ecorley@cucard.med.columbia.edu (Eric Corley) (02/02/89)
THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE IS REPRINTED FROM THE WINTER 1988-89 EDITION OF
2600 MAGAZINE, A PUBLICATION THAT DEVOTES MUCH OF ITS SPACE TO THE STUDY OF
COMPUTER HACKERS. QUESTIONS CAN BE DIRECTED TO 2600@dasys1.UUCP or 2600,
POB 752, MIDDLE ISLAND, NY 11953, OR 516-751-2600.
It all started with what sounded like a friendly phone call in October:
"Hello, this is Patricia from MCI. We noticed that you presently have an
account with MCI and we wanted to let you know that we'll be offering 'one
plus' service in your area starting December 10th. We'd like to verify your
address."
The nice lady then read us our address, which was one hundred percent correct.
She then said another person would call us to confirm this information. That
call came within minutes and was almost identical in content.
A couple of weeks later we got another one of those calls on another of our
lines that had an MCI account attached to it. But this time the second call
never came.
In early December, equal access came to our phone lines. We decided to check
the status of those two lines that had gotten the calls. We dialed
1-700-555-4141. And guess what? They had both been claimed by MCI. Surprised?
We weren't. In fact, when those calls come in, we EXPECTED them to try and
pull this scam we'd heard so much about. They made one big mistake though --
they tried it on us.
We always listen very carefully when phone companies call us. And we can say
very definitely that MCI never asked us if we wanted to choose them as our
long distance carrier. All they asked us to do was to verify our address.
OK, so it was a sloppy representative. Maybe even a corrupt one. How can you
condemn an entire company because of the actions of one person? That's quite
easy. It happened more than once. Different representatives called different
phone numbers and gave the same little speech. And we've found out that other
people have gotten the same treatment. This indicates to us that these
representatives are reading a script that tells them NOT to ask the customer
whether they actually WANT MCI's "one plus" service. Address verification,
after all, is a much less controversial issue.
Perhaps MCI feels they're taking a calculated risk here. They only seem to make
these calls to people who already use MCI in some form. Maybe they feel these
people won't raise a fuss when they discover who their long distance company
is. In fact, they may never even discover that MCI is their carrier since they
most likely have been getting MCI bills in the past. Remember, these are
people who have already been using MCI's services.
Regardless of whether or not it pays off, it's distressing to see such
dishonest tactics on the part of a major company.
This isn't our only gripe with MCI. We had been using an account on MCI's
950-1986 dialup. In November we paid the bill a few days late (it was under
$10). Well, lo and behold, they disconnected our code without ANY warning.
When we asked them to reconnect it, they said they would have to handle our
payment for 10 days first. Ten days went by and the code was still down. We
asked again. This time, they said they were phasing out that service, so they
couldn't reconnect us. But they came up with a bright idea. We could use our
14-digit MCI Card code instead of our old 5-digit code. "It's just as easy to
remember," they said.
Clearly, they have the right to phase out their services and replace them with
less desirable ones. But once again, it's the way in which they did it. MCI
jumped at the first opportunity to take away our old code instead of being up
front and letting their customers know that as of a certain date this service
would be terminated. Being sneaky about it doesn't do anyone any good.
The Real Scam
We've saved the best for last. When we discovered that MCI had selected
themselves as our long distance carriers, we decided to experiment a little.
One of our experiments involved trying to make an operator assisted call
("zero plus") on an MCI line. MCI doesn't offer operator assisted services. So
we were curious as to what would happen when we tried to do this.
What happened was a big surprise. We got the same little fading dial tone that
we got on AT&T -- in other words, the prompt to enter our AT&T calling card
number. We entered the card number and were astounded to hear a recording say,
"Thank you for using NTS."
NTS? Who the hell were THEY?! And what were they doing accepting AT&T calling
card numbers on MCI lines?
We'll skip all of the drama and simply tell you what we found out. NTS is an
Alternate Operator Service (AOS) company. They handle calls from hotel rooms
and privately owned payphones. Their rates are often double those of AT&T. And
it seems that in various parts of the country, MCI has a clandestine
relationship with these people. We say clandestine because we're in the habit
of reading all of the literature from every phone company that serves our
area. And nowhere has this little "service" been mentioned. We have yet to
find anyone in MCI who is even aware of this arrangement. On the other hand,
NTS (based in Rockville, Maryland) is quite proud of the MCI connection. All
of the NTS operators (who can trick anyone into believing they're really from
AT&T) are aware that they provide service for MCI "zero plus" customers.
Why does MCI use an AOS? We can't imagine. But we can tell you the effects. If
you decide to call someone collect from your phone and MCI happens to be your
long distance carrier, the person who accepts on the other end will wind up
with one hell of a surprise when they get the bill. You'll be the one getting
the surprise if you forget that MCI doesn't have operators and you attempt to
place an operator-assisted or calling card call through them. The most likely
scenario, though, would be something like this: you visit a friend and need to
make a phone call from his house. Since you don't want to make your friend
pay, you dial it "zero plus" and bill it to your calling card. How are you to
know that your friend selected MCI as his long distance carrier and that
you've just been swindled by an AOS? Perhaps MCI's new slogan can be: "We
bring the thrill of hotel phones right into your own home!"
Now we should point out that this "NTS Connection" doesn't work everywhere. In
some areas you get recordings when you try to make "zero plus" calls using
MCI. We need to know where it does work. You can find out at no charge by
dialing 10222-0 followed by a ten digit phone number (you can use your own).
If you hear a fading dial tone, it means you're about to be connected to NTS.
You can stay on and ask a whole lot of questions if you want. Let us know if
it works in your area. (You can do the above even if MCI isn't your primary
carrier -- the 10222 routes the call to MCI. You must have equal access in
your area in order to try this.)
There's really not much more to add. We are demanding a public statement from
MCI addressing the issues of signing up unsuspecting consumers and billing
their own customers exhorbitant rates for operator-assisted calls without
telling them. We don't expect to ever get such a statement.
Several years ago, we printed a story about MCI's electronic mail system, MCI
Mail, which had a policy of terminating accounts that had received mail not to
MCI's liking. We called it a flagrant invasion of privacy to peruse the mail
of their own paying subscribers. The president of MCI indicated that he
couldn't care less.
So all we can say right now is that it would be a very good idea to boycott MCI
for all of the above reasons. A company that resorts to such devious methods
of making money and that treats its customers so shabbily is not worthy of the
historical significance its founders achieved.
We would appreciate it if this article was spread around in whatever ways
possible.