Office of the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel

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Consumers’ Counsel reacts to changes to Ohio’s telephone consumer protections

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Feb. 7, 2007 – Ohio’s residential consumers today had important telephone service safeguards maintained but others scaled back by state regulators, the Office of the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel (OCC) said. Many of the recommendations made last August by the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) staff would have significantly weakened rules that must be followed by telephone companies.

The OCC and other consumer groups opposed reducing the level of protections and led a coalition of consumer organizations and cities in an effort to keep – and in some cases strengthen – the rules, known as the Minimum Telephone Service Standards.

“The continuation of important consumer protections is critical as residents continue to rely on basic telephone services and deserve to have problems quickly resolved,” said Janine Migden- Ostrander, Consumers’ Counsel. “On behalf of residential consumers, we are pleased that many rules were maintained. However, our office is disappointed that customers will not be entitled to any credits for outages unless they lose service for 72 hours or more. Scaling back that rule moves Ohio’s consumer protection standards in the wrong direction.”

Important protections that remain in effect include maintaining the ability for consumers with medical conditions to be placed on a priority repair list. The OCC believes this helps ensure that those consumers who need to call for medical assistance might be able to do so sooner than if they were not attended to first during a service outage.

The new rules continue to prohibit most telephone companies from disconnecting customers’ basic local service if they have paid that portion of the bill. However, the PUCO has reduced the required notice time to customers facing disconnection to 7 days from 14 days. Also, under the new rules those customers may receive their only notice as a bill message instead of through a separately mailed notice of disconnection.

The new rules also maintain a reasonable fee charged to consumers making payments at an authorized agent. Consumers who made payments at authorized agents will continue to be charged a small fee, twice the cost of a first-class postage stamp (78 cents), for the convenience. The PUCO’s staff recommended that agents be allowed to charge customers $5 or more to process their payments. The OCC argued the increased charge would have had a huge financial impact on a portion of telephone consumers who have lower or fixed incomes and who do not have credit cards or checking accounts.

Prior to today’s changes, the rules provided credits if customers were out of service for more than 24 hours. Based on today’s decision, customers will receive credits only if their service was out for 72 hours or more. The OCC believes this is unfair to consumers and takes away any incentive for companies to have outages repaired within 24 hours. Customers should not be required to pay for service they do not receive.

The new rules also do not ensure that telephone company representatives will meet a customer’s needs before marketing services. Prior to today’s decision, customer service representatives were required to address an incoming caller’s concerns before marketing services or features. Now, the rules will allow companies to market services unless customers are calling with service problems or to make payment arrangements. The OCC believes that many consumers may now be inundated with sales pitches about products or services that they do not want before their original concerns are addressed, as Ameritech (now AT&T) did 10 years ago.

About the Office of the Ohio Consumers' Counsel

The Office of the Ohio Consumers' Counsel (OCC), the residential utility consumer advocate, represents the interests of 4.5 million households in proceedings before state and federal regulators and in the courts. The state agency also educates consumers about electric, natural gas, telephone and water issues and resolves complaints from individuals. To receive utility information, brochures, schedule a presentation or file a utility complaint, residential consumers may call 1-877-PICKOCC (1-877-742-5622) toll free in Ohio or visit the OCC Web site at www.pickocc.org.