Can you hear me now?

[Zinner]

Well, I feel much better now after rolling around laughing at the stories.

Please understand that even more than the rate hike, I am dumping MCI for two reasons:

1)the guy tried to lie and pass the blame for the bill off to federal fees and taxes when MCI is getting most of the hunk.

2)they started billing me for sending me a bill without asking how I wanted to receive the bill. They are charging poor unaware folks almost $48 a year just for sending the bill through a local company. That's ridiculous. Isn't it cheaper for them to do that than to have to send you a separate bill themselves?

I think that these companies have realized that a lot of people are leading busy lives and don't look closely at their bills each month. Often we just pay them and done with it. But corporate greed has gotten to the point that you wonder if they have somebody in house who just sits around and makes up the names of fees, so you can't tell what they're really charging for.

I am looking to dump Charter Cable for just that reason. Bunch of stuff on the bill that they can't explain. And don't even get me started on State Farm Insurance(a few notches lower than pond scum)...just do a search on the internet if you want to find out how bad they are. Hint.. they're often referred to as Snake Farm Insurance.

If enough people dump the bad companies, perhaps there can be some slow change to more honest and reasonable business practices.

I did a preliminary search about phone companies and the BillSaver website, for example, lists a company that charges only 99 cents partial usage fee and they'll drop that if you take your bill online. Apparently BillSaver developed the website to sort out the confusing phone stuff and then went on to rate other things as well.

As for the irritating cell phone users...do you know that they even have a name for the problem now? It's called "cell yell."