I worked for Bellsouth
 

I orginally found this forum when looking for a customer service number for yahoo, and found it rather amusing that this site also had a section provided for Bellsouth complaints.

First off, I didnt exactly work FOR Bellsouth, I worked for a Telemarketing firm which was paid several million a month by Bellsouth to push their products.

If you've ever had Bellsouth on your phone in recent years, I'm sure you most likely fammiliar with the frequent telemarketing calls. People trying to sell mostly long distance plans and DSL High-speel internet. I quit because of how disgusted I was with their bussiness practices, we were encouraged to manipulate the customers by misleading them on what their bill would be, amoung other things. I even recall one instance where my manager was taking a call with me, and he told me to quote some old lady a price of around $55 as her total monthly bill, and after i made the changes it turned out to be around $90. Nothing was done about it.

I should also mention that all of bellsouths services are pathetic when compared to some of the competition, paticuarly global crossing, and Qwest. Several people recieved rates as low as 4 cents a minute for long distance for virtually no monthly fees, and i was expected to sell them plans that costed 2 or 3 dollars a month and went no lower than 5 cents a minute.

I find it ironic, according to what they told us in training, bellsouth has several awards for customer service, but at least half of the people who didnt hang up on me were fairly upset with Bellsouth.

Another thing I remember is that when a customer asked to be put on our "Do Not Call List" We would just schedule them for another call back unless they specificaly said the words "put me on your do not call list" - things like take me off your list didnt count, we also had to read them a paragraph of disclosures, and if they hung up before then we wernt aloud to put them on the Do not call list...

Another thing worth mentioning, is that about 4/5th of the employees at this firm were between the ages of 15 and 21, i was 16 at the time. Let me tell you, most of them were not the brightest of people, and made ALOT of mistakes when their trying to make changes on peoples accounts, and i personaly will never do business over the phone after my experiences working there...
overall, i find their bussiness practices repulsive, and I just thought some of you might find it interesting.

now that is not cool