Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request From: John Higdon Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: MCI Playing "Switcheroo" Message-ID: <3670@accuvax.nwu.edu> Date: 8 Feb 90 06:41:49 GMT Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu Reply-To: John Higdon Organization: TELECOM Digest Lines: 56 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 88, message 1 of 10 Will Martin writes: > As soon as a legal ruling in a couple jurisdictions established this > principle, we'd see those LD companies being *very* careful about > getting written authorization that will hold up in court as legal > documents before doing any carrier-switching! This matter of written authorization is an interesting problem in the Long Distance field. Several years ago I was a principal in a sizeable interconnect business (7th largest in San Jose). Unfortunately, for reasons I won't go into, we were forced to close our doors. The corporation left a number of unpaid bills including a $1,000 WATS bill from AT&T. Some months after the bankruptcy was filed I started getting calls at home from a collection agency in Houston who claimed to be representing AT&T for the purpose of collecting that WATS balance. As I had done with many of the creditors, I referred the gentleman to the bankruptcy attorney. A couple of weeks later, this guy called back and asked when I was going to "clear up" the outstanding balance. Once again, I referred him to the attorney. He then told me that my name was on the account in addition to the business name and that they could come after me, personally, for the money. When I asked him to send me a copy of the contract or personal guarantee that I would have had to sign for that to be the case, he laughed and said, "You know perfectly well that AT&T doesn't have to have any signatures or contracts to collect its money. You can either send a check today, or when we sue you it will cost you much more." I told him to put it where the "sun don't shine" and then called my personal attorney. She said that this was a blatantly transparent scam to try to circumvent the corporate veil by intimidating me, and that she would give the character a call. That was the last I heard about that. But his comment raised an interesting point. We do an awful lot of "telephone" business (contracting for service, etc.) over the phone without benefit of written confirmation. In the case of the WATS, I never even personally had anything to do with the transaction; the general manager or some such would have ordered the lines. There would have been no reason to even mention my name (I was president) since the corporation at that time had sterling credit. How did my name get on the bill? It was probably added after the fact by either AT&T or the collection agency. Principals of corporations are a matter of public record. In view of the potential for abuse in the ordering of service, we may eventually have to have everything confirmed in writing. John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 723 1395 john@bovine.ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o !