220 DEAR HACKER

220 DEAR HACKER

My bill was a total mess! Sprint had done two things to my bill as far as I could fathom from the mess printed on those pages. 1) They had charged me for busy signal calls. 2) They had chopped up large calls into four or five smaller calls.

I called Sprint right away and had it out with the billing person. He gave me credit for all of the one minute busy calls (about 40 alto- gether). As for why they did this in the first place, I don’t know. Is their billing computer really that messed up that they can’t keep track of the status of a call? They must have a lot of this happening, because

he gave me credit without too much of a problem. As for the chopped up calls, that’s a different matter altogether. He

refused to change my billing to make the series of smaller calls into one big call. I’ll have to write the company about that one.

Here is what I would like you guys to think about: We all know about those thieves who reprogram a bank’s computer to shave off .00001 percent of all the accounts in the bank and drop it into an- other account for themselves. The small amount taken from the individual accounts will be insignificant for anyone to notice, but the total amount can be quite large. Well, here we have a long dis- tance company that is cutting up callers’ long calls into smaller calls and then charging the callers more for the first minute on all of the small calls. This amount is small and I don’t really care about it. But if they’re doing this to all callers—how much are they actually making per month?

Cray-Z Phreaker Skunk Works

What you’re implying here is a very serious matter. If Sprint is in fact doing this, they could be facing an awful lot of trouble (something a lot of phone phreaks would no doubt relish). Let’s find out for sure. Let’s all put them to the test and keep logs. In fact, why not do it for all of the companies?

T H E M A G I C O F T H E C O R P O R AT E W O R L D

Dear 2600: US Sprint issues a complete rundown of who called an 800 number.

We got our 800 bill and, surprisingly, it showed every number that called us.

The Renegade of Pittsburgh Sysop of Charlotte

The copy of the bill you sent us looks exactly like a regular Sprint bill, except the numbers on it are the numbers that called you. Something to think about, espe- cially those of you who like to call 800 numbers. Look in our Spring 1989 issue to find out which 800 exchanges are owned by Sprint. We’d like to know if the other companies provide such detailed billing.

By the way, Sprint’s FONLine 800 service isn’t a bad deal. There’s currently no startup fee to obtain an 800 number and you can attach it to any existing phone number. Your 800 number will work all over the country and the monthly fee is only $10. The per-call fee is rather steep, though. It averages about 22 cents a minute. But it’s one way to virtually guarantee not getting ripped off by an AOS some- where. Of course, you can only dial one number.

Dear 2600: I’m the kind of guy that likes to just try things for the hell of it (what’s

this button for??). You know, to see what happens or just for the sake of knowing something new, even if it’s “useless.” Anyway, that’s how