Oxnard Businesses Urged to Use GTE Rival AT & T
Oxnard’s business community welcomed GTE California with open arms in March when the telephone company announced that it was converting the never-used Chevron USA building into a customer-service center that would bring hundreds of jobs to the city.
But the Oxnard Chamber of Commerce is urging its members to give their long-distance and local toll-call business to a GTE rival, AT & T.
As far as Thousand Oaks-based GTE is concerned, the long-distance business is no loss. The company doesn’t carry those calls. But, along with AT & T, MCI and numerous other companies, it will begin vying for toll-call revenues when the toll service is decontrolled Jan. 1.
Don Facciano, the Oxnard chamber’s executive director, has sent a letter to members saying the group has formed “a new alliance with a company we should all feel proud to be associated with: AT & T.” He wrote that the deal, called Profit by Association, will offer members special discounts on business long-distance services, including toll calls.
According to the letter, AT & T will offer members rates about 50% lower than they now pay on toll calls in the Greater Los Angeles Area. Profit by Association will give members another 5% discount, Facciano wrote.
“Not only does AT & T provide the best quality, highest reliability, fastest call completion time, and round-the-clock service and support, they reward your loyalty with no-cost Value-Added programs that enhance your operations and improve your bottom line.”
GTE spokesman Larry Cox says he’s surprised that GTE, the main telephone utility in Oxnard, didn’t get an equal boost from the chamber. “Certainly, our new center will be a big plus for the city’s economy,” he said. “As for rates, we’re offering business customers plans that are at least as reasonable as AT & T’s.”
Cox says GTE’s new center, which will consolidate work formerly done at a number of offices throughout Southern California, will employ 500 workers by the end of December. “We’ll probably have 800 people there by the end of next year,” Cox added. “People laid off at other sites will get a chance to transfer there, but I expect we’ll be hiring several hundred people to work in Oxnard.”
Facciano, who formerly was manager of the Sears, Roebuck store in Oxnard, said there’s a simple reason why he bypassed GTE’s toll-call program. “They haven’t made us a pitch. AT & T did.”
