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An elderly well-to-do couple in my town have a beautifully restored 1880's house, built before electricity and indoor plumbing was available in this part of town. Over the years, lots of "tradesmen" and "experts" have modernized the house. Suffice it to say, that over the last century, there have been many different telephone installations and repairs, resulting in miles of wire of every description being left in, repaired, spliced, removed, re-routed, extended with cords, etc.

They bought a base station with 6 wireless handset/charging station things. They said, on several occasions: "Take out all the unnecessary wires, and just install a brand new jack on the baseboard of the kitchen, where we will plug in the base station."

So, here's what I did: I took out all the unnecessary wires and installed a brand new jack on the base board in the kitchen. I plugged in the base station and voila! dial tone.

Madame then said "Here's the new white wall phone that we want to have over there on the wall of the kitchen. There's already a wire 'over there' so all you need to do is make it work."

The wire that was 'over there' is now rolled up in the garbage bin in my truck. So, out comes the drill, the snake, the staple gun, and the wall jack. A few minutes later, voila! the white phone in the kitchen is working.

They paid the bill with no hesitation, and told me a story about a previous encounter with a "telephone repairman" from AT&T.

Seems they didn't realize that right here in their town is a real telephone man (me) who could have addressed the original complaint, which was static caused by all that old wiring run on the outside and the inside of the house by previous civilizations. They called AT&T who sent a private contractor (unlicensed) who told them that the reason they had static was that all that wire was swinging around loose on the outside of the house, and if it were run in conduit, the static would go away. He stated that he would run all the wires in tubing for a flat rate of $1000.00 (one thousand dollars) but they should not let AT&T know about his offer, because if he did it while working for AT&T, the bill could be twice that amount.

They are older, and not electrically-inclined, but they are also not stupid, and didn't get rich by being the victims of scamsters. They said thanks but no thanks, ran the guy out of their house, and called me, on the advice of a mutual friend.


Arthur P. Bloom
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Hal says it best..."I gotta get out of this business"


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If Verizon is the LEC, why would they call at&t eh


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Good story Arthur. I have several similar.

One reason people don't call their LEC is because many don't know/care who the LEC is. They get a bill from their carrier and the carrier becomes the de-Facto LEC. Sometimes, even though they are paying a "telephone bill" to a LEC. they don't realize that's whom they should be calling for service related issues. Add to that all the TV commercials for wireless carriers and people end up calling a wireless carrier for home wiring issues. People are kind of dull of understanding when it comes to telephone service issues.

Scammers abound and the worst are those who prey on the elderly and infirmed.

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Originally Posted by dexman
If Verizon is the LEC, why would they call at&t eh

Maybe the customer is across the channel in Connecticut and Arthur took his yacht over for the job?


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I'm not sure what it's called these days, but lots of people fell prey to a scam by AT&T a few decades ago, in which AT&T would "buy" dial tone at wholesale rates from the ILEC (in this case VZ) and then be the CLEC for the end user. Verizon would still be the company whose CO, cables, poles and wire would supply the service, but AT&T would be the billing agent. If subscribers to this scheme call VZ for repairs, they get told to call AT&T, who then calls VZ, thus wasting time and energy, and bringing in an unnecessary level of bureaucracy.


Arthur P. Bloom
"30 years of faithful service...15 years on hold"

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Originally Posted by Rcaman
Good story Arthur. I have several similar.

...Scammers abound and the worst are those who prey on the elderly and infirmed.

Rcaman

Although those are right up there, the worst are the LEC's themselves. For example, in this area, Bell's favourite trick costs their clients big money. When someone cancels their DSL service from Bell, they are sent a prepaid envelope to return the modem. Most don't take note of the tracking number. EVERY client I know who has done this has received an invoice from Bell for $175 because "they didn't return the modem."

I wish the CRTC (equivalent to the FCC) would investigate & penalize...


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So you are saying I have to look forward to problems like that when Bell completes the buy out MTS later this year?

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A friend had AT&T dial tone through Verizon copper,as Arthur mentioned. Verizon sent my friend an offer that if he switched to Verizon dial tone they would cut his bill in half. He took the offer. Even though the line had been working on copper,the tech disconnected the drop and installed Verizon Voicelink" wireless landline" equipment.

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Originally Posted by Arthur P. Bloom
I'm not sure what it's called these days, but lots of people fell prey to a scam by AT&T a few decades ago, in which AT&T would "buy" dial tone at wholesale rates from the ILEC (in this case VZ) and then be the CLEC for the end user. Verizon would still be the company whose CO, cables, poles and wire would supply the service, but AT&T would be the billing agent. If subscribers to this scheme call VZ for repairs, they get told to call AT&T, who then calls VZ, thus wasting time and energy, and bringing in an unnecessary level of bureaucracy.

Yeah, that happens here too. At&t (or many other CLECS) buy a single block of 1,000 numbers in an existing ILEC's exchange. My father in law got one in the 540-548 exchange, but in the 6XXX range. I could clearly tell that it was DMS dial tone, and after digging around, I found that he arranged his local service through an AARP deal with at&t Local. It took me forever to figure this out (and a lot of bitching with Verizon) only to find out that yes, it was Verizon's DMS, but they were being resold by at&t. I don't even want to begin to tell you how hard it was to get him out of that contract when he had to move into an assisted living facility and they wouldn't let him take his service to a non-participating CO. It was a mess.


Ed Vaughn, MBSWWYPBX
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