[ckotchey]

I've got a minor situation here with the ReplayTV service, and I'm not sure who's pointing the finger at the right culprit.


Simply, my dial-in number for my house cannot be reached from my house! When I dial it (and all combinations with the 1, area code, etc.), I get a standard "sorry, your call can't be completed as dialed - check number and try again" recording. From a few miles down the road at work, I dial the phone number and get the modem as expected!


A call to ReplayTV says it is simply a problem with the phone company, and the phone company gave me some mumbo-jumbo about the owner of the phone number needing to make some sort of deal with the company to carry the number...which I neither understand or believe.


Can anyone shed some light on who exactly I should call and who is really responsible for such a thing?


For reference, I'm at (607) 625 exchange (Apalachin NY, just outside Binghamton, NY. Zip 13732, the number I'm trying to dial for replay (as listed for Binghamton) is 607-240-0009, and my phone company is Citizen's Communications.

 

[Rudy]

Is the number "at work" in the same area code and exchange? Do you use "Citizen's Communications" at work?


Without any further knowledge, my bet is that the problem is either at your local Central Office or Citizen's Communications.


Can your next door neighbor call the number?


Do you know anyone else that uses Citizen's Communications to see if they can dial it?

 

[Buff]

Any of the phone companies between you and them could have some routing info screwed up. It will be hard to figure it out. You could try to find someone how has a different local provider than you. If it's a long distance call, try something like 1010220 to get a different LD carrier to isolate that portion.


I'm innocent because so far only France has a live version of the Lucent Telco switch I write code for.....phew!

 

[alleng]

This is certainly not a problem with Replay.

 

[toots]

Back when I was completely starving to death, I was doing some bottom of the barrel consulting work, and ended up having to install {Someone}Link software on a client's computer. (Yeah, you can argue that you'd really have to hate someone to do that to them, and after a while, we did, but that's another story.)


The thing that I found so entertaining was that when we went through the official sign-up process, that included the PC dialing some 800 number to fetch a list of phone numbers, none of them worked. The ones purporting to be local to the market where this guy worked either weren't connected, didn't answer, or were long distance.


Calls to {Someone}Link customer support - a bit of a misnomer - resulted in a phone number that would work, but wasn't listed anywhere in their normal list of numbers.


It seems entirely obvious to me that if a company doesn't really know what its dial in numbers are, you've got problems.


But the thing that makes it relevant here is that it's entirely possible that whoever is supplying the ISP to ReplayTV has also supplied ReplayTV with a list of bad phone numbers.

 

[ckotchey]

FYI - My home number is (607) 625-xxxx and is Citizens Communications. From work (5 miles and across the county border), I'm (607)-752 and it is Verizon I believe.


I really have no idea why Verizon handles the phones all over the place around here, but my neighborhood has Citizens.

 

[Rudy]

Looks like the problem might be with Citizens.


You should definitely try dialing the number from a neighbor's house.


If it goes through, I'll be stumped. My bet is that it won't go through. If I'm correct, get someone at Citizen's to fix the routing problem. Don't let them point the finger to Replay.

 

[SuperDave]

I had the same problem calling a sprint number, from Verizon. Is this number across a lata or long distance? Because LD calls always should go through. Insist to your phone company that you cant reach the number.

 

[RandyL712]

Part of my job involves having modems connect all throughout the country. Often the only way to make it work is to dial 1010321,13035551212 for some odd reason. Try it out!

 

[rayliner]

I had similar problems in my home town where one day I couldn't dial my parent's house (same town, same area code, but we each had a different local phone company). One day everything was okay, the next day I couldn't call them, although they could call me. It took persistent calling and threatening before they finally figured out what was wrong with their switches, routers, and whatevers and were able to fix the problem. Keep calling them; someone is bound to get tired of hearing from you and stick with the problem. If you can find a private residence of a friend/relative where you have the same problem, you might have a better chance of getting it fixed than telling them you are trying to connect to a business line. Of course, you could also call the PUC; but document every call you make to their customer service and any corrective action they take or don't take. What normally happens is the PUC contacts the 'offending' company,and a representative from your phone company calls you back to see why you are unhappy. Good luck, and happy hunting.