The Telecom Digest for September 11, 2010
Volume 29 : Issue 246 : "text" Format
Messages in this Issue:
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Date: Fri, 10 Sep 2010 07:19:18 -0400
From: Randall <rvh40.remove-this@and-this-too.insightbb.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Cellular Runaround
Message-ID: <7E9F5BEC-331E-42B2-B4DB-807CCC5C61D2@insightbb.com>
> From: John Mayson <john@mayson.us>
> To: redacted@invalid.telecom-digest.org.
> Subject: In the pursuit of new customers, wireless companies forget
> their existing ones
> Message-ID:
> <AANLkTi=hY=cAUAFfsOvoObjo3fHNpDsi_74vbYMNACgr@mail.gmail.com>
>
...
> In order not to lose $27 and change ($6.82/month * 4 months) in
> a phone subsidy they're going to let me walk out the door and pay them
> nothing for eternity instead. That just makes no sense at all. And
> keep in mind when we switch we're taking three numbers with us.
> They'll lose that revenue too.
>
> Am I missing something? We often hear the big telecom companies are
> evil. They may be, but they're not stupid. Why allow a good customer
> to stroll out the door over pocket change?
Don't forget that you have thus far been dealing with low-level
people who have very little power to diverge from the script.
And they are penalized for every call that gets escalated to someone
who does have the power to diverge - and that person is penalized
every time he does diverge.
The IVR robot answers the phone at call centers for two reasons: One,
to allow a certain percentage of people to solve their problems
themselves, without having to involve anybody whose health insurance
is company-paid, and Two, to discourage a certain percentage of the
rest from calling back.
When you do navigate the IVR and reach Rajiv^H^H^H^H^H "Roger", he
cannot allow you to break out of the narrow range of options on his
script. If you insist on being escalated to Hement^H^H^H^H^H^H
"Hank", he has only a slightly larger set of options within which he
can operate.
But they'd ALL love to sell you U-Verse.
Date: Fri, 10 Sep 2010 15:25:34 +0000 (UTC)
From: danny burstein <dannyb@panix.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Cellular Runaround
Message-ID: <i6dile$nvn$1@reader1.panix.com>
In <7E9F5BEC-331E-42B2-B4DB-807CCC5C61D2@insightbb.com> Randall <rvh40.remove-this@and-this-too.insightbb.com> writes:
[snip]
>> In order not to lose $27 and change ($6.82/month * 4 months) in
>> a phone subsidy they're going to let me walk out the door and pay them
>> nothing for eternity instead. That just makes no sense at all. And
>> keep in mind when we switch we're taking three numbers with us.
>> They'll lose that revenue too.
>>
>> Am I missing something? We often hear the big telecom companies are
>> evil. They may be, but they're not stupid. Why allow a good customer
>> to stroll out the door over pocket change?
>Don't forget that you have thus far been dealing with low-level
>people who have very little power to diverge from the script.
My "cellular" account is with company A. My wife's is with B.
About a year ago we called up B and asked if there was
any way they could reduce the price. They said no. We pointed
out that company A would give us a second line for just $10
and that while we didn't expect them to match it, their
current pricing was costing us an extra $30 (above that $10)
each month and that just wasn't practical.
No answer.
We then sent off a letter to the CEO's office, explaining
this again, and saying we'd like to hang around with them
but that the $30 was too much.
We got back a call from one of their special designees.
She also couldn't do anything.
I specifically mentioned that they had lower rates for
preferred folk such as gov't employees, and asked if
that would work. She said no. I mentioned that my cellco
would give me a month free. She said no.
This went back and forth for a half hour with her.
Finally I said thanks, but no thanks, and that we'd
be putting in the number portability swap request in
to move the phone to company A.
I asked one last time, suggesting that maybe one
of her colleagues had a discount option on his or
her screen that she wasn't seeing.
After a couple of minutes on hold, she got back
to us with a $5 or so lower rate/month.
Which, considering we weren't even getting a
"free phone" from them, was miniscule..
Since we really did want the redundancy of a
completely separate phone network from company A,
we took it.
Sigh.
--
_____________________________________________________
Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key
dannyb@panix.com
[to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded]
Date: Fri, 10 Sep 2010 16:23:21 +1000
From: David Clayton <dcstar@myrealbox.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: A Strong Password Isn't the Strongest Security
Message-ID: <pan.2010.09.10.06.23.18.524020@myrealbox.com>
On Wed, 08 Sep 2010 21:11:12 -0400, Ron wrote:
> David Clayton <dcstar@myrealbox.com> wrote:
>
>>Someone please show me
>
> Have you bothered to STFW on your own?
>
Yep, that is why I am asking for someone to point out the actual
examples of these threats rather than just assume that they occur.
>> where these infamous "rootkits" have compromised
>>non-Windows systems in comparison to Windows in the last 10 years and
>>I'll give these threats a little more credence.
>
> This has added humor value, as the term "rootkit" is a UNIX term for
> this type of compromise. The term was ported to Windows when this type
> of attack finally hit that platform.
>
> The very fact that there are a lot of currently maintained and available
> Linux rootkit scanning tools implies that they're not merely a useless
> holdover from the past.
Then why does *everything* I can find on the subject either date back to
2003/3 (like at the SANS site) and assume that the particular Linux/Unix
system is directly connected to the Internet?
The bare truth is that for the majority of Linux systems in use now
rootkits are not a threat, these system are either behind NAT devices and
have no direct attack vector available for any malware or use the basic
Linux security model of the last 5 years which does not allow installation
of root privilege programs in same cavalier manner that Windows does.
I have not been able to find anything outlining Linux systems infected by
rootkits in recent times, in almost 6 years on the Ubuntu Forums I have
not come across a credible report of a rootkit infection (just nervous
ex-Windows users seeing false positives as they desperately try and make
their Linux systems more secure than the Windows systems they recently
escaped from......)
The biggest threat to Linux users right now is installing software sourced
from outside the official repositories of their particular distro, getting
the message through that they could be installing something that could be
malicious is a tough job because of the reputation Linux has for better
security and the implicit trust people have in the Linux community for
others.
There may well be current and active rootkit threats out there right now
for Linux systems, but the truth is that the massive, overwhelming
majority of threats are specifically for Windows and any reference to "PC
threats" should specify this. People should know better than to lump all
other more secure platforms into the same threat bucket as Windows, but
they continue to do so.
I understand that the media will not care about the difference, but I do
expect better from those who claim to have some understanding of
technology.
--
Regards, David.
David Clayton
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
Knowledge is a measure of how many answers you have, intelligence is a
measure of how many questions you have.
***** Moderator's Note *****
Gentlemen, you are boxing with shadows.
It does _not_ matter if you are using Windows, or Linux, or BSD,
or CP/M, or OS/2, or Joe's-Software-and-Barbecue System A! What
matters is being willing to do the hard work that makes systems
secure, and sacrifice the convenience which leads to degraded
security.
As I have said before: the moment you favor any particular OS based on
the label that is on the box it came in, you lose.
Bill Horne
Moderator
Date: Fri, 10 Sep 2010 02:40:50 -0500
From: Neal McLain <nmclain@annsgarden.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Gmail phone service makes calling anywhere from home cheap.
Message-ID: <4C89E102.2040200@annsgarden.com>
Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net> wrote:
> Even if a number is entered as a landline, you can't have more
> than one (or possibly two) Google Voice accounts associated with
> it. I "invited" my wife to join, and that worked OK, but then I
> let my son have an account, and Google denied me the use of the
> number, saying someone else had registered it.
>
> It might be one account, it might be two: I'll crank up my
> wife's account and see what happens. Is there a guideline at
> Google?
Perhaps my experience will shed some light. I have two Google voice
accounts, each of which points to the same two numbers, one landline and
one cell. One GV number is in the local NPA 979 (50 miles south of
Houston); the other is in Houston's NPA 832. Thus, I have a number
that's local to Houston callers.
When I set it up, I had no problem telling each account to point to the
same landline. I did have a problem getting each account to point to
the same cell because each time it had to verify that I had "access" to
the phone. It was a four-step process:
- Set up the first account to point to the cell and verify it when
Google calls it for verification.
- Set up the second account to point to the same cell and verify it when
Google calls it for verification. At this point, Google automatically
canceled the connection with the first account and sent me an email
saying that somebody else had registered it.
- Repeat the setup for the first account to point to the same cell and
verify it when Google calls it for verification. At this point, Google
automatically canceled the connection with the second account and sent
the usual email.
- Repeat the setup for the second account to point to the same cell and
verify it when Google calls it for verification. At this point, Google
did not cancel the first-account connection.
By judicious number selection, I even managed to get the same last four
digits on both GV numbers: 979-XXX-5043 and 832-XXX-5043.
Neal McLain
Date: Fri, 10 Sep 2010 10:33:22 EDT
From: Wes Leatherock <Wesrock@aol.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: A Strong Password Isn't the Strongest Security
Message-ID: <53818.2ebcf57d.39bb9bb2@aol.com>
In a message dated 9/9/2010 10:04:07 PM Central Daylight Time,
thad@thadlabs.com writes:
> Heh! A major road here in Silicon Valley (San Francisco Bay Area,
> running from San Jose CA to San Francisco CA) is named El Camino
> Real.
Camino is road and real is royal. El Camino Real can be translated as
Royal Road or Kingshighway, an older English usage. There is a
Kingshighway (in English) in St. Louis.
Wes Leatherock
wesrock@aol.com
wleathus@yahoo.com
Date: Fri, 10 Sep 2010 10:57:44 -0700
From: AES <siegman@stanford.edu>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: In the pursuit of new customers, wireless companies forget their existing ones
Message-ID: <siegman-F38B89.10574410092010@sciid-srv02.med.tufts.edu>
In article
<AANLkTi=hY=cAUAFfsOvoObjo3fHNpDsi_74vbYMNACgr@mail.gmail.com>,
John Mayson <john@mayson.us> wrote:
> Am I missing something? We often hear the big telecom companies are
> evil. They may be, but they're not stupid.
I think it's right there in the final four words that you're going wrong.
(And the same reaction would apply if you left out the word "telecom"].
Date: Fri, 10 Sep 2010 14:48:04 -0700
From: Steven <diespammers@killspammers.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: In the pursuit of new customers, wireless companies forget their existing ones
Message-ID: <i6e92l$tur$1@news.eternal-september.org>
On 9/9/10 7:11 PM, John Mayson wrote:
> The real purpose of this email is to poll people here to see if they
> know the nitty, gritty details of phone subsidies and why phone
> companies seem to treat existing customers like third-class citizens.
> I wasn't going to mention the name of the company in question, but
> it'll be very obvious anyway, so why confuse matters.
>
> My family and I have been customers of AT&T Wireless for years. We've
> always had what I call POCTS (plain ole cellular telephone service).
> We have long been content to take the free (to us) flip-phones knowing
> the cost of the phone was being built in to our two-year contract.
> However this last time I paid $50 to get a slightly nicer phone, the
> Pantech C530.
>
> I decided to get with the times and picked an Android smart phone. I
> tried to order it from Amazon.com but got a message that I wasn't
> eligible for an upgrade until January 2011. This puzzled me for two
> reasons. One, back in May 2010 they allowed a random person in
> California to use my upgrade. I didn't learn about this until that
> customer returned the phone, thus returning my upgrade, which disabled
> my phone service. Two, I've had my existing phone for a long time. I
> don't know exactly how long, but it's close to two years. And
> besides, how much of a subsidy did I really get on it?
>
> I thought a quick call to customer service would get this ironed out.
> Certainly they would work with a long-time customer with an excellent
> payment record who wanted to convert his minimal talk plan to a beefy
> data plan with global roaming. Turns out no, I was wrong. They had
> little interest. I was very polite and calm on the phone. I didn't
> threaten. Surely they would allow me to upgrade four months early
> rather than risk me going to T-Mobile, right? According to their
> records I have had my phone for only 11 months. This can't be true as
> I was unemployed 11 months ago and would not have bought a new phone.
> They admit they allowed someone else to have my upgrade in May, but
> now say that upgrade never existed. Surely the aggravation of having
> to straighten that out and not having my phone available was worth
> four months, right? The best they could do was give me a break on the
> price of the Android phone. But it was still way more than I wanted
> to spend. I told her I'd call back.
>
> I've been out of the country. I talked to my wife and lately she's
> had all sorts of trouble with her phone and the service. Whenever she
> goes to the local AT&T store they're more interested in selling her
> their U-Verse service than solving her phone issues.
>
> It turns out we can go to T-Mobile, get nice Android phones at a deep
> discount, and get data plans for less than AT&T. Why stay with AT&T?
>
> Is this the new business model? I would have to think it's less
> expensive to keep existing customers than attract new ones. I think
> I've had my phone for nearly 24 months. They say 11. Let's call it
> 18. I'll be eligible for an upgrade in four months meaning month 22
> of owning the phone. Even if my phone cost $200, I paid $50 up front,
> which means $6.82 per month in subsidy, assuming we're even in January
> 2011. In order not to lose $27 and change ($6.82/month * 4 months) in
> a phone subsidy they're going to let me walk out the door and pay them
> nothing for eternity instead. That just makes no sense at all. And
> keep in mind when we switch we're taking three numbers with us.
> They'll lose that revenue too.
>
> Am I missing something? We often hear the big telecom companies are
> evil. They may be, but they're not stupid. Why allow a good customer
> to stroll out the door over pocket change?
>
> John
>
I took a look at my contract with Sprint, mine are up in January of
2011, but if I want to upgrade my phones I can do it next month without
changing my contract date, so the new one would end in January 2013.
Same cost as if I had waited until January of 2011. I have been a
customer of Sprint for many years, even though I had worked for a
competitor. They have always worked with me and at times let me know
that the service I had; minutes in a month; with more then I needed and
my costs them went down, I now work for a company that is a major
contractor for Sprint, they let me know about an employee discount plan
that gives me 15% off my bill each month and another 15% off off any
thing else I buy from them along with any rebates or other discounts
given. I just got a Overdrive 3G/4G router, the plan is really great,
unlimited 4G data and 5 Gig 3G which is more then enough, works on any
CDMA network and no roaming charges.
--
The only good spammer is a dead one!! Have you hunted one down today?
(c) 2010 I Kill Spammers, Inc. A Rot in Hell Co.
TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecom-
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