House Committee OKs Bill to Fight ‘Slamming’

Telephone customers would be better protected from having their long-distance companies switched without their permission under a bill sent to the House on Thursday.

The House Commerce Committee approved the bill on a voice vote without dissent. The Senate has passed a different version of the bill, but it is uncertain whether Congress will act this year on a final bill to combat “slamming.”

Slamming, the unauthorized switching of a person’s long-distance carrier, is among the biggest sources of telecommunications complaints to regulators and is already illegal.

The House bill would act to prevent the practice from happening in the first place.

The bill would authorize the Federal Communications Commission, after consulting with the Federal Trade Commission and the telephone industry, to come up with a code that companies would voluntarily follow to combat slamming.

The code would call on companies that slam consumers to reimburse them for unauthorized charges, something the FCC has been pushing.

It also would have companies verify their customers’ selected long-distance provider, notify customers when their long-distance company has been switched and bar companies from “negative option marketing,” in which a customer’s service is automatically switched unless he specifically tells the company not to change it.

“They can either police themselves through a consensus code of conduct, or if they choose not to, they can suffer the consequences of tough FCC regulation,” said one of the bill’s authors, Rep. W.J. “Billy” Tauzin (R-La.).

MCI WorldCom Inc. and other phone companies said they like the voluntary approach.

An earlier version of the House bill would have imposed tough anti-slamming FCC regulations on the companies.

The bill sent to the House on Thursday also would remove requirements aimed at cracking down on “spamming,” or sending customers unsolicited commercial e-mail messages. The provisions had been attacked by the bill’s supporters as being too weak and its opponents as being too tough.