Me too and several times. I went to the FCC website and submitted a complaint through them.
It took several months but I was refunded all the charges related to all the times that Qwest comitted slamming with my account. I was even refunded for the phone calls made while my account was changed (without my consent). So to anybody going trough this, I say go through the FCC. This will make the companies pay fines for doing this. It may also be good to put a "frezze" on the account so that companies can't switch it without your authorization.
I have gone through the same problem as you did. I went on vacation and when I came back my long distance service was changed without my authorization from AT&T to Qwest. This is common practice and all phone companies do it all the time. As a matter of fact I was a victicm of this several times. Finally, I got tired of it and took more drastic measures. I went to the FCC website (they are the ones that regulate phone companies) and submited a formal complaint about the phone slamming (they have an on-line form your can fill to submit your complain). It took quite some time (several months) but at the end I was awarded full credit for all the charges they made me. I was even credited for the phone calls I made with the other long distance company (I claimed those were illgal because I didn't know they were made with Qwest instead of AT&T). I suggest you do the same. I don't remeber the website but it should not be too difficult to find, make a search for FCC or Federal Communications Commsion. When you make the complaint make sure you tell them if you have contacted the respective companies to solve the problem and give as much detail as you can. Also make sure you include the amount of money you think the other phone company owes you (charge for changing long distance company, any phone call made during the switch, any monthly fees, etc). After that make sure you put a "frezee" on your account so it can't be changed without your authorization. By the way, my long distance company is now MCI as well.
cheers,
Jorge
Does more than a BILLION constitutes a few people to you? You say "In an ideal world however, this do as you please attitude would be fine, so long as it was grounded in respect, for self, and other.". If you have respect for "others" you don't go and label them as the "most hypocritical social forces in the world".
I agree with you in saying that the x86 based processors may not be as efficient as more advanced RISC based processors (Alpha, Sun, etc.), however you also need a BIG piece of reality into you. The fact of the matter is that a Sun Workstation worth less than $5000.00 will have a much lower performance than a high quality PC which would cost only $3000.00. In our research group we have a Sun Ultra Enterprise Server with a 333Mhz processor and a PII 350Mhz processor beats our processor on many integer and floating point calculation benchmarks. The first one costs $20000.0 while the second one much less than $5000.00. We also have many Sun Ultra 10 Workstations (they cost around $5000.00) with 333Mhz chips and their performance is inferior (in Matlab applications) to simlilarly configured PCs. The reality is that if you don't have around $50000.00 to buy the TOP of the line Sun or Alpha, you can get MUCH MORE PERFORMANCE from a PC based on the Athlon or Pentium processor for much less money. Personally I think you are much better off using a PC with Linux and the latest top of the line processor (wether it is the Thunderbird or the Athlon) than bying a very expensive Sun machine. On a different subject I find it very funny that even INTEL itself admits that PC133 SDRAM is better than RDRAM. This is not new since it's been in may websites like toms hardware guide (www.tomshardware.com). I guess we will have to see what are INTELs true intentions with respect to memory in the future.
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Me too and several times. I went to the FCC website and submitted a complaint through them. It took several months but I was refunded all the charges related to all the times that Qwest comitted slamming with my account. I was even refunded for the phone calls made while my account was changed (without my consent). So to anybody going trough this, I say go through the FCC. This will make the companies pay fines for doing this. It may also be good to put a "frezze" on the account so that companies can't switch it without your authorization.
I have gone through the same problem as you did. I went on vacation and when I came back my long distance service was changed without my authorization from AT&T to Qwest. This is common practice and all phone companies do it all the time. As a matter of fact I was a victicm of this several times. Finally, I got tired of it and took more drastic measures. I went to the FCC website (they are the ones that regulate phone companies) and submited a formal complaint about the phone slamming (they have an on-line form your can fill to submit your complain). It took quite some time (several months) but at the end I was awarded full credit for all the charges they made me. I was even credited for the phone calls I made with the other long distance company (I claimed those were illgal because I didn't know they were made with Qwest instead of AT&T). I suggest you do the same. I don't remeber the website but it should not be too difficult to find, make a search for FCC or Federal Communications Commsion. When you make the complaint make sure you tell them if you have contacted the respective companies to solve the problem and give as much detail as you can. Also make sure you include the amount of money you think the other phone company owes you (charge for changing long distance company, any phone call made during the switch, any monthly fees, etc). After that make sure you put a "frezee" on your account so it can't be changed without your authorization. By the way, my long distance company is now MCI as well. cheers, Jorge
Does more than a BILLION constitutes a few people to you? You say "In an ideal world however, this do as you please attitude would be fine, so long as it was grounded in respect, for self, and other.". If you have respect for "others" you don't go and label them as the "most hypocritical social forces in the world".
I agree with you in saying that the x86 based processors may not be as efficient as more advanced RISC based processors (Alpha, Sun, etc.), however you also need a BIG piece of reality into you. The fact of the matter is that a Sun Workstation worth less than $5000.00 will have a much lower performance than a high quality PC which would cost only $3000.00. In our research group we have a Sun Ultra Enterprise Server with a 333Mhz processor and a PII 350Mhz processor beats our processor on many integer and floating point calculation benchmarks. The first one costs $20000.0 while the second one much less than $5000.00. We also have many Sun Ultra 10 Workstations (they cost around $5000.00) with 333Mhz chips and their performance is inferior (in Matlab applications) to simlilarly configured PCs. The reality is that if you don't have around $50000.00 to buy the TOP of the line Sun or Alpha, you can get MUCH MORE PERFORMANCE from a PC based on the Athlon or Pentium processor for much less money. Personally I think you are much better off using a PC with Linux and the latest top of the line processor (wether it is the Thunderbird or the Athlon) than bying a very expensive Sun machine. On a different subject I find it very funny that even INTEL itself admits that PC133 SDRAM is better than RDRAM. This is not new since it's been in may websites like toms hardware guide (www.tomshardware.com). I guess we will have to see what are INTELs true intentions with respect to memory in the future.