One Ringee-Dingee
Ya gotta wonder what we’d be paying for long distance phone calls if MCI, AT&T, Sprint, and the ten-ten yahoos didn’t spend sooooo much on advertising their rate wars. It’d be somewhere in the neighborhood of three cents a minute. Everyone would be on the phone all the time. How precious!
One of the great things about our country is that people think that television is free. They watch these long distance ads go by, sometimes back to back. Then the phone rings and its one of these telephone behemoths suggesting that the customer switch over to their system. And usually offering a bribe.
AT&T must have been outta their minds, but twice they have sent me checks for a hundred dollars to switch over. MCI offered ten thousand frequent flyer miles on American once. Deciding I wanted the miles, I switched over to MCI. Never again. When I had completed my obligation and switched away to Sprint for a better price, I was glad to leave MCI in my dust. Two months later, I got a second final bill from them, for 97-cents.
Now think about this, does it really make sense to send a bill for less than a dollar to a former customer whom you’re probably gonna try to get back? I don’t think so. There’s the cost of the billing, the paper, the envelope, and the postage. And my ire.
I called MCI to ask what gives. It took three calls to reach them. I raised this politely with the young woman to whom I finally got through. She admitted that it is so bad at MCI that she doesn’t call herself, but talks to people in person. She also said that other people there had complained internally, but no one would do anything about it. This is a telephone company.
MCI is not alone in this. For four months after I left the Bay Area and wasn’t using Cellular One, they were still sending me a three-page invoice with a 72-cent credit. I wrote to the CEO and asked if this made sense to her. She never responded, but they stopped sending the invoices. Too busy to send a thank-you note, I guess.
Something doesn’t smell right about these companies becoming too big to get it right. Surely you can program your computer to stop sending invoices for items under a dollar, a second time. Surely, if you know what you’re doing. I think it was someone in the Carter Administration who during budget talks with Congress said, A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.
And that’s SetonnoteS...I’m Tony Seton.
[Home]
SetonnoteS