Allnet: A Horror Story (June, 1987)
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By Mike Yuhas

A feature in April's 2600 noted that Allnet would give customers five bucks
credit if they persuaded a friend to sign up for Allnet's equal access service.
If you recall, this pyramid scheme was a wee bit deceiving the friend would
need to designate Allnet as their primary carrier. April must have surely been
a good month for promotional creativity over at Allnet: I ended up with Allnet
as my primary carrier, without my consent!!!

This tale begins in February, shortly after I had started a new job. Part of my
job requirement is to spend some time on the phone talking to clients, etc., in
the evenings. Since these calls would be reimbursed by my company, I decided to
use another long-distance carrier to make accounting easier. At random, I chose
Allnet. This was to be a stopgap measure until I had received my MCI Cards
(TM).

(Remember that with equal access, if you want to make calls on a secondary
carrier, i.e., not your primary carrier, all you would need do is dial 10XXX
(XXX being the identification code of the secondary carrier) plus the number
you wish to reach. The local Bell company would then bill you in the event you
didn t have an account with this carrier. It's also interesting to note that
this billing cycle is often delayed by several months.)

A few weeks after I had made a bunch of Allnet calls, I got a call from someone
who claimed she was from Allnet, saying that her records indicated I had been
using Allnet, and would I give her my name and address so Allnet would bill me
directly, instead of letting my local Bell company bill me. It sounded like a
reasonable request they wanted to get their funds quicker so I asked her to
recite some of the numbers I dialed to prove her affiliation. Thus convinced, I
gave her the information she asked for. At no time did she mention anything
about setting me up with Allnet as my primary carrier.

But that is precisely what happened.

A few days later, my postman delivered a form letter: "Welcome to Allnet
Dial-1  Long Distance Service. You now have the benefits....You are a highly
valued Allnet customer....' and a load of other diplomatic rubbish from Allnet
s Director of Customer Service, Elaine Delves. It listed a toll-free customer
service number, 800-982-4422, for questions, changes and "suggestions for
improving our service." I felt my blood pressure rise about 50 bizillion points
as I read. I wanted Sprint back! Of course, I called their number, and was put
on hold for about 20 minutes. The fellow who finally answered said that no one
in customer service had switched me over to Allnet, so naturally there was
absolutely nothing he could do to remedy the situation. He suggested I call my
local Allnet office.

Bennett Kolber, who is apparently some sort of big shot in Allnet's
Philadelphia office, listened to my story: That Allnet had surreptitiously (and
you thought only hackers and the folks in the National Security Council acted
surreptitiously) connected me to their network, and I wanted to be reconnected
back to Sprint, and that I would not call my local Bell company to make those
arrangements due to the principle of the thing, not to mention that they'd
charge me five bucks for the change. My plight must have really hit home with
him because he said he'd look into the matter and promised - promised - that I'd
get connected back to Sprint within a couple of days.

Unfortunately, he did not define the term "couple."

I had spoken with him a "couple" of times to try to resolve the affair in an
expeditious manner. I got nowhere. I then spoke with Steve Edmonds, who also
seemed sincerely disturbed by my situation. I thought my fortunes would change.

My fortunes stayed the same.

Now I was mad. I spoke to a bigger big shot named Bill Love. He was new on the
job, he said, but he would rectify my problem immediately. After waiting a
week, I called again. And again. He finally said something like this: "I'm
sorry, okay, that it's taken us, okay, so long, okay, to get this matter
resolved. But since I, okay, don't represent Sprint, okay, or your company,
okay, there's no way, okay, that we can switch you back, okay, to Sprint." (He
really did talk that way.) In short, I would have to call my local Bell
company, arrange to be disconnected from Allnet, and deduct the $5 charge from
my bill.

There have got to be serious internal problems with a company that asserts that
I am "a highly valued customer" but seems to go out of its way to make me feel
damn sure that I won't do business with them in this century, if I can help it.
It took these clowns over a month to tell me that they were indeed powerless to
satisfy me, but my local Bell company had the problem fixed in one 5-minute
phone call.