IMPORTANT - A Warning on "900 replacement" calls - cost you $$$

[Tab]

True story. Long ago there were 900 numbers (1-900-xxx-xxxx). They carried a charge and were the opposite of 1-800 numbers (toll-free). Some 1-900 use was valid; for instance, I used them occasionally for tech support (charge per call) or to active a computer service. Like most pay-per-call features, they were overtaken by the porn industry, so most ads in the back of non-mainstream magazines would have you call a 1-900 number to "contact Tracy's sex-starved girls next door". Over time, however, businesses and such started blocking all 900 calls, including the few valid ones.

What was the industry to do? They didn't want to ask for credit cards. Then they discovered international phone calls. It seems there's a class of international phone calls to which international rates apply but do not require the +011 international dialing prefix. There's maybe a dozen countries that qualify - friends and neighbors (like Canada). But also places like Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica.

You can call Jamaica by dialing a seeming innocuous number, like 1-876-822-3311. It's an advertised number. Or perhaps, they call you and leave a message and ask that you call them back (at that number).

Well, that number is billed at high international rates ("Carribbean rates apply"). How does it work for them? My understanding is that the phone company charges you whatever the established rate per minute is (let's say $1.75/minute), takes their cut, and the residual (presumably the bulk of it) goes to the local phone company in Jamaica.

In other words, it looks like a safe number, particularly if you have free national dialing like I do, but in reality it can cost megabucks to call.

How do I know? Well, we had a friend stay with us. He's older, if he was a pack of M&M's he'd be missing the yellow ones, if you get my drift. So, looking for a girlfriend, he calls the above number (we gave him his own line so he didn't have to use his cell phone), and when we got our first bill, it was $3300+ in international calls (plus another $1400 awaiting in yet-unbilled activity). Nearly $5,000 from calling that apparently "free" number in Jamaica. No, ComCast won't wipe it from the bill. We'll have to have him pay it off, which will be probably nearly 2 years to accomplish.

So, just warning to all, on the new "900" scam. Be careful, or you could rack up a lot of owed money without knowing it.

- Tab

[LiberalFighter]

1. Hmm Comcast won't but AT&T, Verizon would wipe it?

[MiniMe]

2. A good link to have:

http://www.bennetyee.org/ucsd-pages/area.html

It lists where every area code is in area code order.

[madinmaryland]

3. The free ones are the eight and then a doublet.

Thanks!

[dixiegrrrrl]

5. I have been looking for a list like this. Thanks!!!!

[MiniMe]

7. YW, I find it handy

I answer a rescue hotline at times, and I can check the area code before I call back if I don't know it. It has come in handy a few times.

[slampoet]

4. This is not new. I saw this in 1998 while working for MCI-Worldcom.

[Shagbark Hickory]

6. Nevermind the phone bill, I bet you had a lot of "cleaning up" to do with all that teleromancing.

Anyway, if you had Vonage, you'd only be paying 29 cents a minute to that area code.

Those international phone sex lines are nothing new btw. They were there back in the good ol' days of 900 numbers.