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Miscellaneous

by Mike Masnick

Wed, Dec 11th 2002 9:21am





AT&T Customers To Hear Recorded Thank Yous

from the just-make-the-damn-call dept

Apparently, AT&T is experimenting with a new system where callers will hear a "thank you" message before their long distance call is connected. After certain users dial, but before the call is put through, a short recording will come on thanking the caller for being a loyal AT&T subscriber, and telling them that they're receiving 30 free minutes. They say that callers like being "surprised" with messages like that. It's certainly nice to get a free 30 minutes, and it's nice to be "thanked" - even if by a computer recording - but, for someone who is trying to make an urgent call, I'm not so sure how happy they'll be to sit through some annoying recorded message from the phone company. Of course, it doesn't take a genius to figure out what comes next: phone companies offering cheaper deals to callers willing to accept the equivalent of telephone "pop-up" ads. Make your calls for only $0.04/minute if you agree to listen to verbal spam before we complete your call. "Thank you for calling 911, we will connect you after this short message from our commercial sponsor...".

4 Comments | Leave a Comment..


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  1.  

    No Subject Given

    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, Dec 11th, 2002 @ 11:10am

    Of course, it doesn't take a genius to figure out what comes next: phone companies offering cheaper deals to callers willing to accept the equivalent of telephone "pop-up" ads.
    More likely, phone companies giving you the ads by default, and forcing you to go out of your way to pay more to avoid them...

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  2.  

    This is already happening

    identicon
    Flyer22, Dec 11th, 2002 @ 12:55pm

    I was given a Verizon prepaid phone as a gift. As I got within $10 of exhausting the $15 card, every phone call I made, I had to suffer through a ridiculous 20 second message about how my balance was low and all of the ways I could buy more minutes. That $10 represented several hundred minutes of off peak calls, so I could have had to listen to it dozens of times. Suffice it to say the recording had the opposite effect in that I would never buy any more service from a company that values it's customer's time so low.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  3.  

    Waaaait...

    identicon
    DV Henkel-Wallace, Dec 11th, 2002 @ 1:37pm

    So lemme get this straight: they're interrupting only their most important customers???

    Pathetic.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  4.  

    No Subject Given

    identicon
    David, Dec 12th, 2002 @ 6:07am

    This is nothing to fuss over. Long-distance calls have a lag of a few seconds while the two ends find each other; AT&T is simply using that space. In fact, they do that now: Haven't you gotten the cheery "Ay Tee and Tee." jingle when you've made a call the past few years?

    The first sentence of the article says it all: "During a pause between the dialing and connection of long-distance calls." This may be annoying but it's not a delay.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]


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