MCI VA Correctional, please leave me the fuck alone for one day?

The BBQ Pit
1

I have a landline phone for one reason, so my parents can call me from the UK without paying the high rate to call my cell. The Do Not Call list has worked well for me as a rule, and it seems I miss the majority of the charity begging calls by not getting home until 8 or so most nights.

Recently, however, I have been getting the same call 3 times a day - it is a recorded message from MCI VA Correctional, telling me that some prisoner, whose name I cannot even decipher from the recording of him saying it that they place in the call, wishes to add me to the list of numbers he may dial. I am pretty certain I don’t know this gentleman, and therefore I do not wish to enter into dialogue with him, nor to pay for the privilege of receiving his collect calls.

So the first few times, I hang up. I imagine the calls will stop. They don’t. Every single day. A call at 9. One in the middle of the afternoon. One at 8.30 or so. So I crack, and go through the whole message, pressing all the buttons required, and finally get to the stage where I have rejected any future calls from this individual, and indeed from anyone served by MCI VA Correctional.

But the calls don’t stop. 4 times I have spent the 5 minutes or so going through your bogus menu, and still the calls come. Every day, without fail.

Now this is driving me crazy over the holidays, as I am working from home. And when I don’t go into the office, I tend not to go to sleep until 4 am or so. And every morning at 9, the phone wakes me.

Finally, after much searching, I find a web site for the company, or the parent company. But of course, there is no email contact address there. I spend two hours calling the various numbers they have listed, reaching dead end menus, before finally I get through to a person. Person tells me if I had followed the menus, I would not be getting calls any more. I tell person that really isn’t the case, but would she please block my number. Person tells me I should follow the menus. I at this point ask to speak to her supervisor. She tells me there is no supervisor there, but she will put my number on the block list. I then ask for a mailing address for the company, which she refuses to give me and hangs up.

Still, I am now blocked. Except I am not. The calls continue for days. Saturday I call back again, and this time get a reasonably polite person there. She apologizes, to my shock, and offers to block my number. When she goes into the system, she tells me that no block has been put on it.

Fingers crossed, I am now properly blocked. I have no faith in this, because I got my regulation three calls yesterday, but I guess that the blocking could take time to register. If I get home today and the caller ID shows I have been contacted this morning, I may have to go on a rampage of sorts.

2

why don’t you just give the convict the go-ahead? when (s)he calls, you’ll learn the name and can either tell them to piss off or take further action (cause now you’e got a name)

and who knows, maybe it’s an old friend who wants to tell where he stashed the money from the heist.

3

I am pretty certain I have to pay for the calls the person makes to me. And looking at their rates, I think that might be a bad fiscal decision.

4

Collect calls from the Virginia correctional system cost a fucking fortune. The state gets a cut of something like 35% of the total cost of the call, plus there are the costs of equipment, etc. that someone has to pay for, and those someones are the families and friends of inmates.

It seems that the contract has moved from MCI to an outfit called Global Tel*Link. Their website is here. You’ll want to call them from your land line if they can block your number that way. As always, get names and times that you call.

Alternatively, you can always try to contact someone with the VA Department of Corrections.

Robin

5

That’s the clown outfit I spent the whole time dealing with, MsRobyn. I hope it has finally worked, but I have no faith. I also am very mistrustful of an organization that hides its snail mail address so much.

Thanks for confirming that I am dealing with the right organization, though…

6

If dealing with Global Tel*Link doesn’t work (and I’d give it a few days), I’d contact the VA Department of Corrections in Richmond. I’ll PM their info.

Robin

7

I did a bit of digging around and their physical addressis 2609
Cameron Street, Mobile, Alabama 36607.

Their corporate address is
Corporate Office
12021 Sunset Hills Road
Suite 100
Reston, VA 20190

It might be worth it to write the Corporate office a letter if you keep getting calls.

8

villa, check your PMs.

Robin

9

I think you should just go ballistic, get yourself incarcerated, investigate the caller on your own, shiv him, wait out the end of your sentence, and be done with it.

10

Thanks so much - this will be my next stop if they don’t just go away!

11

One other thing I thought about is getting in touch with one of the prison family support groups. They may have an established point of contact with the company that will let you bypass the customer-service area entirely.

Here is the Family Guide I referred to earlier. There are listings in the back for the various support groups. CURE, in particular, seems to have had issues with the phone arrangement in the past, so they may be able to help.

Robin

12

I second this fabulous idea.

13

That’s one way to ride out a shitty economy. :wink:

Robin

14

I have also been feeling a degree of guilt about this - the guy probably is sat in prison wondering why his family won’t let him call. Hopefully the family support groups will have a way of getting in touch with the person if I can glean a little more information from the recorded message (if it comes again).

15

It will probably also be more efficient than the “official” process in solving the problem.

16

The prison probably entered the wrong number in the system even though the guy gave them the correct one.

17

I hadn’t thought of that. I do know that there is a call on my caller ID from them at 3 pm, and therefore presumably one from 9 am.

18

You’re in a cell, and you won’t even take a call from a fellow prisoner? Yeesh! :smiley:

19

Send it registered, or require a signature somehow. You might also note that your first attempts at getting your number blocked by following the menu were unsuccessful, and that your attempt to resolve the problem by talking to a live person was also met with resistance. And that you can’t make out the name of the guy who wants to add your number to his calling list.

I think that you can have your phone company block calls from a certain number, too.

20

I don’t think it’s always the same number, though, so unless villa has a list of numbers, he’s going to have to block them one at a time, which is a PITA.

Robin