PUC Puts Parents’ Complaints on Hold, OKs Dial-a-Santa

The state Public Utilities Commission ruled Wednesday that Dial-a-Santa calls can continue this Christmas season--despite thousands of complaints from parents whose children ran up big phone bills last year, apparently unaware that the calls are not free.

The PUC did approve temporary regulations, however, that will require that ads promoting the services clearly state the cost of calls and that local phone companies must make some refunds to parents who can “establish” they did not know their children were making the calls.

While a Pacific Bell spokesman hailed the decision, a grass-roots group called Parents Opposed to Pacific Bell Exploitation of Children said it is “very disappointed” at the PUC’s action and urged its members to seek unspecified “effective legislation.”

Information Access Services

Dial-a-Santa is just one of a rapidly growing number of so-called information access services offered in many metropolitan areas at prices ranging from 50 cents to $2 a call. Other services--typically obtained by dialing numbers with a 976 prefix--include erotic fantasies, soap-opera updates, fairy tales, stock quotes, horoscopes, prayers, jokes and even lectures on how to quit smoking, lose weight or handle stress.

The messages are provided by vendors who pay installation and service charges to the local phone companies, which carry the calls and usually collect the fees as “vendor charges” on monthly phone bills.

Complaints to the PUC about the services escalated to a storm after the last holiday season, when many surprised parents received their December phone bills. The problem, they said, was that many young children who saw TV ads for Dial-a-Santa services gleefully called Santa, sometimes without their parents’ knowledge and often oblivious to the cost. Even worse, they said, children availed themselves of Dial-a-Porn services. In some cases, the children rang up monthly bills in excess of $1,000.

The phenomenon spawned continuing PUC hearings and a pair of pending class-action Dial-a-Santa lawsuits, one against Pacific Bell in San Francisco Superior Court, the other against General Telephone in Ventura County Superior Court. The parents’ group and Public Advocates, the public-interest law firm in San Francisco that filed the suits, had asked the PUC to suspend the service as “irreparably harmful” to the public.

The commission rejected that view. While conceding that 976 services are “potentially harmful,” the PUC ruled Wednesday that the damage is “not imminent or substantial enough” to warrant suspension. Also, local phone customers benefit, the commission said, because the additional revenue to Pacific Bell and General Telephone of California helps hold down basic telephone rates.

Temporary Rules Accepted

Instead, the PUC accepted temporary rules drafted by vendors offering the services, Pacific Bell, General Telephone and the commission’s staff. The rules will remain in effect until the PUC completes its hearings and issues a final order, sometime next spring.

The rules require that vendors “clearly and conspicuously” display the cost of calls on ads and announce them on television ads aimed at children, along with a warning to obtain parental consent before calling.

Pacific Bell and General will make one-time refunds to customers able to “establish” that they were ignorant of the extra charges or that minor children placed them without consent.