Last week's column on the high cost of hotel-room phone calls offered some remedies. But one of them -- using a telephone-company calling card -- doesn't always work, as a number of readers have pointed out.
Susan Johnson, of Saint John, says she used her NBTel calling card to place long-distance calls from her room at the Delta Prince Edward in Charlottetown last December. When her bill arrived, the notation "CanopCo" appeared beside the calls, and the charges were higher than the NBTel rates she expected to pay.
She gives the example of a one-minute call within PEI being billed at $2.76. Other readers told of receiving similar shocks when using Bell Canada calling cards while staying at hotels on Toronto's Airport Strip.
Its all part of the deregulation of Canada's telephone industry, and the best advice anyone can give is: User beware.
CanopCo Inc. is a two-year-old Toronto-based company that describes itself as "the first and largest alternate operator service provider in Canada." As of this week, it has signed up about 250 Canadian hotels to use its services. Guests staying at those hotels no longer reach an internal switchboard when they dial "O" from their rooms. Instead they are connected directly to a CanopCo operator.
Hotels like the system for two reasons. They can save money by laying off their own operators and they can earn income in the form of commissions paid by CanopCo on long-distance calls placed by guests.
The system has been common in the U.S. for some time, and many of the American service providers are now competing with CanopCo to sign up Canadian hotels.
Tony Lacavera, CanopCo's president, says his company's system is programmed so that hotel guests who make automated calling-card calls from hotel rooms should be billed at the rates of their phone company back home.
But if someone makes a mistake in dialling, takes too long entering the required numbers, or dials "O" by accident, a CanopCo operator will come on the line. If the room guest then asks that person to place the call, CanopCo rates will apply. Those rates are sometimes higher, sometimes lower than those charged by Bell and its affiliated phone companies, Lacavera says.
So what can a poor traveller do to avoid paying "operator-assisted" charges to CanopCo or its competitors? Leaving the hotel room and going to a pay phone might sound like the solution. But it won't always work. That's because many pay phones are no longer connected to Bell or its affiliates, but to CanopCo or other third-party service providers.
The safest way to make a calling-card call these days is to start by dialing the toll-free number that connects directly to the phone company that issued the card. Newer cards have the number printed on the back. For Bell and many of its affiliates the number is (800) 555-1111. Check with your local phone company to see if that number applies to your calling card.
And if you do reach a CanopCo or other third-party operator by mistake, don't panic. All you have to do is ask, says Lacavera, and you will be connected free-of-charge to the phone company of your choice.
Parking crunch hits
Pearson
Toronto's chaotic Pearson Airport has a new problem: too few parking spaces. A couple of times each month, drivers are being turned away from the parking garage at Terminal 2 because all 5,000 spaces are occupied.
The crunch began early this year and has intensified since North American flights of Air Canada and Canadian Airlines were consolidated at the terminal. The removal of short-term parking meters in mid-September only made things worse.
Whenever the garage fills up, the Greater Toronto Airport Authority provides up to five hours of free parking at an off-airport, reduced-rate lot.
But many drivers get lost trying to find it, and end up on expressways that carry them miles away from the airport. Those who find the lot, located off Airport Road, are shuttled back to the airport by a free bus service. But many of them spend the trip complaining that they have missed their flights because of the delay, according to one of the drivers.
Parking facilities at Terminal 3, which are also nearing capacity, are being expanded by 1,000 spaces. But serious relief won't come until 2003. That's when the existing lots at Terminals 1 and 2 will be replaced by a new 12,600-space garage.
In the meantime, if you plan to drive and park when flying from Terminal 2, make sure you get there early.
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