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BY M. PAUL JACKSON MJACKSON@LEADER.NET
Monday, January 24, 2000 Page: 1C
WILKES-BARRE – Naomi Martin, meet MCI Worldcom Inc. When Martin, a
Wilkes-Barre resident, installed a phone line for a new computer four months
ago, she never realized she would become so well-acquainted with the
long-distance phone company. Just weeks after installing the extra line,
Martin received a long-distance bill from the company for about $11, she said.
The bill listed calls allegedly made from her phone. Trouble is, the bill was
in another person’s name, and Martin had never made any long-distance calls
using that line. Indeed, she does not even use MCI as a long-distance carrier.
“It’s been a total nightmare,” said Martin, who has since received two other
long-distance bills with similar problems. “It’s been going on for three
months.” Examples of such phone mix-ups are not unheard of, officials say.
In some cases, customers can wind up paying the bills of former phone
users, and solving the problem can take time. In Martin’s case, the owner of
the phone number before her might have used his phone before the service was
shut off, utility officials said. In rare cases, the next owner could end up
paying the old bill. The long-distance phone calls showed up as an MCI bill,
she said. Martin uses AT&T as a long-distance carrier. The previous owner
“obviously made some calls before the number was terminated,” said Eric
Levis, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Utility Commission. “That sounds more
like an isolated computer glitch.” Although Martin identified the person
charged with making the phone calls on her bill, attempts to reach him were
unsuccessful. A listed Wilkes-Barre number for the man has been disconnected.
“They knew he was charging his phone calls to my bill,” said Martin, 43.
“When you don’t get anybody to rectify the problem, it’s exhausting.” And
potentially costly. Although Martin’s long-distance charges totaled only about
$22, she said the charges could have been much higher. “Should I have waited
until it was some outrageous amount?” she asked. According to MCI officials,
the problem is infrequent, but it can happen. The former user’s phone number
had not been canceled correctly, said Charlie Sutlive, an MCI spokesman. When
the number was reopened in Martin’s name, she still received the old bills.
Normally, when a customer cancels a service or switches long-distance
carriers, the phone number goes back into a pool of unused numbers, Sutlive
said.
“This is actually a rare situation,” Sutlive said. Eventually, the
company issued Martin credit for the three long-distance bills, he said.
Customers who find themselves saddled with mysterious phone bills should
contact the phone company that issued the bill, Levis said. “I think she took
the right approach,” he said. “The first step is talking to the phone
company and trying to alert them to it.” Martin is hoping the problems don’t
continue. Even after she was credited for some of the charges, calls continued
to appear on her bill. She recently was forced to change her phone number to
avoid paying any more long-distance fees, she said. “I don’t know what the
deal is. It seems awfully shady to me.”