I canceled my MCI accounts years ago. Every month they send me a bill for $0.00. At first I tried to contact them, but was put on hold, so I never bothered again. Now the latest bill for $0.00 has a note saying that starting March 1, they will charge you $5.99 per month minimum. What is the deal here? How do I get them to understand I do not have an account with them. I called their 800 number but have been on hold for about 30 minutes and am getting angry.
I’ve often wondered about putting a typed-up note or letter in their payment envelope indicating just this. “Look, I do not have an account with you. If you want any money out of me, call me at home at (878) 555-TRIP.”
It’s not illegal, and hell, sometimes they’ve already paid for the postage (pre-paid business reply). Anybody ever done it?
Conversely, do they have ‘automatic’ bill payers that would just toss it aside? Or do they actually have humans doing the letter opening?
Tripler
Curious minds abound.
All of my bills have instructions not to send correspondence with the payment. Calling in may be the only option.
Are you calling the “billing questions” line or the “member services” (or whatever) line? I bet you’ll get through quicker on the latter, and then they can tell you what they seem to think your membership status is. Then they might be able to transfer you to level 2 billing or whatever the appropriate escalation would be.
FYI, the Gethuman.com database says to call 888‑624‑5622 and then to press 2 at each prompt, ignoring the messages to get an actual person on the phone.
Having worked in the past at a company that handles payments by check, I’ll state that MCI almost certainly contracts this out to a different company, probably one that processes payments for several different places. Anything that’s not a bill stub or a check, I wouldn’t bet money on it reaching anyone that matters.
I suggest you file a complaint with the appropriate agency. If it’s wireless service, that would probably be the FCC. If it’s landline service, it might be your state utility board. Believe it or not, these agencies are often very helpful when consumers complain.
You can usually file the complaint over the internet.
You should be so lucky. MCI wants to charge me $5 a month for the luxury of having a bill (online or paper, doesn’t matter)
I had a similar problem with AT&T. I resolved it by calling the customer service line.
The first three calls, each with a nearly interminable wait on hold, resulted in Catch-22: “What is your account number?” “I don’t have an account with AT&T, and yet I am receiving bills. Here is my phone #.” “You don’t have an account with us.” “Yes, I know, and yet you are billing me.” “That’s not possible.” “I have the bill in my hand!” “What is your account number?”
The fourth call, the clever woman at the end figured out that there was a typo in their system. By searching on my name she was able to pull up an account number, with a phone number that nearly matched the one I was using.
So: I suggest calling customer service, but stock up on patience.
Send them a check for $0.00.
That ought to take care of it.
MCI is scum. They billed me for a call, even though I had absolutely no connection with them. Customer service was unhelpful, and when I asked to talk to a supervisor, they gave me this story that billing was in a facility in Kansas. I asked for the phone number. They told me there was none. At all. Not just that they couldn’t give it out, but that there were absolutely no telephones there.
MCI couldn’t put a phone in their own billing center? :rolleyes: How stupid did they think I was? (Well, maybe they couldn’t afford their own rates.)
In any case, I called my phone carrier and they took the bill off.
But MCI is scum.
OMG, are you Julie Snyder?
I’m not sure what options your using (I’ve never called MCI so I don’t even know what options they have), but I find often times you get through MUCH MUCH faster if you use options that suggest you are a new customer rather then a current customer. It seems like a lot of the time they go to the same people anyways it’s just that they push new customers through faster.
I agree with every fiber of my being.
For my problem with them, I had to get the State Attorney General’s office involved. In my case it was an Internet connection set up using their disk. It called Minneapolis from St. Paul, adjacent cities but different area codes, and they charged me long distance rates. Calls to customer service only got me the response that I was fully responsible for the $400 in calls. After working with the AG office I did get a letter from them saying there was a glitch on their part and that they credited my account. Never any sort of an apology. A few months later I got a bill for $0.00 and a threat that they were sending my account to their collection goons. I sent them the finest ass chewing letter I have ever written and never heard back.
But, be worried about how they deal with you. The $0.00 bill may be because they sent the account for whatever they erroneously think you owe them to the collections agency and zeroed out your account. But, they are looking for the amount sent to collections. Try the number Dewey Finn gave. But, be prepared to escalate it to the State Attorney General.
I thought MCI had died a corporate death, but I guess it was the WorldCom part of it. Pity, ‘cause MCI is scum.
This is interesting. There is always an account number on the bill - what was in that space? Was it blank? If not, why didn’t you just give them that number?
Not as bad off as her, thank the gods, but I was definitely ripped off and lied to. At one point, we switched to MCI for long distance with a promise of a $5 monthly rebate for six months and free 60 minutes of long distance calls. We never got either – no rebate, no free calls. I contacted them about it. They told me they’d give me the $5 credit, and it would take take three months to register it.
I lit into them. It was $5 a month, not $5. And why would it take three months to credit?
They replied:
I said,
That got them to back off a bit:
Note they’re not talking about “three months for it to appear” any more. From “unable to expedite the credit” to “the credit was applied immediately.” Not quite the same thing.
But there was a problem. This was supposed to be a monthly credit for six month. They were only giving me a single $5 credit. So I wrote:
Their reply:
This sounded to me like a canned paragraph, especially since it didn’t address my point. So I replied:
That got action.
So it worked out, but as soon as that six-month requirement ended, I went to Verizon as fast as I could dial. I thought I was done with them until I got that unexpected charge.
Like I said, scum.
Yeah, at least I have an account number. Too bad I can’t find anyone to talk to. Interestingly, you can also set up an internet account. To do so is easy, but they will only send the password by USPS and said it will take 5-7 days to process. How come every other company on the internet can give you essentially instant internet access? This last is mostly a rhetorical question.
It all started years ago when a cold call from MCI promised they could save me like 20 bucks a month on my phone service, and it instantly went up around $25.00. I also once had an MCI wireless account. I canceled it, and they kept sending me monthly bills. I tried to get through to them but was put on hold so I just ignored it. Finally they sent me to collections, so I waited and waited on line. I was told that I they had a record of my cancellation, and then a request to reinstate service. I pointed out that that would be a stupid thing to do, and that I never used the service from the time I cancelled. They said tough luck, I owe them the money and better pay up. After a few bumps up the supervisor level, it was all taken care of, but it did take quite awhile of my time.
Perhaps because they’re the same company now?
It was because they were my local carrier, but I was disputing my long-distance bill, which arrived in the envelope with the local bill but was calculated separately. The account number was based on my phone number:
555-555-5555 1234
which, while correct for local service, indicated I had no long-distance service at all.
Finally, it turned out that a long-distance account had been created for me, but under the fictitious number
555-545-5555 1234
No calls were billed, of course, but I was being billed the monthly service charge.
So their billing system tied the two accounts together, but for some reason they were unable to see that there were two accounts. I’m afraid I don’t really understand why it was so difficult for them.
Contact the Federal Trade Commision: http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/index.shtml
Click on the File a Complaint tab.