OK - this is probably an UL you’ve already addressed, but…
I heard a story about a guy who had to be apart from his girlfriend for a couple of weeks and didn’t want to pay to talk to her from across the country. So, he called her from his hotel room, she answered, and they simply never hung up their phones.
That way, for the next couple of weeks, they just pre-aranged when they would both return to their phones and resume their conversations.
At the end of the month, when his calling-card bhill showed a two-week long call totalling thousands of dollars, he simply called the company to argue to call, saying the absurd charge was “obviously” a mistake.
According to the story, they believed him. Comments?
If true, I can only think of two sources for the story, neither of which would wish it to get out. The culprit wouldn’t want the phone company to know he screwed them (for various financial and legal reasons) and the phone company wouldn’t want to let people know how they can be screwed. It smells like a UL or a plan nobody had the guts to actually try.
“A phone link generally won’t stay connected for that long, especially one overseas.”
Why not? It seems to me that I (as a telephone customer) would be justifiably pissed if the phone company automatically disconnected my call without me asking them to!
Ursa, as far as the source goes, that’s a good point, but I was really hoping to hear from someone who knew whether or not this would really work! >
I’m not sure exactly why, and I’m not sure how often it happens, but I am under the impression that you actually lose telephone service for a second or two periodically (like once every day or week), while the telephone company does line checks, etc. Most people don’t notice because their not on the phone, and it’s done mostly at night.
I’d guess that especially on long distance lines, connections are reset periodically to make sure nothing’s locked up.
I do know that I’ve never had a modem connection to my network at work (local call) last more than about 10 hours, but of course with modems involved it’s a different ballgame.
Note that I don’t really know all this to be true, but that’s my guess!
He called from his hotel room?!? Unless he was using a calling card or credit card, the charges would have been incredible! At my hotel, it costs nearly $9 for a one-minute call in the USA, international is much worse. And if the trunks got tied up, he would have been disconnected sometime. This sounds like a figment of someone’s imagination.
I certainly have to disagree with the theory that your call lasting two weeks would matter-of-fact be disconnected. Not long ago before AOL became popular, my wife and I were some of the first subscribers and you could stay on as long as you wanted without anyone ever throwing you off. And back then there were no busy signals or little pop-up windows telling you you had been idle for 30 minutes and therefore were getting knocked off. So plenty of people (including myself) who had second phone lines and a flat rate calling plan for local numbers just dialed in and always left it connected. The only time it got ‘reset’ was when we needed both phone lines and would then hang up the connection, but I’m sure there were periods of at least a week at a time when we were logged in at the local level. Maybe that doesn’t work anymore, but it did six years ago.
C’mon folks. READ the OP carefully. It says, " across the country"…NOT across the OCEAN. Calls within the USA are handled differently by just about every carrier, opposed to International calls.
I’m with Mr AOL A Week At A Time. But…man oh Manoschevitz- hotels surcharge per minute, typically. NOT the big ones, but the smaller motels, and small hotels do. I travel to Atlanta, and stay at the Hilton Airport? Free local calls. ( Good thing, considering my considerable AOL jones). I go out into the wee faire countryside? I pay per minute, FOR THE SAME ACCESS # ( yeah, yeah, the area codes are split there, that doesn’t make a difference here).
If you want to kiss the sky, you’d better learn how to kneel.
I have traveled a bit and my first thought is that the hotel maids would have hung up the phone at least once during the stay. I mean they have moved my luggage, taken my groceries why not hang up a phone? Plus you can’t keep them out that long most hotels have a policy that they must clean the room at least once in a 72 hour period due to health laws.
Not that this proves anything but when I lived in the dorms in college, one of my roommates had gone home for the weekend and I had to call her for something. Well, apparently the phone didn’t disconnect and a few weeks later I got my phone bill for over $500. (I got out of it by going to telecommunications and arguing with them over the logistics that I would spend that long on a long distance phone call to someone i live with anyway.)
I have a hobby. I have the world’s largest collection of seashells. I keep it scattered on beaches all over the world. Maybe you’ve seen some of it.
Well, it seems that in some areas you can stay on the phone for at least a week at at time :). Anyway, as others have pointed out, the biggest problem is a maid hanging up the phone at the hotel.
This sounds like another urban myth to me. I doubt you can have a permanent phone call from a hotel room lasting days. Furthermore, normally the phone companies (like the credit card companies) have software that will disable an account with suspicious activity. You want an example?
Some months ago I travelled to Europe and took my laptop which I used a couple of times a day to connect to Compuserve for a minute or two and get my email. After a couple of weeks I was unable to log on and got a message that my account was suspended for lack of payment. I did not know it at the time but it turns out they had sent some big charges to my credit card and when they sent even bigger ones (almost $4000) my credit card rejected them and I was cut off.
It seems the software logged me on every time but did not log me off so apparently I had multiple computers (one for every call) permanently logged on for weeks and the charges added up accordingly.
You would think this is a clear cut case that Compuserve would recognize as a computer error… Think again, I am still fighting the charges and it has been a big hassle with the credit card.
OK - let me clarify. I seem to have comitted the cardinal sin - I misled you all in my OP.
With chagrin, I admit that, even though my OP specifies that the guy in question placed the call from “his hotel room”, I’m not sure that that was the case.
Regardless, let’s ignore the point. The real question avoids hotel room fees and bothersome maids and focuses on telephone carrier policy.
Yarster, Cartooniverse, Arjuna34 and EvilBeth have identified the point exactly - doesn’t it make sense that the plan would work? EvilBeth even says that she experienced exactly what I describe:
<B> Not that this proves anything but when I lived in the dorms in college, one of my roommates had gone home for the weekend and I had to call her for something. Well, apparently the phone didn’t disconnect and a few weeks later I got my phone bill for over $500. (I got out of it by going to telecommunications and arguing with them over the logistics that I would spend that long on a long distance phone call to someone i live with anyway.) </B>
One day, back in the mists of time, when I was an AOL hacker (a hex on you, Aol!), before they all became wanna be |-|@x0/2z, I did a 48+ hour download. I think I was grabbing Win 95, and a few others out of my mailbox, and it never did disconnect. This was also pre “Do you want to continue using the service that you pay good money for or should I automatically disconnect you? You know, unlimited access doesn’t mean that you should stay on all the time. It’s not like you’re paying for it or anything…” messages. BASTARDS! Rot in hell, deep, painful, burning hell, Aol.
–Tim
We are the children of the Eighties. We are not the first “lost generation” nor today’s lost generation; in fact, we think we know just where we stand - or are discovering it as we speak.
