I moved into a house where I shared a phone line with a housemate. The phone number was transferred into my name from that of the person who'd had my room before me. For almost a year, there was no problem. Our long distance bills were included with our local bills and we received the low rate we'd signed up for. Then the long distance stopped coming in the local bill. I waited for a long distance bill and I have to admit that I am not great at paperwork and lost track of time and suddenly our long distance service was cut off. I called AT&T to find out what was going on, and somehow the bill had been sent to our house but in the name of the person who'd lived there before me, so it had been put aside for the next time he was in town. Why would we think it was our phone bill? Anyway I spent like an hour on the phone with AT&T and thought I had everything worked out.
But then when they re-established our service, they didn't re-enroll us in the low rate plan. So suddenly I got like a $300 phone bill. I thought I got that straightened out, then next the bills stopped coming in my name again. When I called about that, they had once again sent the bill to my predecessor in the house, but this time in Switzerland (where he was living). I thought I got that straightened out. And so on. By the time I moved out of the house, I had had the number switched into my name THREE times. Yet when I went to get the phone switched into my housemate's name, I was told that I couldn't do that, because the number was not in my name, so I had no authority to switch it. It turned out that they were bundling the number at the house with my previous housemate's cell phone number and claimed they couldn't detach the two numbers from each other. I finally called the local phone company and had them change the name, and notified AT&T by email AND phone that they were no longer the long distance carrier for the number and that if they continued to give me trouble I would get in touch with my lawyer and my congressman.
I haven't had AT&T service since, it goes without saying, and actually haven't had any problems with MCI since. My dad also ultimately cancelled AT&T service when he had repeated billing problems with them related to a calling card -- they constantly billed him at like 10 times the advertised rate and wouldn't fix the problem.
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