Competition... It's the Next Best Thing to Being There
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We've just about had it with this NYNEX/New York Telephone strike.  Since early
August, we in the New York region have been living with substandard service,
long delays getting through to information, noresponsive repair service, a
suspension of new orders, 50-minute waits for service reps after interminable
busy signals, and pay phones that never seem to work.

Here's an exchange one of us had while trying to reach a service rep.  One hour
before closing, busy signal.  Three phones were set to redial mode, each trying
the same number.  After half an hour, success!  A ring, then a recording.  "Due
to the work stoppage, there will be a slight delay answering your call.  Please
hold on, etc."  The announcement repeated every minute.  Finally, at one minute
before closing, a human being came on the line.  "Hello, I can't hear you,"
they said.  "What?" we asked incredulously.  "I said I can't hear you."  Click.
We redialed.  Sure enough, we were connected to their after-hours recording.
Please call back when we're open. Right.

It gets worse.  After going through about a dozen pay phones in the streets of
New York without a single one working properly, after losing 75 cents trying to
make a local call, the New York Telephone operator suggests we place the call
using a calling card.  "I can't access the billing information because of the
strike," she said.  "But I do know th surcharge is only 45 cents."

New York Telephone has this incredible habit of fixing their own faults by
charging you extra.  Another example centers on our fax machine, which,
according to our AT&T bill, was calling people in Delaware and staying on for
15 minutes.  When we started hearing from people who were trying to send us
faxes but were instead getting strange human beings in another location, we
realized what had happened.  Again.  An incompetent repairman had routed our
fax line into someone's house.  They got our calls and we got their bill.
Apparently, the problem was fixed without us ever being notified.  New York
Telephone says there's no way for us to get credit for the local calls these
people must have made or for the interruption because what happened to us
simply wasn't possible.  If we wanted more information, though, we could obtain
a local usage list for only $1.50.

In 1984, we made reference to the AT&T strike of 1983.  The strikers weren't
paid, the customers were charged full price for poor service, and the company
made lots of unearned money.  The same is true today of NYNEX/New York
Telephone.  With all the confusion that divestiture brought, we now at least
have options to AT&T.  With New York Telephone, there is no choice.  No
competition.  And it's high time there was.