Kids ‘Dial It’ and Parents Don’t Like Bill--or Message

Want romance? Dial it. How about a laugh? Dial it. With the growing number of dial-a-whatevers blossoming around the country, there’s virtually nothing you can’t find on the phone.

There’s Dial-a-Joke, Dial-a-Horoscope, Dial-a-Soap Opera, Dial-a-Romance, Dial-a-Children’s Story, Dial-a-Stock Report--and, oh yes--Dial-a-Porn.

They’re everywhere, of every kind, for everybody.

There are stop-smoking lines, rock hotlines, teens-in-trouble advice lines written by psychologists and messages to help people relieve stress.

In Los Angeles, there’s a Prince Hotline to get the latest on upcoming concerts, and daytime soap addicts can get the up-to-date scoop on General Hospital.

There’s also a “Tips to Word Power,” a movie review message and five separate 976 exchanges to inform Southern California surfers whether the waves will be awesome and tubular during the weekend.

Volcano Message

In Honolulu, one can call a daily volcano eruption message. Philadelphia has a Dial-a-Romeo line featuring sexy male voices, and if you need to know Nancy Reagan’s daily schedule, dial (202) 456-6269.

Hundreds of millions of calls are made each year to these recorded messages. The costs range from a few extra cents to $3.

For telephone companies and the private vendors who lease the lines and produce the calls, dial-a-message has become a multimillion dollar operation, and is getting bigger.

The service has come a long way since 1928, when New York Telephone first introduced the time-of-day service.

But in the last two years, since the prerecorded exchanges have multiplied by technological leaps and bounds, public advocates, angry parents and wary customers say the system is out of control and needs dramatic restructuring--that children, in particular, unwittingly run up exorbitant phone bills not realizing there’s a price tag attached.

Consider:

- Ed O’Geese’s 10-year-old grandson made nearly 2,500 phone calls last December to the 976 Dial Sports line. He thought it was free and he loved to play Sports Trivia.

O’Geese, a San Francisco window washer, was not amused. The bill came to a not-so-trivial $1,316. O’Geese couldn’t pay it and his phone was shut off in February.

- During the Christmas holidays last year, 7-year-old Josie Aaronson-Gelb, enticed by the commercials she saw on her favorite cartoon show, made 45 calls to Dial-a-Santa.

He too thought it free, like the Dial-a-Tooth Fairy call the American Dental Assn. produced last year. But each prerecorded chat with Santa Claus cost 50 cents. Josie’s parents filed a lawsuit against Pacific Bell in March.

- Teresa Hillman of San Jose received a $305 phone bill in April. Her 6-year-old son also went on a 976 binge. He made more than 75 calls, including 28, at $2 a crack, to get the latest red-hot pornographic message.

She refused payment and Pacific Bell threatened to disconnect her phone.

But like hundreds of parents and consumer advocates, Hillman is fighting back, claiming telephone companies are working in callous tandem with private firms that are making big profits.

‘Entertainment Function’

“We see it as having an entertainment function and it’s educational,” said Pacific Bell’s business director, Bill Dunkle. “The vast majority of calls are pretty harmless.”

Nonetheless, more than $50 million in lawsuits from shell-shocked parents are pending, and the California Public Utilities Commission has begun hearings to determine whether 976 numbers--particularly the porno and children-tailored messages--are being abused.

“There’s a great potential for abuse,” said Don Vial, president of the PUC, which has received more than 1,200 complaints this year from people upset about the pornography lines and that recordings carry no warning that the calls are costing money.

Dunkle said it would be “an irritant to the listener” to make any announcement on the recording as to the cost of the call. But the dial-a-porn message has introduced a whole new controversy.

“Under a monopoly basis that phone companies have, it can get into everyone’s home,” Vial said.

In June, 1984, the FCC issued an order restricting a minor’s access to porn lines by requiring vendors to restrict their hours to 6 p.m. to 5 a.m. or accept payment by a credit card only.

But the U.S. Court of Appeal in New York, citing First Amendment grounds, set aside the order and suggested that it consider the use of blocking devices. The FCC has not yet taken action.

Attorney Robert Gnaizda of the San Francisco-based Public Advocates maintains that dial-a-message calls should be itemized separately from other costs in the phone bill and that a phone company should not be allowed to disconnect for failure to pay without an appeal process.

Gnaizda, who has filed suit against Pacific Bell on behalf of 17 parents, said, “The problem you have is the coercive power of a combined monopoly that can be brought to bear to pay a debt.

“If you do business in California with a minor, the minor doesn’t have to pay,” Gnaizda said. “But yet the phone company has the right to terminate service. Other businesses have to go to a collection agency.”

Lee Blackman, an attorney for the New York-based Carlin Communications, the largest supplier of the pornographic messages, said, “One would think that after you get the first bill, a parent would talk to their children.”

Pushing for Blocking Devices

Whatever the case, Gnaizda and other consumer advocates are pushing hard to get telephone companies--in this case, Pacific Bell--to install blocking devices and offer full refunds for dial-a-message calls consumers say they didn’t make or weren’t notified of cost.

Pacific Bell has said it would consider such reforms, but would like customers to pay offset the cost of putting in blocking devices.

At Mid-Atlantic Bell, customers are entitled to hang up within 15 seconds without being charged, and callers are told the cost of the call at the outset.

But Pac Bell is reluctant to institute such an advisory. As Dunkle put it, “It could have a depressing effect.”

Financial and regulatory conditions vary as to how the message producer and the phone company split the profits.

At Pac Bell, the vendor pays $7,100 to get access to a 976 exchange line. For a 55-cent call, the vendor gets 19 cents off the top and 10 cents for each additional minute.

50 Cents for First Minute

A $2 call nets the private firm 50 cents for the first minute and 10 cents for each additional minute, according to Pacific Bell spokesman John Donner.

At Illinois Bell, where there are no porn lines, an unlimited number of dial-a-message calls can be made for about 4 1/2 cents a minute.

In New York, it costs 18.3 cents a call during the day, from which the vendor gets 2 cents and New York Telephone the remainder.

Last year, nearly 40 million calls--about 40% to steamy porno recordings--were placed to 976 exchanges in California, and Pacific Bell netted $7 million for providing the lines to private vendors.

This year, the phone company will bill customers $43 million and accrue a $13-million profit. Nearly $30 million will be collected by the five private companies having contracts with the phone company, and the rest will go to Pac Bell, according to the PUC.

There are about 100 firms in the thriving dial-a-message business.

“Most of our people have writing and broadcast experience,” said John Bremner, one of partners at Megaphone Co. in San Francisco, one of the largest dial-a-message firms in the country.

“We got into this because we know people are looking for lots of different kinds of information,” Bremner said. “And we know a lot of people miss the soaps and want to know what happened.”