Law changes coming soon in Germany (and also Europe?)

[ronator]

Hello there everybody,

I have some bads news about a certain coming change of law in Germany that's really ... I can't express my thoughts. It was even in the press: The ministry of economics wants to pass a law that says: people _must not_ be billed for the time in queue! We will be allowed to bill them only when they are connected to an agent; as long as they are on hold, we are not allowed to bill them. That brings me back to an old question and a new one.

When thinking about this new (crazy) law I again miss the ability of vicidial (or asterisk) to singalize a busy; with that we could re-route calls to an "un-billed area" and when an agents gets free we could route back and bill it. I don't want to bother you with that, but I liked to re-animate the good old signalize-busy-question :) The new question would be: regarding the possibility, that this law COULD become European Law (so it would not only me be who is suffering from that law), do you have any idea or a solution how I can map that statutory requirements to vicidials functionality ? It's just the point that I have no experience with AGI so for me i cannot work or manipulate any call that have entered a queue; I can moved it around timebased, but maybe with the help of DIDs I can do it, right ? (oh, I have an idea ^^) ...

Am I looking in the right direction ?

[williamconley]

Ya lost me. You bill your prospects for hold time? (I wish *I* could bill my prospects ...)

[mflorell]

Yes, please explain the mechanics of how this would work.

As for busying out calls at the DID level before going into a queue that is busy, I'm sure it could be done, and I think there is already a ticket for this in the Issue Tracker, but we have several other unfunded projects that are much more popular than this so it most likely will not happen any time soon.

[ronator]

well, your first sentence calmed me down. If you got something like that in your pipeline, I won't bother you anymore :)
On the other hand, I even know that when I ask, what you need to get the project founded, you will ask me what I can provide ;-)

[Michael_N]

How would you do that?

The call is billed from the phonecompany when it is answered.

I thinks it a good idea, it will make callcenters shapen up, by hirering more people so that you dont have to wait that much when you call them.

[Michael_N]

Ya lost me. You bill your prospects for hold time? (I wish *I* could bill my prospects ...)

You are billed per minute when you make a call in europe and when the line is answered, and that is done by the phonecompany.

[williamconley]

correct. but i can't charge a prospect for that. lol. they aren't customers yet. and they get charged for the product i'm selling them, not for the phone call from me to them. i'm trying to figure out who is getting billed...

are we charging the agents for the minutes?

are we avoiding fees by rejecting calls if the queue is full?