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 questions@wirelessnotes.org / +1 (510) 254-0133 / www.wirelessnotes.org The above message does not necessarily reflect the views of Interpage NSI.