Phone billing bug, revisited

[Mark Mallett]

Well, folks, it has happened to me again. For the second time in the
last couple of years I have been the victim of a bug in ATT phone billing.
You may recall my posting the first time it happened, a year or two ago.
It seems that it is possible to place a call right before midnight and
get charged for an extra 24 hours. (It is quite a thrill to open up a
bill and see a $350 phone call in it.)

I suspect, as I did the first time, that someone is reading the date
before reading the time of day, and not bothering to see that they
make sense together. I thought that everyone knew enough to verify
that synchronized variables are indeed in synch, especially when it
comes to reading date/time values.

Probably some big IBM billing computer somewhere. I would hope that this
problem isn't in unix!!

-mm-

[ba...@calma.uucp]

In article <4...@sii.UUCP> m...@sii.UUCP (Mark Mallett) writes:
>It seems that it is possible to place a call right before midnight and
>get charged for an extra 24 hours. (It is quite a thrill to open up a
>bill and see a $350 phone call in it.)
>

Hmmmmm. Does this mean that if I place a call from an Airphone while
flying east across the International Date Line that I'll get a *credit*
for 24 hours worth of conversation on my next Visa bill?? I gotta try
that next time ...

--

Ken Barr {ucbvax,sun,csd-gould}!calma!barr
Calma Company calma!ba...@ucbvax.ARPA

Disclaimer: Calma lets me use their computers and their mailstops. Unless
policy has changed, my opinions should not be considered as gospel.

[Fabbian G. Dufoe]

In article <4...@sii.UUCP>, m...@sii.UUCP (Mark Mallett) writes:
> I suspect, as I did the first time, that someone is reading the date
> before reading the time of day, and not bothering to see that they
> make sense together. I thought that everyone knew enough to verify
> that synchronized variables are indeed in synch, especially when it
> comes to reading date/time values.
>
> Probably some big IBM billing computer somewhere. I would hope that this
> problem isn't in unix!!
>
> -mm-

I can see from your remarks that you haven't been reading the
discussion of how to recognize leap years that has been going on in
net.lang.c. :-)

Fabbian Dufoe
350 Ling-A-Mor Terrace South
St. Petersburg, Florida 33705
813-823-2350

UUCP: ...akgua!akguc!codas!peora!ucf-cs!usfvax2!jc3b21!fgd3