A number of years ago 15 to be exact when the break up of AT&T was taking place and the FCC splitting the bells apart. I had a sideline business that did extremely well and was quite a eye opening experience. The company I ran was subcontracted to sell Dial 1 service to consumers for one of the long distance carriers. I was working in California and we spent a lot of time educating the public on the politics and the reason they were going to have to choose a long distance carrier. I became deeply disturbed by the dirty tricks that the newly split bells where playing. AT&T was obviously the favored company as they had the inside connections within the Bells. They where so deeply embedded with AT&T that the other 2 carriers had to literally un-brainwash the public. Disinformation was king, I sat in awe as commercials were being run actually discrediting Sprint and MCI.
I learned first hand how many of the bell customer service representatives flat out lied to consumers at times. I also learned how to work the system and had friends that kept me in the loop within the bells. It was amazing how thousands of our customers would magically get switched back to AT&T after only being on there new service 1 month and alienating the consumer so much they would say the hell with it. I lost thousands of customers because of mysterious glitches.
We were literally at war with the Bells, AT&T and the other major long distance carrier. Those of you that remember the Dial 1 roll-out may have actually fought the change. I literally had over 100 people on the streets educating the public. The word slamming had not been invented yet but it was rampant. When areas where selected for Dial 1 roll-out there was a balloting process. We learned the hard way that ballots had a tendency to be lost.
We implemented double verification long before it became mainstream to cut down on fraud and protect our sixes. The balloting process was a challenge in that on a certain day certain time the consumer selection process was closed. We actually would sit in the office that handled that process and several hours before the closing time we would have our ballots time stamped (last ballot received won). To ensure no one could pull a fast one we would Xerox those time stamped ballots. For the next several months we would then have to painstakingly go over thousands of printouts to ensure that all of our new customers got switched, when they weren’t we had to either fight the bell case by case. We also got smart and with the customers consent re-submitted the ballots for the accounts that the bells refused to switch over. All of the customer service people knew my voice and I would spend hours on the phone with them.
I remember getting boxes of printouts and spending sleepless nights cross checking. We were paid on the number of consumers we signed up and we received a percentage of there long-distance bill for the life of the account. For us it was purely financial I did not get paid till the account produced. My teams sold a hell of a lot of accounts.
So I fully understood the dirty tricks the bells where capable of at the time and the process’s the bells used back then. To get to the heart of the article we also became masters of reading phone bills and explaining the weird regulatory charges. I have watched those charges evolve and change over the years. It has been tough trying to keep up with what the FCC is up to. So I was not surprised when I read the article I am referencing.
Some consumer groups are pissed that Billions of dollars worth of equipment that has been bought and paid for thru those state and federal regulatory charges are unaccounted for. A significant amount of equipment is flat out missing a partial audit that was done is highly suspect. With accounting practices that show a switch costing $4.00 on one invoice is billed at $120,000+ on another consumer groups want answers.
I take this one point further in that many of the switches/equipment that new startup companies are plugging into, which the bells have been bitching/fighting about say is causing them to loose revenue was paid for by you and I. I could go on for hours and may bring up some other points at a later date but I leave you with this final thought.
Consumers and the FCC will never get a full accounting as the industry is too large and too powerful. With my personal experience I can tell you the industry just has to many political connections and until consumers can find a way to fully bypass the bells change will never come in that industry. [Forbes]