Oh no. Basic economics: a person's worth is determined by supply (similarly desirable people) and demand (employers with similar needs). The law does not determine this, today or otherwise.
Have you ever heard of the concept of price supports? They exist when markets become unsustainable when prices are driven too low. For example, minimum wage is already too little to live off of unless you pull serious overtime (or more likely work multiple jobs since companies are adverse to overtime pay).
A large part of the cause of the widespread misery of the Great Depression was the collapse in the value of farm goods. Because of this, farming was no longer viable to support families. Farmland went unused and banks were emptied as people started taking out savings that had been loaned out to farmers that couldn't repay. At the Depression's height, one in four Americans was out of a job, and many were homeless. This is because farming had become too expensive for the wages paid until such time as the federal government stepped in and started price support.
Similarly, labor is a good that had costs -- housing, food, education, etc. These costs are poorly met by our existing minimum wage. Eliminating it entirely would make having a job insufficient to cover for basic needs. As such, you could expect higher unemployment.
In addition, the lack of buying power of workers would have an effect similar to what happened in the Great Depression -- people couldn't afford goods like new houses, so construction stopped and several industries went out of business. If people are having to spend all their money on food and shelter, then they can't buy any of the luxuries and services that drive our economy. Eliminating the minimum wage would close a lot of American companies due to lack of customers.
Focus on supply and demand only minimizes local costs. It does not provide a livable society.
Note that many people, probably even most people, are not getting just minimum wage. I may be willing to work for $3/hour, but I might get 10x that if people like myself are in demand.
No minimum wage job is for people in demand. Minimum wage jobs are generally menial labor with no real skills needed to apply. Food service, maid services, janitorial services, etc. The vast number of people desperate enough for a job to take a job like these does not however justify paying sub-poverty level wages to people who are actually working.
Unemployed people can't afford safe housing, can't afford education, can't afford healthcare, and are thus trapped in poverty from generation to generation. This is what we have now because it is illegal to provide jobs for people who are worth less than some arbitrary minimum wage that was determined by elitists such as yourself. I know, you can't bear to see people living in squalar, but the "cure" only increases the disease.
Most homeless people are "unemployable" at any wage greater than zero. That's my point, and I'm not the elitist who's proposing that some jobs should pay less than the cost of two meals for a day (with none left over for a roof over your head) and that the rabble should be happy for it. Anyone who thinks that the "cure only increases the disease" hasn't actually ever had to live at minimum wage nor known someone who has. I unfortunately have 2-3 friends who work jobs just slightly better than minimum wage and none have healthcare, none can live on their own in safe neighborhoods, and none can afford any savings after paying utilities, rent, and food except for the one that still lives with his mother in his 30s.
How are people to earn enough of a living to avoid needing crime if they are unemployable at the minimum wage?
These people you refer to aren't employable even at $1/hour. People don't want to be near them. It's part of the stigma. Putting everyone who does currently live on minimum wage out on the streets because they can no longer afford housing at even more pathetic
Eh, I knew I was bound to screw something up in that. Out of curiosity, are there any good resources for learning proper older English grammar? (Free and online would be a bonus.)
I am certain that one as perspicacious as thou was not remiss in making proper use of thine Capitals and Punctuation when reprimanding yonder knave for his abuse of the King's English.
Shame is a good thing. It's in many cases the only thing that prevents us from being absolute rapacious monsters to each other. I'd put dishonesty as a far, far worse trait than fear of getting caught, which is a healthy and necessary thing.
What percentage of card-carrying NRA members voted against this administration that's been actively working on trampling the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, 8th, 9th, and 14th Amendments all so long as they promised to protect the 2nd -- The Only Amendment That Matters (tm). How many in fact have howled their support for every single abridgement of freedom offered up in the name of fighting terrorism?
Let's face it. Most modern day gun owners are more likely to think that security is freedom and are the most dedicated supporters of everything that is being done to tear the Constitution in half.
I know a couple of dedicated gun owners who aren't this way, but they're definitely in the minority in my experience.
Ideally a business could hire anybody for what they are worth. (People with negative value are unlikely to pay for the privilege of working though!)
That's a horrible stance. A person's "worth" by that standard is determined by how desperate they are. That's how debt bondage and sweatshops get started -- by feeding on desperation and making sure that people never get comfortable enough to ask for more. It's all about lowering the standards of living for the masses to increase the profits of the masters.
That's how the race for the bottom happens. That's why we have laws to protect people against it because it leaves us with a populace that can't afford safe housing, can't afford education, can't afford healthcare, and who are thus trapped in poverty from generation to generation. That's what we had in the 19th century, and it led to very miserable lives for many. We put a stop to that so that America could have a middle-class centric society instead of a pyramid shaped society. You would have us return to neo-feudalism with your ideas.
I'd rather have somebody working than committing crimes.
Now there's a false dichotomy if I ever heard one. Personally, I'd rather have people earn enough of a living to avoid needing crime and to avoid being so poorly educated that crime looks attractive. Violent crime is highest in the poorest because of desperation. We don't need to encourage more desperation by eliminating the minimum wage at a time when it's already insufficient to let people work just one job and provide for their family.
We have a "fair" minimum wage that excludes the less-desirable potential workers.
Your entire argument rests on this postulate which I do not accept. Homeless people aren't excluded from work because they aren't qualified to do work worth the minimum wage but are qualified to work for a pittance. They're excluded because they're unwashed and frightening to customers and are perceived by employers as untrustworthy since they are desperate and don't have it together enough to keep a living space. Giving them less money a day than they could get from begging at a good corner isn't really benefitting them.
Exactly what type of jobs do you see people hiring homeless people for that they wouldn't prefer to hire an illegal immigrant or a kid in high school for?
In India, there are people stuck in a position known as debt bondage. Basically, you provide shelter and food for someone in exchange for debt and pay them so little that they can never work it off. It's not a system any sane and humane person would wish for our culture to emulate.
We used to do so something similar in the US in company towns where everything was owned by the company you worked for and you were only paid in money good at the company store. Deductions were made from your paycheck before you received it such that you never actually saw any money. If you wanted to leave a company town, you had to do so penniless and homeles.
The Pullman strike happened over these conditions. At the time, many people pointed out that the housing Lake Calumet was nicer than average and would say that these people were helped by entering into debt bondage. However, the lack of freedom to anywhere else without becoming a vagrant was oppressive and wrong.
The argument that someone, somewhere is more desperate than your current workers is never an excuse for stringing people along for the absolute minimum that you can give them while demanding that they be grateful for it. That's called the race to the bottom, and its the sport of plutocrats everywhere. A fair minimum wage only eliminates the worst kind of menial jobs and gives people the purchasing power to buy the goods that help generate jobs elsewhere.
You know what I love in reading the responses to this post -- the almost instant anger and denial it generates. Geeze, I've been in pretty unexpected situations before, and though I've never had to beg for change, I understand exactly what you're saying. There's a visceral reaction to try to separate yourself from the "unfit" that leads people to treat homeless people so badly. You distrust them, assume they're lying, assume they'll just spend it on booze or whatever. It's probably instinctual.
I got past that for a while in college for a few years, but I got burned by a good scam artist over a couple of weeks my 4th year. Now I give on rare occasion to the Salvation Army, and I've worked soup kitchens, but I just don't trust beggars enough to give them money. I haven't had to deal with people begging much since I got out of college, but your story reminds me of how I always felt about the possibility that their stories could in fact be real and that no one would listen to them and believe them. It makes me shudder to think about being put in that position myself. We really do reduce the homeless to sub-human.
You know, studies have actually been mixed in regards to this.
I would actually like to see studies that show no effect. I'm actually quite familiar with studies that show that cell phone driving does have an effect and would like to see a good counterpoint. I recommend reading a post I wrote up in another discussion about David Strayers's work on dual-task interference and change blindness. Humans don't multitask all that well despite their own perceptions of their abilities.
In fact, I would not be surprised to find people are as poor at driving with a hands-free set for their phone as they are holding the phone.
That's basically what the research shows. It's not having both hands on the wheel or not that results in slower braking times and less attention to surroundings -- it's focusing part of your mind on conversation.
Paying too much attention to passengers (much like all the other things you listed) is one of those things that can and will get an accident blamed on you in a police report if you own up to them. Though, it turns out that in simulations, talking on a cell phone is more impairing than talking to a passenger according to the 10th paper on Strayer's page. Somehow, though, I doubt the passenger in the experiment was being stared at by the drivers instead of the road. People who do that give me the willies when driving.
You work in the billing department so you aren't getting all of the data. The MSC sends GCDR data with all sorts of useful information like LAC and Cell ID, on and off hook signalling, etc. Records are even generated for cell handovers in which no calls are made.
Actually, we do see most of that (except for cell-to-cell handovers). Our billing system takes raw switch data from about 4 different switch types and data from the clearinghouse as inputs. [Edit: Oops, almost put the data types which would be a dead giveaway about where I work...] There is a little filtering to remove irrelevant and unbillable information, but call delivery records, etc. get sent to us right along with the usual MTC/MOC records. In fact, pulling formatted dumps of the data is a common part of diagnosing these problems.
Personally, I wish OUR switches group was together enough to keep everything on tape. We're the ones who keep backlogs of data for up to a year. Our switches group can't seem to go back and look at data over a week old. One of our biggest problem right now is that two of our larger markets are getting records for when people call a number and get no answer with an incorrectly set call completion indicator. This is causing us to have to strip out a ridiculous amount of data and is causing huge revenue hits in those markets. In addition 4 bills have gone out late -- one a full week late because of stripping, rerunning, backing out, stripping a different way, etc. until we "guesstimate" a way to keep dollar amounts trending for the bill cycle. Our switches group has identified the source of the problem, but it'll be over a month before they implement the fix. (IF they ever implement it. Heck we're still stripping records in one of our markets due to a year old issue.)
Anyway, it's good to hear from someone who knows the industry from the inside.
The most important part of his suggestion is that you list the symptoms of the problem and not try to convince them you know the cause. These billings systems are monstrously complex, and all sorts of things can go wrong. When you come with a proposed solution, not only are you mostly likely tediously wrong, but you sound like someone's who has come up with an angle to get yourself out of something you did instead of a genuinely puzzled customer who wants to know why this is happening to them.
Calling up support determined that you have a particular problem is just as arrogant and futile for remedying your problem as doing the same with a doctor. You don't know as much as you think you know from reading junk online, and while you may be smart, you don't have the domain knowledge to get what's going on.
(Also, SIM cloning is not your problem. You wouldn't be getting only calls meant for you while the "bad guy" only got calls meant for him. It doesn't work that way. It's also monstrously difficult to pull off at all with modern phones and royally screws with the switches if they are both used at the same time.)
(Furthermore, as others have pointed out, overlaps of a single minute aren't uncommon thanks to the rounding up of time to next minute that most billing systems do.)
Lastly, though, skip the last bit about complaining to regulators. They'll do nothing. The company will do nothing. All you'll get is elevated blood pressure. The correct procedure is to dispute individual records. Once the company has decided these are good or bad, that's pretty much your last court of appeal unless you want to spend a lot more money than $40.
I work for one of the top 5 American cell phone providers specifically in the department that maintains the billing system. This is the suite of systems that go from switch records to taxed and formatted bills to be sent off to the printing houses (as well as roamer records to be shipped off to other providers, records for partners, etc.)
Let me tell you something you may not realize -- all of these systems have bugs. Some of them are horrible bugs. Bugs like ringtones getting double-taxed or calls getting billed when you ring a number but don't get an answer with absolutely no way to tell the difference between a legit call and a call that didn't answer.
Some of these bugs are due to flaws within the billing system. Some are bugs in the switch data (the absolute worst kind because there's no good way to filter the data when good and bad records are all marked up the same). Some are tables screw ups that lead to entire bills getting mangled. Some of these bugs get caught by the bill checking department and others may go for months without being noticed until a customer complains.
"Number unavailable" calls are most likely from records that were sent to the billing system with no other party number populated (or populated with some default "we don't know what this is" value). Our system simply replaces the other number with your own number and keeps going. Other providers probably cover for it in some other way as well.
What you have may in fact be legit phone calls that had mangled or incomplete switch records or records from the inter-carrier clearinghouse. Alternately, you may have junk data that you don't deserve to be billed for. It's all up how your company handles such complaints on what to do with about it. I know that my company frequently requests us to go find how many customers were affected and by how much so that we can either strip records from the bills and rerun them or go back and credit the customers proactively. We always try to err on the side of underbilling rather than overbilling customers because it's better to lose some money up front and give customers a pleasant surprise rather than after a nasty lawsuit with all the bad publicity.
However, if T-Mobile hangs up on you, that just isn't right. Call them up and simply say that you'd like to dispute the charges and have their billing team investigate where the records came from. That'll probably lead to a bug report being filed somewhere in their bureaucracy and a fix for you and others having the same problem. If they give you crap, then switch providers. It's not like there aren't multiple GSM service providers in the US now.
Nope. Verizon's also helping the NSA spy. Qwest is the only hold-out. But, hey, the market'll sort it all out right? Just as soon as Qwest becomes someone I can switch to...
So, MrChaotica, you admit that you are not a creator of original content.
Actually, he just complained about content owners. I see this as distinct from content creators as the recording industry shows. How many actual artists own the rights to their own work, after all?
We've come a long way from the days of 24 years copyrights which ensure you'd receive your rewards but didn't ensure that you children's children could rest on your laurels or that corporations could continue to deny the public access to your work until all the master copies have decayed as is the case with most of the earliest film work. That's history destroyed.
It's not content creators that are to blame -- it's content middlemen, brokers, and outright jailers that many of us have a problem with.
I know that's a FSM joke and all, but the sad truth is that the world is NOT lacking inpirates. While piracy attacks have dropped in frequency over the last couple of years, there's still about 300-400 attacks per year. People still die on the high seas thanks to murderous thugs out to loot and kill the crew and passengers of cargo vessels, oil tankers, cruise liners, and private yachts.
(Also, the Cold War was the lowest point in history for piracy, which doesn't trend with Global Warming which has increased even as piracy has increased since the 80s.)
Cerberus is already in use as an asteroid. I'm not sure whether or not that has any bearing on the naming of planets and moons, but at least Hydra's better than Quaoar.
A single dollar-voting customer is worth any number of petitions and angry letters.
You're right. A single dollar-voting customer is just as effective as an angry letter, which is to say that they're both pointless and empty gestures. Even a petition is worthless if all people do is grumble and then go back to being good little consumers.
Now a petition that gets a critical mass of people to commit to terminating their service... Ah, now that's actually worth something.
A single voter is as meaningless as a single rain drop. A movement can be a torrential flood. So, tell me now: are you trying to help build a storm front, or are you just making puddles?
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Oh no. Basic economics: a person's worth is determined by supply (similarly desirable people) and demand (employers with similar needs). The law does not determine this, today or otherwise.
Have you ever heard of the concept of price supports? They exist when markets become unsustainable when prices are driven too low. For example, minimum wage is already too little to live off of unless you pull serious overtime (or more likely work multiple jobs since companies are adverse to overtime pay).
A large part of the cause of the widespread misery of the Great Depression was the collapse in the value of farm goods. Because of this, farming was no longer viable to support families. Farmland went unused and banks were emptied as people started taking out savings that had been loaned out to farmers that couldn't repay. At the Depression's height, one in four Americans was out of a job, and many were homeless. This is because farming had become too expensive for the wages paid until such time as the federal government stepped in and started price support.
Similarly, labor is a good that had costs -- housing, food, education, etc. These costs are poorly met by our existing minimum wage. Eliminating it entirely would make having a job insufficient to cover for basic needs. As such, you could expect higher unemployment.
In addition, the lack of buying power of workers would have an effect similar to what happened in the Great Depression -- people couldn't afford goods like new houses, so construction stopped and several industries went out of business. If people are having to spend all their money on food and shelter, then they can't buy any of the luxuries and services that drive our economy. Eliminating the minimum wage would close a lot of American companies due to lack of customers.
Focus on supply and demand only minimizes local costs. It does not provide a livable society.
Note that many people, probably even most people, are not getting just minimum wage. I may be willing to work for $3/hour, but I might get 10x that if people like myself are in demand.
No minimum wage job is for people in demand. Minimum wage jobs are generally menial labor with no real skills needed to apply. Food service, maid services, janitorial services, etc. The vast number of people desperate enough for a job to take a job like these does not however justify paying sub-poverty level wages to people who are actually working.
Unemployed people can't afford safe housing, can't afford education, can't afford healthcare, and are thus trapped in poverty from generation to generation. This is what we have now because it is illegal to provide jobs for people who are worth less than some arbitrary minimum wage that was determined by elitists such as yourself. I know, you can't bear to see people living in squalar, but the "cure" only increases the disease.
Most homeless people are "unemployable" at any wage greater than zero. That's my point, and I'm not the elitist who's proposing that some jobs should pay less than the cost of two meals for a day (with none left over for a roof over your head) and that the rabble should be happy for it. Anyone who thinks that the "cure only increases the disease" hasn't actually ever had to live at minimum wage nor known someone who has. I unfortunately have 2-3 friends who work jobs just slightly better than minimum wage and none have healthcare, none can live on their own in safe neighborhoods, and none can afford any savings after paying utilities, rent, and food except for the one that still lives with his mother in his 30s.
How are people to earn enough of a living to avoid needing crime if they are unemployable at the minimum wage?
These people you refer to aren't employable even at $1/hour. People don't want to be near them. It's part of the stigma. Putting everyone who does currently live on minimum wage out on the streets because they can no longer afford housing at even more pathetic
Eh, I knew I was bound to screw something up in that. Out of curiosity, are there any good resources for learning proper older English grammar? (Free and online would be a bonus.)
thats "trebled", not tripled ;)
I am certain that one as perspicacious as thou was not remiss in making proper use of thine Capitals and Punctuation when reprimanding yonder knave for his abuse of the King's English.
Shame is a good thing. It's in many cases the only thing that prevents us from being absolute rapacious monsters to each other. I'd put dishonesty as a far, far worse trait than fear of getting caught, which is a healthy and necessary thing.
So just how do you use the three shells?
I'd hardly call a super-low power consumption embedded processor without a floating point unit a "standard CPU chip."
What percentage of card-carrying NRA members voted against this administration that's been actively working on trampling the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, 8th, 9th, and 14th Amendments all so long as they promised to protect the 2nd -- The Only Amendment That Matters (tm). How many in fact have howled their support for every single abridgement of freedom offered up in the name of fighting terrorism?
Let's face it. Most modern day gun owners are more likely to think that security is freedom and are the most dedicated supporters of everything that is being done to tear the Constitution in half.
I know a couple of dedicated gun owners who aren't this way, but they're definitely in the minority in my experience.
Ideally a business could hire anybody for what they are worth. (People with negative value are unlikely to pay for the privilege of working though!)
That's a horrible stance. A person's "worth" by that standard is determined by how desperate they are. That's how debt bondage and sweatshops get started -- by feeding on desperation and making sure that people never get comfortable enough to ask for more. It's all about lowering the standards of living for the masses to increase the profits of the masters.
That's how the race for the bottom happens. That's why we have laws to protect people against it because it leaves us with a populace that can't afford safe housing, can't afford education, can't afford healthcare, and who are thus trapped in poverty from generation to generation. That's what we had in the 19th century, and it led to very miserable lives for many. We put a stop to that so that America could have a middle-class centric society instead of a pyramid shaped society. You would have us return to neo-feudalism with your ideas.
I'd rather have somebody working than committing crimes.
Now there's a false dichotomy if I ever heard one. Personally, I'd rather have people earn enough of a living to avoid needing crime and to avoid being so poorly educated that crime looks attractive. Violent crime is highest in the poorest because of desperation. We don't need to encourage more desperation by eliminating the minimum wage at a time when it's already insufficient to let people work just one job and provide for their family.
We have a "fair" minimum wage that excludes the less-desirable potential workers.
Your entire argument rests on this postulate which I do not accept. Homeless people aren't excluded from work because they aren't qualified to do work worth the minimum wage but are qualified to work for a pittance. They're excluded because they're unwashed and frightening to customers and are perceived by employers as untrustworthy since they are desperate and don't have it together enough to keep a living space. Giving them less money a day than they could get from begging at a good corner isn't really benefitting them.
Exactly what type of jobs do you see people hiring homeless people for that they wouldn't prefer to hire an illegal immigrant or a kid in high school for?
In India, there are people stuck in a position known as debt bondage. Basically, you provide shelter and food for someone in exchange for debt and pay them so little that they can never work it off. It's not a system any sane and humane person would wish for our culture to emulate.
We used to do so something similar in the US in company towns where everything was owned by the company you worked for and you were only paid in money good at the company store. Deductions were made from your paycheck before you received it such that you never actually saw any money. If you wanted to leave a company town, you had to do so penniless and homeles.
The Pullman strike happened over these conditions. At the time, many people pointed out that the housing Lake Calumet was nicer than average and would say that these people were helped by entering into debt bondage. However, the lack of freedom to anywhere else without becoming a vagrant was oppressive and wrong.
The argument that someone, somewhere is more desperate than your current workers is never an excuse for stringing people along for the absolute minimum that you can give them while demanding that they be grateful for it. That's called the race to the bottom, and its the sport of plutocrats everywhere. A fair minimum wage only eliminates the worst kind of menial jobs and gives people the purchasing power to buy the goods that help generate jobs elsewhere.
You know what I love in reading the responses to this post -- the almost instant anger and denial it generates. Geeze, I've been in pretty unexpected situations before, and though I've never had to beg for change, I understand exactly what you're saying. There's a visceral reaction to try to separate yourself from the "unfit" that leads people to treat homeless people so badly. You distrust them, assume they're lying, assume they'll just spend it on booze or whatever. It's probably instinctual.
I got past that for a while in college for a few years, but I got burned by a good scam artist over a couple of weeks my 4th year. Now I give on rare occasion to the Salvation Army, and I've worked soup kitchens, but I just don't trust beggars enough to give them money. I haven't had to deal with people begging much since I got out of college, but your story reminds me of how I always felt about the possibility that their stories could in fact be real and that no one would listen to them and believe them. It makes me shudder to think about being put in that position myself. We really do reduce the homeless to sub-human.
Well, with the right technologies, you could literally give blood for oil.
Wow! With that kind of horsepower, can it emulate a sense of humor?
You know, studies have actually been mixed in regards to this.
I would actually like to see studies that show no effect. I'm actually quite familiar with studies that show that cell phone driving does have an effect and would like to see a good counterpoint. I recommend reading a post I wrote up in another discussion about David Strayers's work on dual-task interference and change blindness. Humans don't multitask all that well despite their own perceptions of their abilities.
In fact, I would not be surprised to find people are as poor at driving with a hands-free set for their phone as they are holding the phone.
That's basically what the research shows. It's not having both hands on the wheel or not that results in slower braking times and less attention to surroundings -- it's focusing part of your mind on conversation.
Paying too much attention to passengers (much like all the other things you listed) is one of those things that can and will get an accident blamed on you in a police report if you own up to them. Though, it turns out that in simulations, talking on a cell phone is more impairing than talking to a passenger according to the 10th paper on Strayer's page. Somehow, though, I doubt the passenger in the experiment was being stared at by the drivers instead of the road. People who do that give me the willies when driving.
Worked for Michio Kaku.
You work in the billing department so you aren't getting all of the data. The MSC sends GCDR data with all sorts of useful information like LAC and Cell ID, on and off hook signalling, etc. Records are even generated for cell handovers in which no calls are made.
Actually, we do see most of that (except for cell-to-cell handovers). Our billing system takes raw switch data from about 4 different switch types and data from the clearinghouse as inputs. [Edit: Oops, almost put the data types which would be a dead giveaway about where I work...] There is a little filtering to remove irrelevant and unbillable information, but call delivery records, etc. get sent to us right along with the usual MTC/MOC records. In fact, pulling formatted dumps of the data is a common part of diagnosing these problems.
Personally, I wish OUR switches group was together enough to keep everything on tape. We're the ones who keep backlogs of data for up to a year. Our switches group can't seem to go back and look at data over a week old. One of our biggest problem right now is that two of our larger markets are getting records for when people call a number and get no answer with an incorrectly set call completion indicator. This is causing us to have to strip out a ridiculous amount of data and is causing huge revenue hits in those markets. In addition 4 bills have gone out late -- one a full week late because of stripping, rerunning, backing out, stripping a different way, etc. until we "guesstimate" a way to keep dollar amounts trending for the bill cycle. Our switches group has identified the source of the problem, but it'll be over a month before they implement the fix. (IF they ever implement it. Heck we're still stripping records in one of our markets due to a year old issue.)
Anyway, it's good to hear from someone who knows the industry from the inside.
The most important part of his suggestion is that you list the symptoms of the problem and not try to convince them you know the cause. These billings systems are monstrously complex, and all sorts of things can go wrong. When you come with a proposed solution, not only are you mostly likely tediously wrong, but you sound like someone's who has come up with an angle to get yourself out of something you did instead of a genuinely puzzled customer who wants to know why this is happening to them.
Calling up support determined that you have a particular problem is just as arrogant and futile for remedying your problem as doing the same with a doctor. You don't know as much as you think you know from reading junk online, and while you may be smart, you don't have the domain knowledge to get what's going on.
(Also, SIM cloning is not your problem. You wouldn't be getting only calls meant for you while the "bad guy" only got calls meant for him. It doesn't work that way. It's also monstrously difficult to pull off at all with modern phones and royally screws with the switches if they are both used at the same time.)
(Furthermore, as others have pointed out, overlaps of a single minute aren't uncommon thanks to the rounding up of time to next minute that most billing systems do.)
Lastly, though, skip the last bit about complaining to regulators. They'll do nothing. The company will do nothing. All you'll get is elevated blood pressure. The correct procedure is to dispute individual records. Once the company has decided these are good or bad, that's pretty much your last court of appeal unless you want to spend a lot more money than $40.
I work for one of the top 5 American cell phone providers specifically in the department that maintains the billing system. This is the suite of systems that go from switch records to taxed and formatted bills to be sent off to the printing houses (as well as roamer records to be shipped off to other providers, records for partners, etc.)
Let me tell you something you may not realize -- all of these systems have bugs. Some of them are horrible bugs. Bugs like ringtones getting double-taxed or calls getting billed when you ring a number but don't get an answer with absolutely no way to tell the difference between a legit call and a call that didn't answer.
Some of these bugs are due to flaws within the billing system. Some are bugs in the switch data (the absolute worst kind because there's no good way to filter the data when good and bad records are all marked up the same). Some are tables screw ups that lead to entire bills getting mangled. Some of these bugs get caught by the bill checking department and others may go for months without being noticed until a customer complains.
"Number unavailable" calls are most likely from records that were sent to the billing system with no other party number populated (or populated with some default "we don't know what this is" value). Our system simply replaces the other number with your own number and keeps going. Other providers probably cover for it in some other way as well.
What you have may in fact be legit phone calls that had mangled or incomplete switch records or records from the inter-carrier clearinghouse. Alternately, you may have junk data that you don't deserve to be billed for. It's all up how your company handles such complaints on what to do with about it. I know that my company frequently requests us to go find how many customers were affected and by how much so that we can either strip records from the bills and rerun them or go back and credit the customers proactively. We always try to err on the side of underbilling rather than overbilling customers because it's better to lose some money up front and give customers a pleasant surprise rather than after a nasty lawsuit with all the bad publicity.
However, if T-Mobile hangs up on you, that just isn't right. Call them up and simply say that you'd like to dispute the charges and have their billing team investigate where the records came from. That'll probably lead to a bug report being filed somewhere in their bureaucracy and a fix for you and others having the same problem. If they give you crap, then switch providers. It's not like there aren't multiple GSM service providers in the US now.
Nope. Verizon's also helping the NSA spy. Qwest is the only hold-out.
But, hey, the market'll sort it all out right? Just as soon as Qwest becomes someone I can switch to...
So, MrChaotica, you admit that you are not a creator of original content.
Actually, he just complained about content owners. I see this as distinct from content creators as the recording industry shows. How many actual artists own the rights to their own work, after all?
We've come a long way from the days of 24 years copyrights which ensure you'd receive your rewards but didn't ensure that you children's children could rest on your laurels or that corporations could continue to deny the public access to your work until all the master copies have decayed as is the case with most of the earliest film work. That's history destroyed.
It's not content creators that are to blame -- it's content middlemen, brokers, and outright jailers that many of us have a problem with.
I know that's a FSM joke and all, but the sad truth is that the world is NOT lacking in pirates. While piracy attacks have dropped in frequency over the last couple of years, there's still about 300-400 attacks per year. People still die on the high seas thanks to murderous thugs out to loot and kill the crew and passengers of cargo vessels, oil tankers, cruise liners, and private yachts.
(Also, the Cold War was the lowest point in history for piracy, which doesn't trend with Global Warming which has increased even as piracy has increased since the 80s.)
Cerberus is already in use as an asteroid.
I'm not sure whether or not that has any bearing on the naming of planets and moons, but at least Hydra's better than Quaoar.
I betcha if this every caught on ... it could really tick off the big phone companies.
*sigh* Fine then... You've convinced me. I'll give it a try.
No. Your contract says that they can change their policies at any time, and that you'll like it... b-tch!
A single dollar-voting customer is worth any number of petitions and angry letters.
You're right. A single dollar-voting customer is just as effective as an angry letter, which is to say that they're both pointless and empty gestures. Even a petition is worthless if all people do is grumble and then go back to being good little consumers.
Now a petition that gets a critical mass of people to commit to terminating their service... Ah, now that's actually worth something.
A single voter is as meaningless as a single rain drop. A movement can be a torrential flood. So, tell me now: are you trying to help build a storm front, or are you just making puddles?