Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!know!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!mips!pacbell.com!decwrl!hayes.fai.alaska.edu!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request From: john@bovine.ati.com (John Higdon) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Call-Screening Device About to Hit the Market Message-ID: <12123@accuvax.nwu.edu> Date: 13 Sep 90 06:49:24 GMT Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu Reply-To: John Higdon Organization: Green Hills and Cows Lines: 59 Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 643, Message 4 of 8 "Glenn R. Stone" writes: > Just another satisfied MCI customer. Well, OK, since we have been whacking Sprint lately, thought I'd share a little goodie: --------------- AT&T NEWS BRIEFS [All items are today's date unless otherwise noted] Wednesday, September 12, 1990 SLAM DUNK -- ... Last spring, ... arthritic, 83-year-old widow [Margaret Olt] became another casualty of the long-distance industry's battle for customers. A telemarketer called Mrs. Olt at home. All he wanted, he said, was to save her some money on her long-distance phone calls by switching her service to MCI from AT&T. Annoyed ... Mrs. Olt says she hung up on him. But when her next phone bill arrived, ... it showed a $5 charge from "some outfit called the MCI." In phone industry parlance, Mrs. Olt had just been "slammed." She thus joined tens of thousands of telephone customers around the nation who claim their phone service has been switched without their consent. ... MCI denies that it would slam a customer and [contends] that ... it received oral approval for service from Mrs. Olt. ... Last year, in any case, at least 100,000 phone customers complained to their local phone companies that their long-distance carrier had been switched without authorization. ... AT&T says slamming is costing it millions of dollars, not only in lost revenues, but also for processing complaints from consumers who still think AT&T runs the nation's phone system. ... "It reached a crisis stage in 1989," says Merrill Tutton, vp of consumer services at AT&T. Mr. Tutton says the biggest culprits are ... MCI and companies that help sell its service. ... In the current fiscal year, complaints to [the FCC] so far total: MCI, 387; Sprint, 194, and AT&T, 22. ... MCI says it is capturing about 100,000 AT&T customers a week. But Mr. Tutton says that when AT&T asks its former customers why they left, more than 20 percent of those contacted say they didn't know that they had given up AT&T service. ... The FCC is reviewing a request from AT&T that would require written authorizations from customers before any service changes. ... Wall Street Journal, A1. ------------------- So how 'bout it? From all accounts MCI does seem to be the slamming king. I have, on several occasions, had to "clean off" MCI as the default carrier on some of my clients' trunks. Associates of mine report the same. So while Sprint is exhorting potential customers to switch from AT&T, MCI is doing it for them whether they like it or not. What a slimepit! John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 723 1395 john@bovine.ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o !