Our company recently availed ourselves of a Bell Atlantic Mobile offer in
the Washington, DC (00018) market offering unlimited off-peak and weekend
airtime, and (I presumed) now standard no-local toll charge features.

BAMS has been generally trying to move customers off of analog plans by
withdrawing special features like package Call-Waiting, Call-Forwarding,
Three-Way calling (collectively "Custom Calling") features, unlimited off
peak rates (so much so they cancelled *existing* NY analog plans' off peak
features and "allowed" [they didn't have a choice!] customers under such
plans to terminate without early termination charges), etc. So I thought is
strange that they would be offering a special plan in the DC market
(promoted in local papers and on their Web site) which seems to go against
the general company policy of getting rid of analog accounts.

(A policy, which BTW, is quite unfair to customers who live in less densely
populated areas which BAMS generally and to a degree by necessity doesn't
cover as well, so these people NEED 3 watt analog phones in order to place
and receive calls reliably, yet can't avail themselves of the best rate
plans and service options simply because they live somewhere where BAMS
doesn't see as much need to improve coverage...so these customers don't get
cellular service, BAMS says "there's no demand there", and unless they are
below the FCC required de minimis RF levels, don't improve coverage, putting
people who live in rural areas served by BAMS and other similar carriers in
a lesser position in terms of cellular service offerings. It would be as if
living 150 miles from a city meant it would be acceptable to have landline
service which worked only 40% of the time, although the expectation is that
no matter where you live your landline service will work approaching 100% of
the time.)

In any event, after speaking with Shelly at the inbound telemarketing office
(800) 366-0043 for the DC market, I was told that the plan was indeed
unlimited off-peak with no charge for local calls in the BAMS/DC-Baltimore
local calling area.

The account was set up in a day or so, and worked fine, although I note BAMS
was getting very cheap by not even offering call-waiting or three-way
calling (it just makes more money for them, so I'm not sure why they don't
just offer it by default, especially the call-waiting).

The bill just arrived a few days ago, and I noted some significant errors:

1. Calls within the BAMS/DC-Baltimore local calling area were charged at 4
to 8 cents per call, NOT COUNTING the airtime component.

2. Off-peak (and weekend) calls were billed at 50 cents per minute -- thus,
the unlimited off-peak component of the plan was not reflected.

3. The "Welcome" letter we received from BAMS, which outlines the selected
rateplan and service agreement, didn't have any mention of the unlimited
off-peak rateplan for one year, etc.

I called up the DC support number and they claim that they are having some
problems with the analog unlimited off-peak plans, and it will need to be
manually credited until the issues are resolved.

I then asked about the local toll charges, and their claim was that this was
standard, even though I was told by the sales rep (Shelly) that they no
longer assessed these charges, which is consistent with their policies in
most of their other markets for analog accounts, including NY Metro (00022),
CT-A/Wallingford (00119), Boston (00028), Manchester (00428), Poughkeepsie
(00486), and Orange (00404).

I escalated the matter since the reason I accepted their offer for service
was based to a large extent on the no local toll charge offering, and will
expect them to honor that (as well as the unlimited off peak airtime, which
they said they will eventually correct).

Bell Atlantic customers in Washington DC and Baltimore who signed up for
service during January 2000 under this promotion may care to closely
scrutinize their bills to ensure that these billing errors are corrected and
any overcharges refunded/credited to their accounts.

I think I spend more time correcting these billing errors and
inconsistencies in their service offerings that I (and perhaps collecitvely
the whole company) spends talking on the phone! :)

(This post and other cellular/CDPD posts and issues are also available at:
http://www.wirelessnotes.org)