I got my bill from MCI (The Neighborhood plan) the other day for our home phone service and saw that it jumped! After some research (viewing my invoice online was a nightmare because the server kept dropping my connection even when I tried from Windows), they raised my rate $10 per month. I’ve been a customer for a long time and wasn’t notified of this change; they swore that they notified me in my online bill (I still can’t find a record of that). The increase is ridiculous. This comes at a time when people are dropping landline phones to go only cellular. I still like the call quality of a landline and knowing that 911 is available. So MCI charges me $56.99 per month. If I’m a new subscriber, it would be $59.99 per month, but each year I’d get a free month of service. So basically as a long time customer, I get screwed out of $24 per year. I’ve looked into switching to AT&T, but their online help is kind of useless. They can’t even tell me exactly how much voicemail costs. The base cost for unlimited local and long distance is $40 per month and somewhere between $6.95 and $9.00 per month for voicemail. So would it be cheaper than MCI? Possibly, but I can’t quite tell. The signup page lists all the fees and stuff which seems to indicate that the total, including voicemail would be a little more than $10 per month cheaper than MCI. If I go through with the signup, there isn’t an option to add voicemail, so I’d have to talk to a rep and deal with that.
After my call with MCI, I got a recorded call back to fill out a survey. I rated them poorly and at the end, it offered to connect me back to a rep to straighten things out. After being on hold for awhile, I gave up.
Maybe tomorrow I’ll call AT&T and see if I can get more information. At this point, it looks like MCI will lose me as a customer because of a small rate increase. $10 is $10 and I’d rather have it in my pocket. (Also it is interesting to note that MCI’s fees are about $6 per month higher than AT&T’s probably because MCI has to pay AT&T to use the lines.)