dattier@ddsw1.mcs.com (David Tamkin) (09/27/90)
{I don't know how the practice of calling US Sprint's FONcard a
"FO(O)Ncard" got started, but what the heck.}
Until the beginning of 1989 US Sprint was my 1+ carrier. There were
three active fooncardz on my account. Then United Telecommunobfusca-
tion pulled its trickery with the PC Pursuit rate increase and I
switched to Teleconnect, who became Telecom*USA, who got eaten by MCI,
but that's another story.
Just in case I ever wanted to use US Sprint again, I didn't cancel the
account. I stopped using it very suddenly, but it remained open. I
had never even told them that they were no longer my primary carrier;
as long as my phone numbers were in their records to be recognized
when I dialed 10333, that was enough.
My telco here is Central Telephone Company, a subsidiary of Centel
Corporation. Centel started its own IEC called Centel Net, actually a
reseller of US Sprint connections as they freely admitted. CentelNet
mailed an offering of its services to Central Telephone customers, and
I thought, ah, what the heck.
Centel Net didn't do any billing on its own, only through telqi; they
issued me a calling card for each of my numbers as I requested,
insisting that they had to mail them to the exact address that
appeared on Central Telephone's records, and before the cards came I
made a couple test calls by dialing 10721-1-NPA-NXX-XXXX. They never
did put their own ID recording out; if you dialed 10721-1-700-555-4141
from service with a telco that billed for them, you got Sprint's
recording, same one as at 10333-1-700-555-4141. If you tried that
from service with a telco that had no agreement with Centel Net, the
call was refused by the IEC. I kept my 1+ service on both lines with
Telecom*USA and never used the Centel Net calling cards.
Eventually I came to hear advertising for AT&T's Reach Out plans while
I'd be on hold with Central Telephone, so I asked, gee, shouldn't you
be promoting Centel Net? "They've closed." Huh? Well, they had
closed all right, and calls to both their customer service number and
their access number were intercepted with referrals to US Sprint's
customer service number. (Now both are simply not in service with no
referral any more.) When I said that Centel Net should have notified
their customers, the Central Telephone rep told me that as she
understood, they did notify 1+ customers but not calling card carriers
like me. (The secondary service on 10721 was automatic for any
customer of a telco that did billing for Centel Net.) Hmmm. Attempts
to dial 10721-1-700-555-4141 were intercepted after the third 5.
Meanwhile, I had not used US Sprint in a year and a half. Not
recognizing my name at my home address in Chicago as belonging to the
same person as the same name at my post office box in Des Plaines (it
would fill a Digest issue to detail what happened once before, just
because even at the same address, US Sprint decided David Tamkin and
David W. Tamkin had to be two different people), US Sprint sent me an
offer of a fooncard with thirty minutes free. I phoned the number and
was told well, the offer does say it's for new customers only, but
I've been gone so long that what the hey, but they had to open a new
account for me to get the credit. So I said fine and asked for two
fooncardz on it (so that I could share it with my parents).
One day about three weeks later I left for the day's activities.
First I checked my post office box, and amid my mail in it was an
envelope from US Sprint with a new account number and two fooncardz.
Joy, delight, pleasure, gratification, fulfillment, ecstasy ...
Late that afternoon I returned home, and since mail to my building had
been delivered by then, I checked my mailbox in the lobby. There were
two envelopes from US Sprint, each with a new account number and a
fooncard inside. Just too much happiness to bear! I noted that the
form of my address was identical to that used by Central Telephone
when I had first ordered the Centel Net calling cards.
OK, onto the phone with US Sprint customer service we go, tra la.
Yes, account three and four were indeed maggots spawned in the rotting
corpse of Centel Net. Darn, marketing forgot to put the credit for
the upcoming thirty free minutes onto account two. I'll have to call
the same number that was on the offer to get them to fix that.
Marketing is closed; I must call them the next morning.
The next morning marketing confirmed that account two was entitled to
the thirty-minute (actually $3.90) credit, but I have to ask customer
service to post it. Fortunately, they connected me to C.S. instead of
my having to wait again.
The marketing folk had told me the code number for the promotion, so
when I repeated it to the c.s. person, she posted the credit to
account zero (account one had been put out of its misery in 1987).
She told me she could either cancel the extra three accounts or
consolidate them into account zero; the only difference would be that
cancellation would invalidate the new fooncardz and consolidation
would link them to account zero instead. I thought, well, I like some
of these numbers; let's consolidate and I'll decide later which
fooncardz I want to keep. We finally got everything straightened out:
account one was indeed dead beyond resuscitation; the spelling of my
name on account zero was fixed; accounts two, three, and four were
merged into account zero, fooncardz and all; and they knew they were not
my primary carrier any more. [I wanted to be sure that they didn't
think they were supposed to be and wouldn't try to slam me, though in
all fairness US Sprint never has attempted it yet, not even to my
parents, whose numbers were on the account only for 10333 all the time
that my numbers really and later supposedly were on it for 1+. MCI
thinks it has a God-given right to slam all numbers with 10222 service
on any account where at least one number has 1+ service.]
So now account zero has my parents' and my 10333 service, my name
listed properly, a $3.90 credit balance, its original three fooncardz,
two fooncardz from account two, and one each from accounts three and
four. I wish I'd known about consolidation back in 1987, when the rep
who finally gave account one euthanasia omitted that one possibility;
perhaps US Sprint couldn't do it at that time. See, I had this
fooncard on account one whose number I really loved. Now I have seven
that I merely like. It's just not the same, you know?
David Tamkin Box 7002 Des Plaines IL 60018-7002 708 518 6769 312 693 0591
MCI Mail: 426-1818 GEnie: D.W.TAMKIN CIS: 73720,1570 dattier@ddsw1.mcs.com
[Moderator's Gasp: Whew! Readers, did you get all that straight? I'll
wait while you go back and read it again. Wouldn't you love to be a
CSR for Sprint handling the billing cycle David is in and get into
these commotions with him month after month about something or another? PAT]