[FreeLibertarian]

I had an encounter with the collections department of MCI and later with a collections agency that I found to be remarkable.

I was scammed by MCI on my small business account. They called and offered a low rate, about 7 cents per minute, and several calling cards with $50 of free time. The cards arrived and were distributed to employees. When the first bill arrived the amount due was several hundred dollars more than we had been paying to our previous carrier.

I called their customer support line and was told that I must have misunderstood, that they had never offered any free calling cards and that the cards we had received were regular calling cards and the rate for using the cards was $1.00 per minute. I demanded to talk to a supervisor and was refused, they gave me another number to call about complaints. The new number was a answered by a voicemail that instructed me to leave my name and account number and to send a fax with my complaint. I did both but it was a waste of time. I immediately changed carriers to Qwest.

Several weeks went by before I heard anything back from MCI. In the mean time I had received a new bill from MCI that had doubled the original overcharged amount. They were now trying to overcharge me more than $400.00 for one months service. The person who called said that the amount was correct but that he would deduct $50.00 from the amount due if I would pay the bill immediately. I offered to pay the amount that Qwest had charged me for the same amount of time minus the free $50.00 calling cards, The MCI supervisor refused and said they would turn it over to a collection agency. I told him to go to he!!.

About a month later I received another bill from MCI and they had doubled the amount due again. Now they were overcharging me more than $1000.00 for one months service.

Eventually an agent with a collection agency began calling, I explained the scam to her and told her I would only pay the amount I actually owed and that I would document the amount owed by sending her copies of my bills for the months previous to and following the one months service from MCI. She would not accept this settlement. She insisted on receiving payment for more than $1,200. I explained that the actual amount due was about $25.00 and that she could call everyday if she wanted but that I was not going to pay more than the amount I owed.

She continued to call daily for about two weeks, each day she insisted that MCI was a reptuable company and that I must pay the $1,200. I told her that MCI was committing fraud and she was contributing to that fraud and that I wasn't going to play their game. She said that they would continue to call until the bill was paid. I laughed and explained that trying to out stubborn me wouldn't work, by this time I was beginning to enjoy the daily exchanges. (Yes, I know I'm strange but I have a stubborn streak a mile wide and enjoy arguing)

She quit calling on the day that MCI/Worldcom was charged with accounting fraud and I've never heard another word out of her or MCI. MCI is just a corporate con-artist.

[Axenolith]

The funniest part of that story is the fact that they probably carried your "overdue" amount, and similar quantities from thousands of others as "current accounts recievable" on their books and then borrowed against it on revolving credit lines!

I worked at a place a while back where one of the district managers was booking proposal numbers as revenue. This stuff works for maybe a year or so at best (longer when the whole company is involved) but when the gig's up, the cows come home to roost!

[from occupied ga]

MCI was sleazy before worldcom and Bernie Ebbers took it over, but after they set new records. I had acquaintenances who worked as contractors, and the first thing when Bernie took over was that they didn't get paid until 90 days or more after sending their invoices (I doubt Bernie's check was ever late) The next thing they did was stick them for a couple of month's back pay when MCI filed bankruptcy - some of them were out $30k - $45k and several months of work that they never got paid for.

[activationproducts]

An intersting MCI related story. A couple of years ago my brother and I had MCI as our long distance provider. Within a few months we had switched back to AT&T.

A year or so after cancelling with MCI we received an invoice for $1.00. We decided to ignore it as we felt they had been paid in full. The $1.00 invoice was not itemized. I really felt that it was some sort of accounting scheme to generate a "sale" thus improving their pathetic stock price.

They would call and try and collect on the $1.00 invoice. I would act like an idiot just to keep them on the phone for at least 15 minutes.

In the end they credited the invoice as they could not explain what it was for. I must say that I really got a kick out of their having to spend what was surely more than $1.00 on closing this invoice.