Opened: 12/22/99 Resolved: 03/20/2000 Our company recently activated an additional account in the Bell Atlantic Mobile Manchester, NH (00428) market as a result of the BAMS's inclusion of a number of Maine properties into the "home" airtime territory for Manchester customers. Since the inception of it's "Digital Choice" digital service over two years ago, BAMS's (wisely) opted not to charge "toll" charges (charges in addition to airtime for connecting to the local telco) for calls within a given SID or system. Thus, a BAMS/CT (00119) Digital Choice customer who roams to the Boston-B (00028) market and places a local call to Milton, MA (a suburb of Boston) will NOT be billed any charges other than the applicable airtime rate, if any. Similarly, a Philadelphia (00008) customer who roams into the Atlantic City (00250) system and dials a casino in Atlantic City will not be charged anything other than the applicable airtime rate, if any. (BAMS only recently adopted this for 00008/00250 Philly/South Jersey customers; previously, they had an incredibly complicated system of local tolls which were impossible to figure out, and were based on the tower which you called from -- which is uniquely itemized on the Philly market bills! -- to where you were calling to. As soon as Sprint et. al. came in to that market and offered toll-free calling from Allentown to Rehoboth Beach, BAMS (presumably reluctantly) matched them.) Note however that calls between different markets/SIDs, such a Manchester customer who roams to Providence, RI, and places a call back to Manchester, or if someone calls the Manchester customer while he is in Providence, are considered Long Distance, since they go BETWEEN systems, and thus are correctly rated (according to BAMS policies) as Long Distance calls. (As an aside, it is PRECISELY because of this and other similar petty, cheap, nickel-and-dime policy/ies of charging 22 cents per minute to "deliver" a call from Manchester down to RI -- all transported via BAMS network -- i.e., essentially a free call for them which they reap a windfall of 22 cents per minute on unless you use the cumbersome roam ports -- that many customers just abandon them and go to a carrier like Sprint, which for all its coverage deficiencies, doesn't charge long distance for toll delivery on its network (and bundles toll delivery charges with roaming off-network). A friend of mine at Citibank recently chose to have the bank provide him with a Sprint phone above all the other carriers in the NY area because he didn't like the idea of these "hidden" and "extra" charges which BAMS has held over from years and years ago since they are "concealed" enough that few roamers notice or complain about vociferously enough to make BAMS change their mind. I too have Sprint service and use it regularly (where there is coverage) to avoid these call-delivery charges.) Anyway...when we activated the account, I personally spoke to Bob in the Woburn (New England Market) office, who assured me that the rates and billing practices for NH Digital Choice customers were the same as all other Digital Choice plans, e.g., no local toll, home rates apply in all "home rate" markets, etc. However, when we received the bill, I noticed that there were local toll charges, ranging from 4 to 17 cents per minute, in the Poughkeepsie NY (00486), Orange County NY (00404), CT/Western Mass-A (00119), Mid-Hudon/Catskills (01516 BAMS resale) and Vermont (00313) systems, as well as the US Cellular Southern NH/VT-B (01484) markets. (There were no such charges in the Boston 00028, Kittery/Biddeford ME (00482) and Saco/Portland (00484) properties which BAMS reportedly acquired recently). Additionally, ALL of New Hampshire's B systems (what little coverage on the B side there is :( ) are included in the home rate plan. Yet, when calls were placed and received a few miles west of Keene in southwestern NH on the 01484 system, they were billed as Vermont calls at regular roaming rates. Yet the calls were placed FROM NH, not west of the CT River in VT. It may of course be possible that the calls hit a VT tower, but since the 01484 system covers southern NH AND Vermont, it is impossible, even with the roam indicator and SID indicators operating properly, to tell which tower you are hitting. A similar problem occurs all the time for NYC 00022 customers who roam into south Jersey on the Jersey side of the Philly 00008 market: If you are in Jersey but somehow hit a PA-based tower, you are billed roam charges, and need to call customer service and spend a long time explaining you were in NEW JERSEY and placed the call, and it's not YOUR problem that it went on a PA tower, and BAMS needs to either fix their system so it doesn't keep happening or just keep crediting out those calls. That's what I tell them and it works, but it is a pain to have to spend literally half an hour on hold waiting for customer service, and even worse having to argue with them to demand the credit. (BAMS should forget their concerns about incrementalist expansion of their "home" airtime areas and give customers some slack by allowing some of the towers in PA which are near NJ to "count" as NJ towers, thus saving the customers time and frustration of dealing with customer service and giving customer service less of a workload...the same should be done in VT/NH on the 01484 system...again, BAMS is being penny-wise and pound-foolish...especially since they ultimately must give you the credit since their brochures DO indicate ALL of NJ or ALL of NH.) I tried calling BAMS/Woburn today to complain about these charges (the local toll charges and the NH charges in the 01484 system), and perhaps because of the upcoming Holidays, couldn't find anyone who was sufficiently aware of what I was saying to help out. So I left a message with the roaming dept., and we'll see what happens. Additionally, I spoke to a woman in the Woburn technical service office named "Chris" about an unrelated problem -- 3-way calling does NOT work in the Maine 00482/00484 systems for NH customers, but works fine for CT-based customers (both BAMS systems). When I asked her why this was, she literally kept repeating and repeating that "BAMS can not guarantee that all services work in all markets". When I asked, "Well, why can CT customers have this feature and not NH customers?" she just kept saying the same thing over and over. I didn't have time to pursue this, but there are sufficient problems at this point in terms of the billing issues (above) that I'm going to have to escalate this and see what can be done about getting all these issues resolved. Her behavior sufficiently angered me to escalate the3-way calling issue as well as that rather than offering to look into the issue and see why and when they can get it working, she just ranted on with some BAMS psuedo-exculpative fine-print propoganda and didn't try to see if she could get it working. A truly annoying, brain-dead automoton who acts like she works at the DMV / Motor Vehicle Registry rather than as someone who is there to help resolve technical issues. If anyone has a BAMS/Manchester,NH 00428 Digital Choice account (all 6 them...err...7 including Interpage's..:) ) and has noticed these or any other billing/feature problems, please let me know so I can bring this to their attention at the same time I address the issues enumerated above. (I had to spend 6 months clearing up similar issues when BAMS introduced Digital Choice in the CT market and other customer's comments helped immensely in my efforts back then.) It's amazing that after 2+ years of Digital Choice service (and digital has been in the NH market for about a year now) that no one has noticed this or done anything about it! If you are a NH-based Bell Atlantic customer SCRUTINIZE your bill very carefully to make sure you are not being charged for calls which SHOULD be toll-free! (This post, a cellular carrier list, and other rantings is available at http://www.wirelessnotes.org) Hoping everyone has a great upcoming Holiday week! -Doug Issue has been resolved as of 3/20/00; there do not seem to be local toll charges any longer for any of the tested markets. Most recent bill (3/00) indicates the charges beingfor local toll being correctly rated at $0.00.