Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1992 01:55:12 GMT
From: Rolando Vinluan <rvinluan@cs.cornell.EDU>
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: Bad Connection to MCI
Organization: Cornell Univ. CS Dept, Ithaca NY 14853
X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu
X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu
X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 12, Issue 692, Message 2 of 8

sullivan@riemann.geom.umn.edu (John M. Sullivan) writes:

> A friend of mine just moved to a new apartment yesterday, here in
> Minneapolis.  Her phone was connected by US West on schedule.  She had
> requested MCI Dial-1 service, and had told MCI about her new number so
> that her account billing and F+F circle, etc would be transferred
> over.

> But she couldn't dial 1 + area + number yesterday.  I suggested trying
> 10222 + 1 + area + number, but this behaved exactly the same way.
> After a ring or two, we heard the message "Your call cannot be
> completed as dialed.  Please check the number and dial again.  2EB"
> (no doo-wee-dee tones at the beginning). This same message was heard
> when dialing 1-700-555-4141.  I then tried placing a long distance
> call with ATT (10288) and Sprint (10333).  Both of these worked fine.

> Does anyone out there know what's going on here?

	I don't exactly what was wrong in your case (though I have a
suspicion) but I have a similar experience (horror story, IMO):

	I switched to MCI last May. I do a lot of long-distance calls,
and they were cheaper, though their international lines suck compared
to AT&T.

	Last July, I was out of the country for the whole month. When
I got back early August, I found my long-distance wouldn't work!  My
NYT phone bill wasn't due till a couple of days from the time I got
there, but evidently, they thought I couldn't pay and cut off my line!
Which is pretty strange to me ... because here I am giving them a LOT
of business, and then they cut me off. I pay my bill that week, and I
expect them to get it on back. No dice. 1022 doesn't work, even asking
NYT to get me MCI doesn't work -- nothing works.

        I get almost the same message you got, but with a "2CY." I
call Customer Service. They say there's no problem with my account,
and we try to call NYT to get a three-way connection, but it's the
start of the schoolyear and we can't get through. The operator says
she'll put my problem in and handle it. I wait a week ... it's still
dead. I call NYT (up to now, I thought it was their problem), and they
say their's nothing wrong with my account at their end, it's MCI's
problem.  I call MCI again, and the operator says my account is okay,
so he'll make a "Trouble report" or whatever on it right away.

After three days, still no long distance. By this time, I really
would've switched to AT&T, if only switching didn't take so long -- I
needed it by next week, you see. So, I call MCI again, and FINALLY the
operator tells me that "oh, there's a block on your line" EVEN when I
paid them over three weeks ago AND I'd kept asking them the previous
times to double-check this fact. She says, it's gonna be turned on in
48 hours. It was turned on in 72 hours.

	MCI is pretty incompetent, in my experience. If they didn't
have that Northwest tie-up, I'd never have gotten them. As soon as
AT&T starts offering a competitive Frequent-Flyer program (their
current one is still lousy), I'll definitely switch back.

	Maybe somebody from MCI is listening. Talk to me again when
your company's gotten your act together.

	(Oh, and about that "suspicion": In my first call, when I told
the operator my problem, I guess one of the things that prevented her
from checking out my *real* situation was that she immediately assumed
that my local carrier was USWest. So, I guess a lot of people ended up
in your situation.)


Randy