PRACTICAL VIEW : This Is a Recording? They Don’t Mind : Consumers: People who called and called and called the Consumer Affairs Department got busy signals. That is, they <i> used </i> to.

It’s called the “Monday Morning Special” at the Los Angeles County Department of Consumer Affairs--an SOS phone call that goes something like this:

“I bought a car over the weekend and thought I had three days to cancel the sale, but now I want to return it and the seller won’t take it back. Doesn’t he have to?”

This is a common plight, says department Director Pastor Herrera Jr.

“People shop for a car on weekends, and too often they buy one they can’t afford. Then they sit down on Sunday night and take another look at the checking account. Too late, they realize the insurance and monthly payments are going to be a problem.”

What are their contractual rights? That’s only one of the questions consumers want answered when they turn to the Consumer Affairs Department.

“We mediate and investigate consumer complaints in a whole range of areas, primarily against businesses that are not regulated by any state agency. For instance, there is no regulatory agency for department stores, or retail, period,” says Herrera, who has been with the department for 16 years and director for two years.

During his tenure, Herrera has seen the pressures on the department intensify as the county population has exploded. Plus, an economic downturn inevitably means more inquiries in such categories as employment-agency fraud, questionable offers for career retraining, credit-repair problems and bankruptcy proceedings.

“People find themselves in plights they don’t know how they got into and have no idea how to get out of,” says Herrera. “They turn to us for help.”

In an era of budget reverses, his small department was overwhelmed by ringing telephones. Consumers complained that the lines were always busy, and his staff and a corps of volunteers were answering the same questions day in and day out.

On a typical Monday morning, for example, in response to the car-purchase question, they responded over and over:

“The three-day right to cancel does not apply to the sale of a new or used car, regardless of where it is purchased. Know what type of car you need and what you can afford to spend before you go into a showroom. Most contracts, including an auto purchase, are not cancelable within three days. The three-day right to cancel applies to purchases of $25 or more that happen away from the seller’s normal place of business . . .”

So the department turned to technology to bail out of consumer overload. A year ago this month, it installed its Recorded Consumer Information service.

By using a touch-tone telephone, callers can select informational tapes that answer the most commonly asked questions. The service offers more than 50 detailed consumer messages in five categories: landlord/tenant, credit, retail sales, automobiles and consumer department information.

Callers who still have questions after hearing a tape can talk to a counselor during regular hours.

Since its installation, the system has “performed beyond our expectations,” says Tim Bissell, the department’s chief investigator, who wrote the 110 pages of script.

Although the technology is becoming common in corporate use, Bissell thinks it’s a first for a consumer agency that specializes in public-service information.

“We were concerned that people would get lost in the system, or would resent listening to tapes instead of a human voice, but for the most part they like it,” he says.

The unit utilizes six phone lines that feed into a mini-computer. With red and green lights twinkling, it sits modestly behind the reception desk of the Consumer Affairs office complex, working 24 hours a day, seven days a week in the department’s offices in the lower level of the county’s Hall of Administration downtown.

“It’s the best bargain in the basement,” says Herrera. “The telephone system is free, easy to use and always open.”

“It’s very dependable--hasn’t broken down at all--and it has freed the staff to stop being robots,” says Bissell. “The big advantage is that the callers are getting information that is most often requested in a concise and consistent way.”

Herrera says the first-anniversary statistics are rewarding--the calls processed by the department have jumped from 5,000 a month to about 14,000.

“We know that the demand is there,” he says, “and it’s encouraging for us to have a system that can meet it.” But don’t wait until you’re stuck in one of these dilemmas to ask for help, advises the department staff. Consumers can also use the service for preventive advice.