On Thu, 1 May 2003 21:27:52 -0400
Ken Hirsch <kenhirsch(_at_)myself(_dot_)com> wrote:
From: "Kee Hinckley" <nazgul(_at_)somewhere(_dot_)com>
At 2:52 PM -0400 5/1/03, Ken Hirsch wrote:
telephones work that way. Your local phone company is responsible
for >identifying you, billing you, and investigating complaints
against you.
They identify your address. That's about it.
Wrong. They do a credit check.
Most of the rest of the world is not as in love with credit checks and
scores as America is. A fair chunk of the rest of the world has very
little care or interest in personal identification or identity as long
as the bills get paid. I've lived in countries where the *ONLY*
requirement for getting a phone line installed was a decent sized (cash)
down payment, a billing address, and a control placed on the line for
the first three months such that the total bill for the month couldn't
exceed the down payment.
Its actually fairly common.
And if that's not sufficient, they'll require a deposit--in addition
to the installation charges, which are probably comparable to a
certificate. They know where you live, they have your credit history,
and cash up front. Not unlike what a certificate requires.
Umm, they may well they have a billing address, which has no need of
being the same as the service address, and they have a cash down
payment. Nothing more. Factually, they don't *NEED* anything more.
All they really need and want is reasonable certainty that the bills
will the paid. The rest is pretty irrelevant.
And they certainly don't check to make sure that you've never been
accused of making unsolicited phone calls in the past.
I'm sure they do check their own records to see if you've ever had
your line disconnected for cause.
Personal history (mine) would suggest otherwise in California and
Florida (I had a few really bad times financially in both states). In
the California case they stated explicitly that they kept those records
for three months only.
--
J C Lawrence
---------(*) Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas.
claw(_at_)kanga(_dot_)nu He lived as a devil, eh?
http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/ Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live.
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