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1. Looking at my final MCI bill I noticed that I was once again suicidally overcharged. There were two problems with it. The first was the same overcharging as below. As before they (eventually) fixed that up. The second was in the last five days of my service with them the rates on my calls (to a cell phone in Japan) went up from 14¢/minute to $7.81/minute! The customer support rep (and the customer support specialist who I was transferred to and her manager) were not willing to do anything about this. They gave me the steps to escalate, more later.
2. I just noticed there is a $40 charge from MCI in April that doesn't appear on any of my statements. The MCI rep I spoke with couldn't see it either and told me that I had to call the finance department on Monday.
3. They discontinued my service in my first month with them after accruing a whopping $35 in charges!!

• Cingular - Utter and complete crap. It was always a mystery whether or not my phone would work when I pulled it out. Secondly, this phone took the longest time to find a signal (5-20 seconds compared to <5 seconds for TDMA and CDMA). Finally, SMS was regularly dropped silently - was not a reliable medium.
• AT&T - AT&T's TDMA coverage is excellent. However, from what I understand, the GSM coverage, while being a shade better than Cingular's GSM, is still far from ideal - Basically, GSM in the United States is not ready for prime time. Additionally, they have done the best job of creating interesting content and services (american idol voting over SMS, 411 over SMS) - granted when I say interesting, it is not interesting to me, but they are definitely trying.
• Verizon - Far and away the best service coverage, both in terms of quality and area covered. I never have to worry whether or not my phone will work no matter where I am. However the lack of full international SMS is a little annoying.

• Cingular - Like pulling teeth, customer service people consistently lacking in knowledge. Secondly, their billing system is flaky requiring even more calls into customer service. Finally, switching from a national plan to a local plan (or vice versa) resets your service contract (essentially adds a year to it).
• AT&T - Fantastic. Customer service people friendly and helpful and most importantly, knowledgeable. I have had a couple of non-trivial billing issues, all of which were solved quickly and efficiently. Additionally, price plans changes are made effective for that entire billing cycle, not prorated from that point forward.
• Verizon - Most of the time they are really friendly and want to be helpful, but tend to lack in higher end brain functions. I find that even simple tasks, even though they eventually always get solved, always take a *loooong* time.

• Cingular - Not bad actually, but does it really matter - with coverage this bad, you never can use the damn thing.
• AT&T - While there is a good selection of GSM phones, the TDMA and GAIT (combined TDMA and GSM) phones are lame.
• Verizon - Definitely improving, especially on the high-end.

• Cingular insults you across the board with bad marks in everything. I will give them credit that they are trying the hardest, offering features like nights that start at 7 and rollover minutes, but then again, they need to because they really need the most help.
• While AT&T's TDMA coverage is fantastic, it limits you to a selection of really lame phones and no GPRS/advanced data services. Since the GSM coverage is not acceptable, it means that it is not possible to get good coverage, data services and a cool phone all at the same time.
• Verizon's excellent coverage and a kick ass phone makes it the best carrier of the bunch.

• T*Mobile/Voicestream - Tie up with wi-fi hot spots is possibly compelling, but still limits you to GSM coverage. Cingular and T*Mobile tend to share towers so the crappy Cingular service you get in the Bay Area is the same crappy service you will get on T*Mobile.
• Nextel - Don't know much about them except that nobody that I know has service with them. I guess if you are into push-to-talk then it is the carrier of choice.
• Sprint - From what I hear, Sprint is far and away the best value for money in terms of the number of minutes you can get for the price, plus you can get unlimited data for just $10. However, it seems that Sprint's coverage is pretty rotton. Has one of the better selections of phones though.

Dianetics Auditing Success

"I was ill for months in the hospital. I was under intensive care for weeks with a bleeding ulcer infection and kidney failure. My heart stopped three times and I died three times. I also was unconscious for over a week, and I basically did not want to live. The doctors were going to give up on me and stop the treatment. The nurses did not expect me to live.

"My wife had a very hard time with it and she couldn't even call to see how I was doing; she had to have someone else call for her. She then received some Dianetics auditing and came to grips with it, at which point she was able to come into my room in the hospital and give me some auditing. She came in every day.

"I soon started becoming more aware of my environment and had a determinism to survive. It made life bright enough to live. Many other people helped me through it using L. Ron Hubbard's technology. I am now recovered and would not have lived if it weren't for the technology by L. Ron Hubbard that helped us get through it." - D.H.