MCI = Fucktards
Posted June 26th, 2003 @ 07:51pm by Erik J. Barzeski
Read the MCI Backstory here.
Last Friday, a collection agency called me to attempt to collect on $158.89 they say I owed MCI. I paid because I take my credit rating very seriously, then immediately called MCI because the amount jogged my memory. The backstory tells me why - I'd effectively paid off someone else's account. MCI had not fixed the problem.
I called MCI again. I explained myself again. They said someone would call me back within six days. That's today. It's 7:50pm and nobody's called.
I've called twice, and they haven't got a clue what's going on. I got a call from MCI attempting to collect the $62 balance on my actual account - the account that's paid automatically from my VISA card every month.
MCI = Fucktards. As soon as I can get my money back, and a few months of free service, I'm done with them.
Donate Life
Posted 27 Jun 2003 at 12:12am #
I recommend never paying collection agencies. They are vampires. Hateful vampires! Plus, they'll do anyone's dirty work. Hell, I could call up a collection agency, claim I was some company and that you owed me 10 bucks, and they'd call you every damn day, send you nasty letters, and ruin your credit rating. Sending a collection agency on someone is like running them down with a bunch of ravenous dogs. Once you let go of the leash, they won't calm down till they've had their fill of man flesh.
Anyway, back to the point... Don't ever pay them. If they say you owe money, and you don't remember stiffing some company, then get the amount and details, and call the company! If you distinctly remember not paying that one phone bill because you needed to pay rent first, then go ahead and pay, but if there is any question at all, check the facts first. Now that you've paid, it will be MUCH harder to fix the problem. Their payment systems are like backward-pointing shark's teeth. Its easy to go down, but very difficult to come back up again.
I had an old ISP call a collection agency on me to try to get me to pay for 4 months of internet service I hadn't ordered. They claimed that I had used their service for 4 months without paying over a year prior. But I wasn't even living in that state at the time, and I had cancelled the account when I left. They were just a bunch of fuckheads and didn't actually shut off my service.
As soon as the collection agency called, I got the details, and called the ISP back, pissed as hell. Once they realized the problem, they said they would call off the dogs, but the collection agency continued to call and send me nasty letters. It took several more calls, to the ISP and the collection agency, to get things straightened out, while in the meantime, I was denied a small loan because my credit rating was marred (which lasted until the next financial quarter, because most major credit agencies update quarterly).
I'm sorry you had to deal with the agency, and I hope that the situation gets recified for you!
Posted 29 Jun 2003 at 12:07am #
uhmm, about "fucktards"
well, I hate mci. I hate my isp (sbcglobal). but you know, "fuck" has to do with sex. sex is good. sex is something i want more of in my life.
how then did it get to be a word of disparagement, of hate, of "get this ugly mess out of my life?"
oh, and the suffix "tards". Well this has to do with "retards" meaning stupid.
Well, my most beloved person has Down's (is a retard).
so how about instead of using "fucktards" we just all say
criminally stupid
or
malignantly shortsighted
or even
chronically insight-challenged
[oh, I don't have my own URL yet, or I'd give it to you all.]
Posted 10 Jul 2003 at 2:59pm #
You should learn that it is totally impossible for a collection agency to collect a debt without breaking the law and violating your rights. You should also learn how to make them pay the bill they were trying to collect and take it off your credit reports too. That's what they get for not obeying the law.
Creditwrench.com
My message board
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Posted 20 Aug 2003 at 2:09pm #
On May 13 the whole thing started. It continued on through June 26. Hopefully, as promised today, within 14 days I will receive a refund...
Posted 28 Oct 2003 at 10:05am #
It seems the MCI neighborhood is good one in which to get mugged.
Watch for this one - it is a new twist on telephone cramming:
I know this happened because I read the letters and saw the phone bills in question. I even helped write a letter to try to get it resolved without a lawsuit - which my friend is neither rich nor brave enough to pursue.
Take one phone customer who was fed up with MCI changing his plan and boosting their charges without his permission. Let's change his name to Charles. Charles dumped MCI and went with a small long distance provider who offered an easy to understand plan with no hidden charges - unlike MCI. The next four weeks became a circus of calls to each of the numbers Charles used for his home and studio. The MCI strong arm marketing team went into overdrive - offers of free minutes every month for a year, a guarantee of pennies a minute on every call, his own 800 number, reimbursement for changing service and so on for hours.
Charles is a polite older gentleman who didn't know there were laws about telemarketing, even back a couple of years ago when this took place. He would try to get them off the phone by saying such logical things as, "If you can charge me only five cents a minute now, why were you charging me fifteen cents a minute for the last three years when I was a customer?" and, "I'd like to try my new service for a few months and see how it works out."
The calls continued. Often two or three calls in a day and almost always a call just as Charles was sitting down to say grace with his family in the evening. Finally even mild mannered Charles had had enough, "Stop calling me! I don't want anyone from your company to call me."
MCI called again the next night and he repeated the message in even more forceful terms. He recalls stating that he did not want anyone connected with MCI in anyway, shape or form (I know Charles and he speaks like that) to ever call him again about anything on any phone line in the world.
They stopped for some months. Until suddenly he got a bill from his local phone company that included hundreds of dollars billed to.... MCI!
Now here comes the sting so watch carefully -
Charles spoke to an MCI customer service representative and they told him the bill was an error and they would issue a credit. When his next phone bill turned up, the amount was still listed and he was being billed a late fee for not paying. Charles called his local phone company, the people who issued the bill for all his services, and he explained what had happened. They took the late charge off his bill.
The next month - the same thing. Another late charge for not paying MCI's erroneous bill and no credit issued. Charles called his local phone service and they again took off the late fee. They also suggested he call MCI again to encourage them to hurry up in issuing the credit. He called. The MCI operator told him there was no phone number to speak to anyone about credits and he could only communicate with them by mail. A phone company with no phones? That would have started some alarm bells for me but Charles was far more trusting. He wrote to MCI several times in the following weeks and they never once replied.
When the local company sent his next bill, it included a notice that they would disconnect his phone if he didn't pay the full amount within ten days. Charles called his local company and they told him that they could only give three months grace waiting for a credit from another service provider and that he had never complained about the bill in writing to them during the sixty days after the first bill. Rules are rules. No exceptions. Blah blah blah.
Charles paid. He needed his phone. But he is older and wiser - and has checked on his rights. It turns out that MCI must have committed a crime because either:
1. In order to bill for the services MCI claimed on his bill, they must have called to get his permission. This would be a $500 fine for violating his demand that they never call again.
or
2. They lied on his bill which is fraud.
The simple lessons of this true story are that MCI are not to be trusted, permeated as they are with accounting fraud. And if you get a phone bill for MCI services you didn't order - don't believe them when they say they will remove it from future bills as an error.
They lie.
A lot.
Posted 13 Dec 2003 at 5:44pm #
bunch if crap. simply a bunch of crap. i happen to work for mci e-customer servive (e-mail). there is a number to obtain credits: 1-800-444-3333 (for ld), 1-888-624-5622 (1-888-MCI-LOCAL for local). these numbers are available on the mci website (www.mci.com), as is a link to contact mci customer service via e-mail.
to stop mci marketing calls, one simply has to request to be added to the do not call list (fed or mci), the calls will stop within 10 days and cease for 5 years or more.
as far as the other issues, sounds more like a personal problem.
Posted 13 Dec 2003 at 7:14pm #
Not a bunch of crap, jeremy. I still have not received my credit. Two days ago I cancelled my MCI account.
Posted 19 Jan 2004 at 10:14pm #
I have tried, on 3 different occasions, to cancel my MCI long distance. I have been told that the only way to cancel the long distance is to have another phone carrier call to cancel for me. In these days of call 1877xxxxxxx for .03/min calls and cell phones, I do not necessarily need to have another long distance option. I fail to understand if I can order the service, why I cannot cancel the service. I do not see how it can be legal to mandate that another telephone company call in my behalf. Are we to understand that we are too ignorant to understand that we may no longer have long distance coverage at all? Is this not our choice?
I am not concerned about a refund. What completely and totally infuriates me is that I cannot call to cancel a service on my own. Why do I need to rely on another phone company to do this in my behalf. Now, I have to wait on hold for one phone company, tell them I want to cancel. Then I have to hold and get transferred around to tell the other phone company to call the 1st phone company to cancel. Then I have to wait to see if this was successfully completed. I am confident this will not be completed, and the following month, I will pay another $70 and waste another hour calling phone companies. And MCI just keeps billing....
I feel that as a consumer we should have the right to cancel the service, there is no contract that I signed, why am I hostage to MCI. Why do they have the right to steal $70/mo from me - not to mention the time and aggravation.
Posted 01 Feb 2004 at 2:02am #
Brenda...I'm an MCI customer service rep. Let me explain in precise detail the reasons why MCI cannot just instantly "cancel" your long distance service when you call in. Bear with me. When you make a long distance call from your home, it goes to the switching office at your local phone company (like Verizon, Qwest, SBC, BellSouth, or whoever does your dial tone and call waiting and local calls and such). From there, the local phone company hands off the call to the network of your long distance carrier of your choice, like MCI, Sprint, or AT&T. The long distance carrier sends the call down its network until it reaches the local phone company's switching station in the city of the person you're calling, and the local phone company delivers it to that person's phone, and it rings. This is because the local phone companies do not carry long distance calls; they have to have an LD carrier like MCI connect these calls from point A to point B. Anyway, the point is that it is your local phone company that routes your long distance calls to your long distance carrier. If you don't want MCI anymore, you have to have your local phone company change the routing *away* from MCI and *to* the new long distance carrier of your choice. If you don't do this, or you don't have the local company establish a "toll block" if you don't want a long distance carrier, then any long distance call made off your phone is going to be handed off by your local company either to MCI or to another long distance carrier randomly. Keep in mind that "long distance" includes what is known as "intralata" calls, also known as "local toll" or "regional toll" or "short long distance"--it's very easy to accidentally place that kind of a call because it's a call to somewhere just outside the local area defined by the front of your phone book. For some people in some areas that can only be a few miles away for that kind of call. If this happens and you don't have an account with a long distance carrier, and your calls go over the long distance carrier's network, you will be charged what are known as "casual" or "random" rates, and these are *very* unfavorable, as in well more than a dollar (or much more) per minute. The reason MCI refers you to your local phone company or your new long distance carrier is that MCI does not want you to face the risk of getting these casual or random charges. Only your new long distance carrier can send a "Letter of Authorization" after *you* place an order with them (although this is done by magnetic tape) to your local phone company changing your "pic" from MCI to your new carrier, and if you don't want a LD carrier, then only *you* can legally call your LEC and establish a toll block so that you have no long distance. MCI is required by the Federal Communications Commission to make sure that your new "pic" is verified--we have to do everything we can to reasonably ensure you don't get charged random or casual rates. If an MCI rep just "cancels" the account you have on his screen, he is subject to disciplinary action since he'd end up subjecting you to the possibility of higher rates and surcharges. MCI and MCI reps can't cancel anything except your account file or records--that does nothing to stop your calls from coming over the MCI network if your local phone company sends them, and your local phone company *will* send those calls unless you have selected another carrier or a toll block, since the equipment at the local company has to hand off long distance calls somewhere, since as I mentioned earlier they can't carry the calls themselves. We have to make sure you've contacted your local phone company or new carrier to establish service, and we're supposed to offer you the phone number of your local phone company so that you can make sure this happens. I also routinely tell the customers the test numbers they can dial to make sure their calls are being routed correctly by their local phone companies--these are 1-700-555-4141 and 1-(your area code)-700-4141. They're free calls that give you a recording that tells you what's happening with your calls. If you're with a LD carrier, it'll say "thank you for using XYZ company," and if you have no carrier, then it'll give you a busy signal or an error message of some soert. At any rate, I know this can be confusing and inconvenient, I didn't know these things myself until I began working at MCI. Trust me, we know customers call in with issues and we aren't doing this just to make you angrier--keep in mind it's in our interest to make this as smooth as we can, since we want your business back in the future. The things I've described above are not unique to MCI, this is just the way the phone system works no matter what carrier you're with. I've noticed a lot of people think that things can happen with the flip of a switch, and customers tell me "we're in the computer age"--I wish. MCI has these call flows and procedures in place for your protection. Here's why: we'd much rather have you call your new carrier or your local phone company to make sure you've been correctly changed away from MCI--it's much better than just leaving it to chance and then having you call back in a month later to MCI with $300 worth of random charges on your bill after your local company continues to send your calls to us with no active account for you on file. Credit is often denied for those random charges because at that point we've already advised and warned the customer several times--on the phone, on the cancel VRU automated system if you tell us you already contacted your new carrier or local phone company, plus in a letter you receive after you've canceled. We really do stand on our heads and scream up and down to make sure customers know they need to make sure they've been changed at the local phone company to their new carrier, or that they have placed a toll block on the line.
Posted 25 Mar 2004 at 6:10pm #
I have my own MCI story. Don't even get me started with the AT&T story that got me to MCI. Thankfully, we have a plan we've been very happy with through Acceris Communications - I found them through LowerMyBills.com
Anyway, I decide in April of last year that I want to save some money, and switch my service from MCI to Acceris. The vast majority of our long distance calls are to my husband's parents in Europe, so for 8 months, everything was fine - or so I thought. I had made a few out of state long distance calls - everything fine there. Then I made a local long distance call in October. It went through, no problem. Two months later in December, I go to make another local long distance call, and get "The number you are calling cannot be reached..." or some odd message.
Hmm, that's strange, I think. I double and triple check the number - everything ok. I call my local phone company - who tells me that they have no idea why I cannot make a call, and to call my long distance carrier. So, I call Acceris and talk to a very nice guy, who says everything is fine with my account - he has no clue what is going on. He conferences me back with my local carrier, and we discover that MCI has placed a freeze on my local long distance account. Huh??? I haven't had them since April! So, my local company tells me to call MCI. I get voice mail, of course. I leave a message explaining the situation and telling them I'd like a call back, and that my long distance carrier is Acceris and has been since April. I never received a call back from anyone at MCI. A day or so passes and my local long distance works fine, so I figure everything is fixed, right? Wrong! At the end of January I get a BILL from MCI for $21.12 for a 15 minute phone call I made in October. Three months later??? Hmmm......
I suspect that call had slipped into oblivion somewhere until I called on 12/30 about the freeze on my account. Someone realized in retrospect that they messed up and figured they'd send me a bill for it.
I've tried to call them several times, but their hours are extremely inconvenient. By the time I can get to it, seems its always after 2pm here, and all I get is voice mail since they close at 5pm Eastern. I've tried messages, and it seems they don't return calls. You know, I used to work for a company with a large call center. Our CSRs worked staggering shifts from 6am to 7pm to allow for good customer service for everyone ranging from the East Coast to Hawaii. Maybe MCI should consider ways they can improve customer service. They might retain a few accounts that way.
I'll hopefully be able to call in the AM and post a follow-up.
Posted 21 Apr 2004 at 2:05am #
I have to post something, just for the heck of it. I too work for MCI, and today we announced emergence from bankruptcy, dumping about $35 Billion (give or take) in debt.
People are going to complain, no matter who they have. Do a search for "I hate AT&T" or "I hate Sprint" to see the truth of this. I hear first hand from people every day how other companies screwed them, and why they are switching to MCI.
Don't get me wrong, we're no angels ourselves.
I have to call our financial division all the time about 'misapplied' payments. This basically happens when you send a check to MCI, we cash it and add it to our account, but for whatever reason, never reflect on you phone record that you made the payment.
I also am 1 of about 7 persons (out of a 500 person center) who work to correct billing errors. I've seen accounts bill charges monthly for up to a year after the account was cancelled. And we're talking new, current charges on an account that is COMPLETELY cancelled and not generating any charges. Go figure.
I hate to say it, but NO ONE has the market on hating MCI like it's own employees do! 3 weeks ago, we announced the closing of 5 different call centers in the US. And, coming soon, we'll be opening a new one....in Argentina.
Since going to work for MCI, I have learned the value of carefully examing all of my bills I receive monthly. I read all the fine print, and don't hesitate to call with questions or ask for promotions. I've received free months of cable service, phone service, cut insurance rates, etc. About the only bill I cannot change is Power/Gas, because there is no alternative to them.
Be a wise consumer, be a responsible consumer, and shop around for the best rate.
Posted 29 Aug 2004 at 12:06pm #
One of the best way to protect from callecting agencies calling you is to have pre-paid long distance accounts. In this way you will only use long distance to the amount you prepay that can be as little as $10. It works quite well. Rates are usually lower than post-paid long distance. The drawback is you have to dial few more digits.
Posted 22 Nov 2004 at 8:54pm #
Here's another story from the MCI Hall of Shame.
MCI runs a little thing called IP-Relay, which is an online service for the deaf that is accessed through http://www.ip-relay.com
It is funded by a tax on the end of everyone's phone bill. The deaf and hard of hearing get to use it for 100 percent free. That includes all US numbers long distance or otherwise. They used to allow free international calling but no longer do so.
But not only the deaf use the system. Fraud artists from Nigeria use it to steal billions of dollars from American businesses. If a relay operator catches on to this and reports it, that operator will be fired the instant he or she is caught. MCI bills $1.36 per minute for these calls and collect from the Americans with Disabilities Act fund. They are robbing disabled people blind.
MCI knows about this problem and has known about it for a couple of years. They refuse to do anything about it, and continually threaten relay operators with termination (and worse) if they come forward or tip off the potential victims (or God forbid, the press.)
I know...they did it to me.
Posted 20 Jan 2005 at 11:08pm #
All i gotta say is MCI sucks ballz, so does SBC and so does Comcast. And why u ask, simply for one reason.
Its called monopolization. All part of the business and they dont care what happens to the few customers that get left behind.