Fucking MCI, now I remember why I despise them among all long distance/broadband services

And it has nothing to do with Worldcom either

Back in the very early '90's, my roommate got the bright idea of switching the long distance service over to MCI, but didn't bother telling me about it

And seeing as how we went our separate ways about 3 months later, I didn't think I'd ever deal with MCI again

But two years later, I did

Turns out they claimed I still owed a balance on the long-distance bill

I, having not set up the account myself, nor hearing from MCI in over two years, laughed & tossed the notice in the trash

It was the first of a veritable blizzard of such growingly-indignant replies, hectors & cajoling requests/orders barked my way from a Corporation sure that I would immediately give it money at the first unsubstantiated claim heard by my naive, unsuspecting & totally trusting ears

Not very fucking likely

MCI kept up an increasingly agitated tone of "we're the victims of your deadbeat desire not to pay your bills" with an ever increasing count of both paper & phone calls

I just kept laughing it off

And then, MCI hired a collection agent

At this point, I stopped laughing & got royally cranked all right, at which point I resolved to never pay these bastards a single cent

Speaking of which, the sum at issue here totalled a magnificent $6.61

The decimal point is in the right place, MCI actually expected that because it was such a small amount, I'd be like the other suckers who took such claims at face value. In fact, friends told me to do just that

But at this point, I didn't care about reason, I didn't care that it was a small amount, I only cared about NOT paying MCI another cent, not when they'd already spent far more than $6.61 trying to hound me into paying a charge that hadn't existed except on their say-so alone, and not when the collection agency actually started calling me up for the penny-ante amount sought by MCI

And so, before the collection agent could even start the spiel, I cut her off

"First off, I'm expected to pay a bill that shows up over two years later after I've moved to a different place. How do I know that if I pay this $6.61, that another 10 years down the road, I won't get hit with yet another mysterious & heretofor unexistant phone bill? No, you tell your clients that if I'm contacted one more Goddamned time, I WILL file an official complaint with the state's Attorney General's Office, and that it will only get worse from there"

Problem solved, MCI never tried this stupid stunt ever again

Getting a rapacious global corporation to basically tuck it's tail between it's legs & slink away quietly and defeated is one of the greatest feelings one can ever experience, I highly recommend it for everyone