Rival Claims PacBell Gave It a ‘Virus’ : Owner of Talking Yellow Pages Says Phones Often Go Dead

To Michael Amin, it seemed a natural: a “talking” phone book for people who would rather deal with an operator than finger through the yellow pages.

So, Amin set up a Los Angeles-based firm, Primex Talking Yellow Pages, to provide callers a choice of whatever category of company or service they request--for example, a selection of physicians of a given specialty and working in a particular area. Then the Primex operator can connect the caller with the doctor he or she wants.

But the hang-up for Amin has been Pacific Bell.

The phone company says it has been unable to find the electronic “virus” that, for 18 months, Amin claims, has bedeviled Primex. The result for Primex has been to have many of its 36 telephone lines go dead at crucial moments--such as right after broadcast of television and radio commercials inviting the audience to call for a trial.

At other times, Amin said, conversations are cut off in mid-sentence. And sometimes callers hear ringing while Primex operators hear nothing or, answering a ring, find no one on the line.

Don’t Know the Cause

Despite extensive testing by Pacific Bell technicians, who say they don’t know the cause of Primex’s problems, the company’s phone troubles have persisted for 18 months. Amin said they now threaten Primex’s pioneering venture, which competes with Pacific Bell’s yellow pages directories. He also noted that Pacific Bell and other former Bell phone companies have repeatedly--and vainly--sought court permission to enter the talking phone book business.

Recently, Amin lodged a formal complaint with the California Public Utilities Commission, whose consumer division expects to complete its evaluation shortly.

Meanwhile, the PUC’s five members held a final hearing in San Francisco on Monday to hear from businesses such as Primex before deciding later this year whether to accept proposals, submitted separately by Pacific Bell and GTE California, to change telecommunications regulation in the state.

While different in many particulars, the two proposals aim to give the phone companies some flexibility in setting prices, speed commission decisions and strengthen the incentive to cut costs by lifting the present limit on utility profits. Instead, a share of the profits beyond a certain point would be returned to customers in the form of rebates.

Amin and other telephone industry entrepreneurs have complained that giving the big phone companies more flexibility might clear the way for Pacific Bell and GTE to use dirty tricks and other unfair practices to drive competitors out of business.

For instance, Dennis Love has testified before the Assembly Committee on Utilities and Commerce that his Marin County telephone-equipment repair service failed after advertisements bought in Pacific Bell’s local phone books were botched in two of the last three years.

In Amin’s case, the business is still running, although the number of employees has plunged to 30 from a high of 70 when the company moved to larger quarters near Los Angeles International Airport. That same day, Feb. 1, 1988, the young company’s local telephone service unaccountably went haywire, Amin said.

‘Deliberate Tampering’

In its complaint, Primex accuses Pacific Bell of indulging in “illegal harassment” and “deliberate tampering” with the company’s phone lines, most of which are attached to a Pacific Bell Centrex control unit. The goal, the complaint charges, is to destroy the company’s business. Amin attached several pages of single-spaced entries chronicling scores of service irregularities and said he has many more on file.

Pacific Bell spokeswoman Kathleen Flynn confirmed the existence of repeated complaints by Primex but said 2,400 tests have so far turned up no glitch in the phone company’s equipment. Flynn said 99.8% of Pacific Bell’s test calls went through without a hitch.

“There is no reason for us at any time and at any case to disrupt a customer’s business,” she said. “That’s just not the way we do business.”

But Amin disputed the validity of that finding. When he asked Pacific Bell last month to monitor one day’s phone traffic for his firm, he said, the utility found that 41% of the calls lasted less than 15 seconds--too brief, he said, to be completed business calls.