus, by way of example, if I
were using our Cell One/VT 00313 account, which was set to roam on the
Albany/A 00063 system, when a call was placed to the Cell One/VT number,
and the phone rang in Albany, the call was billed airtime by Cell
One/Albany, but CO/VT did NOT bill me the toll charge to "deliver" the
call from the 802# which was dialed to my (temporary, automatically
assigned, "TDN" number) phone in the Albany system. This is a clear
indication that the Albany system is charging airtime for "ringtime", in
violation of their own stated policy. 

I am in the process of addressing this issue with our carriers who charged
us (or passed along the charges) for roaming in the Albany system. I am
insisting on complete credits, and an investigation as to why we were
charged when we were told a number fo times by Albany that we would not be
charged for incompletes, especially after bringing this problem a few
years ago.

When I told ATT/NY (00025) about it, the first rep I spoke with gave me a
rather hard time (ie, "Oh, they are allowed to do that, there is nothing
we can do"; wrong, the NY system is billing us for the calls, they are
Albany's agent in effect, if Albany promised us not to bill for calls less
than 45 seconds and they did then the NY system should either take it up
with Albany or credit the calls and have Albany try to collect from us
directly. Then I got the usual "Why did you call numbers which you knew
were not working?" (because neither you nor Albany bother to check these
things yourself and someone else, unfortunately, needs to test these
things), "Why did you place so many incoming calls, that seems odd?"
(Because I didn't want to give you misinformation and needed to be sure by
performing a grand total of 6 calls), etc.) 

Eventually, after pointing out the fact that I was billed airtime charges
but not toll charges, I convinced him, and he issued a credit. More
importantly, AT&T/NY later said that (at least as far as AT&T/NY goes),
the problem was fixed, and incomplete incoming/outgoing calls while in the
Albany/00063 system will not appear on subsequent bills.  I hope so, AT&T
is usually very quick to fix these things, even if their front-end help
can use some better training. (I dunno, something about being drilled
about my calling patterns just to show them that they may have a problem
is a bit disconcerting :( ). 

I am still pursuing the matter with the other carriers, and will insist
that Cell One/Albany either correct the billing, or give roamers correct
information if they do indeed bill for incomplete calls of less than 45
seconds. 

Cell One/Boston should be fun -- they fight tooth and nail just to keep
the $4 roamer fee, $3 daily charge, and $.99 per minute roam rate. 
Unbelieveable -- $7.99 just to press *350! That's why I am slowly dumping
them as our accounts pass the contract period in favor of Bell Atlantic
(Nynex) -- the offer a wider coverage area from Rhode Island to New
Hampshire, no local call charge on most plans, unlimited off-peak, no
airtime charge for voicemail deposition, and no petty, cheap "roamer
admin" charges for giving you the "privilege" of roaming.

Additionally, I beleive that the Cellular One organization does not allow
carriers to charge for feature activations, such as enabling call delivery
via *350. (I may be wrong, but I will check with them.) If I find out this
is correct, and CO/Albany insists that it may charge for hitting *350 and
other features, I will bring this to the attention of the Cellular One
organization for them to deal with. 

If you roam in the Albany A system, or have in the past few months, you
may want to check your bill(s) for incomplete/unanswered calls and contact
your local carrier if you feel you were incorrectly charged.

Regards,

-Doug

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