Phone Plan Keeps the Customers Wired
Question: According to a recent story in the Los Angeles Times Business section, General Telephone (GTE) has made me a gift of the inside wiring of my home. As a result of this amazing act of generosity, I will be charged 95 cents per month for GTE maintaining this wiring because it now belongs to me.
If I decline to pay by returning a red envelope instead of a green one, future service of my wiring will cost $85 per hour, no less, with a minimum of one hour.
Since when is one legally compelled to receive a gift against his wishes? GTE can keep its wiring and service it themselves. Any possibility of giving it back?--B.S.
Answer: Thanks a lot, a GTE spokeswoman says, but no thanks.
What we have with the telephone-wiring situation is one more move by the Federal Communications Commission to deregulate the telephone industry, whether any of us want this much deregulation or not. The same thing happened two or three years ago, you’ll recall, when we were all suddenly given the freedom to keep on renting our telephones from GTE or Pacific Bell, to buy them outright from the telephone company, or to give them back and buy our own from an independent retailer--something that matches our eyes, glows in the dark and chirps instead of rings.
And after that came the choice--and even more confusion--as to which long-distance service we wanted. All of it was a drastic departure from long-established telephone company practices of providing a host of free or cut-rate services, but spreading the cost of them over all users, regardless of the fact that many of them rarely used the service.
All well and good, in principle--to pay only for services that you actually use--but the suspicion is beginning to arise that the average telephone user is getting satiated with so much freedom of choice and that, sure enough, many of us don’t give a diddly-hoot who owns what as long as the instrument itself works.
As a consequence, the state Public Utilities Commission and numerous consumer groups have loosely banded together and requested the FCC to rethink this latest “Congratulations! You are now the proud owner of your own in-house telephone wires” gambit.
No Response
So far, however, the FCC hasn’t responded, according to spokespersons for both local telephone companies. As a consequence, we now have to make this choice before Jan. 1, when the FCC ruling goes into effect.
Should you own your own wiring or not? Who, in the name of heaven, knows? While in-house wiring problems aren’t normally a big source of trouble--minuscule when compared to the number of dropped telephones, for instance--it’s also just as impossible to predict a need for that company-provided service as it is to predict the need for earthquake insurance.
“I don’t know,” one spokesman said. “Perhaps if you’re living in an old house you might assume that there could be more possibility of frayed or rodent-damaged wires than there might be in a new house. But, who can tell?”
Although, like GTE, Pacific Bell is sending out similar notices in anticipation of the Jan. 1 start-up date, there’s a significant difference in the charges. While GTE will maintain responsibility for in-house wiring problems at a rate of 95 cents a month, Pacific Bell will do it for 50 cents a month. And, in the absence of such insurance, GTE will send out a service technician for repairs at a rate of $85 an hour. Pacific Bell will charge $65 an hour.
“The difference might reflect the fact that we’ve got a lot more customers to spread the cost over than GTE has,” Pacific Bell’s spokesman said charitably.
Wiring damage outside the house continues to be the responsibility of the telephone company, of course.
Q: Can a married woman collect Social Security benefits under her Social Security account, or must she collect as a wife under her husband’s account?
I have paid more money into FICA (Federal Insurance Contributions Act) than my husband, but have been told I can collect only under his FICA and not on my own account. He is getting $483 monthly and I was told I could collect only about one-half of this. I will be 65 in November, 1987.--J.McD.
A: All of which leaves Joe Giglio, the Social Security Administration’s public affairs specialist here, baffled as to who fed you this line. Not, he hopes, someone in an official capacity with Social Security.
The procedure is exactly the same whenever a working wife is involved: Her benefits are computed and the husband’s benefits are computed, each of them separately. What the wife receives at age 65 retirement will be the higher of the two figures. There are occasions, of course, where the husband has had far higher earnings than the wife--and for a longer period of time--and, sure enough, one-half of his benefits will turn out to be greater than her full benefits at age 65.
“But it’s a no-lose situation for her,” Giglio adds, “because in that case she’d get half of his benefit--the higher figure.”
For Full Benefits
The only conceivable way that you might be stuck with half of his benefits is if you have only been covered by Social Security for a very few years. But since you point out that you have “paid more money into FICA than my husband” (who is himself receiving benefits), this would hardly be the case. At your present age you need only 33 quarters of coverage (a little more than eight years of work history under Social Security) to qualify for full benefits.
So, disregard what you’ve heard. If your own benefits are greater than half of his (which seems extremely likely), then that’s what you’ll get.
