Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request
From: gmc@mvuxr.att.com (Glenn M Cooley)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: Changing to MCI Long Distance
Message-ID: <5169@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 13 Mar 90 16:47:16 GMT
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 173, Message 8 of 12


>I called MCI yesterday to switch my service over to them.
>They told me that I'd have to call my New England Telephone Business
>office also, because "the local phone companies don't believe us 

What has been happening is that TELCOs hire telemarketing firms to
harass, I mean call, people at dinner time and ask if they want to
switch.  These firms get paid on commission and so MAGICALLY, the
TELCOs were told of many people who wanted to switch but didn't.

NETCO, my local TELCO, also does this (and who out there thinks
they're squeaky clean?) and started charging me for added services
(e.g. call waiting) which I never ordered. They insisted that I just
must have said yes in such a call (or it just must have been my wife)
because this service could not have been supplied otherwise. After
further argument, they canceled the service and credited me the
overcharges (do TELCOs hire people who see arguing as a fringe benefit
or are they trained to never, never, never, give in before 20 minutes
are up) still maintaining that this just could not happen and that
mine was the only case they had ever encountered.

Some two years later I read in TIME about this WIDESPREAD problem
which was a COMMON occurrance for up to 50% of the orders relayed by
the telemarketers.