Learn the Rates Before Using a Calling Card

The rules for cost-effective use of telephone calling cards have changed, and those who don’t keep up with those trends--like Tony Nino of Altadena--can find themselves hit with enormous charges.

Nino’s story illustrates the mistakes a customer can fall into in the new age of phone deregulation. But it also may show that persistence can ultimately knock a little off even the highest charges.

Nino, a 30-year AT&T; customer, arranged for his daughter, Lauren Marks-Nino, a student in New York, to call an AT&T; access number to place calls on his Pacific Bell calling card.

He says the AT&T; customer representative never told him what an AT&T; spokesman emphasized to me this past week: This was absolutely the most expensive way to make calls.

So Lauren ran up charges for 1,996 minutes of “AT&T; calls made with a non-AT&T; card,” totaling $2,909.10 on Nino’s July and August bills. Lengthy calls were billed at about $1 a minute and one-minute calls cost him $5.88 each.

Lauren was on the telephone more than five hours a day during this period--much of the time because of a romantic relationship, sometimes to call home.

Had Lauren been given her own calling card for calls to her boyfriend and placed her calls home on an 800 line that Nino easily could have acquired, the charges would have been far, far less.

Nino has pleaded with various AT&T; service reps to agree to “re-rate” all of his daughter’s calls at 25 cents a minute, claiming he was misled about their cost.

I examined the issue by talking with Mark Siegel, a spokesman for AT&T; at its headquarters in Basking Ridge, N.J.; with Edward Ticktin, a Thousand Oaks telephone agent whose expertise I respect; and with John Britton, chief California spokesman for PacBell, as well as Nino and his daughter.

Siegel insisted, and Ticktin agreed, that the initial AT&T; rep was behaving legally in not telling Nino that the cost of Lauren’s calls would be prohibitive.

But between legality and advisability of particular conduct, there is often a big difference.

Ticktin said of Nino: “He was naive to assume that because he was a 30-year AT&T; customer that AT&T; would be his friend.

“Did they have an obligation to give him their least expensive rate? Probably not. Should they have told him this was a bad idea? Probably, they should have.”

Nino said, at one point, “We called PacBell to cancel our old calling card and have them issue us a new one. . . . The PacBell representative informed us that our problems with AT&T;, while extreme, were not unique . . . that AT&T;’s procedures require that their personnel not offer reduced charge plans unless there is a specific request for that particular plan. He suggested that perhaps AT&T; doesn’t promote its own 25-cent/minute calling card because it is double the price of many of the calling cards on the market.”

PacBell spokesman Britton questioned whether it was appropriate for the PacBell rep to make such statements about AT&T;, a competitor.

But Britton added, “People need to be absolutely careful these days in using calling cards. It used to be, you could place calls by accessing a long distance carrier and have them charged to your PacBell calling card without excess charges. That is no longer the case. Now you often pay $4.99 right away, and 89 cents more per minute.”

The right procedure now, he explained, if you have a PacBell calling card, is to dial the PacBell access number, 1-800-522-2020, and only then use the calling card number. That way you will be billed at PacBell calling card rates.

I wonder if these are details the average customer knows.

AT&T;’s Siegel said he appreciated many do not know, but he noted that, although nearly the first half of Lauren’s calls were billed July 28, Nino did not contact AT&T; to question the charges until Sept. 9, after receiving an Aug. 28 bill containing many more of Lauren’s calls.

“For two months, he had gotten clear and vivid indication of the size of the bills,” Siegel said. “Why didn’t he call us sooner?”

I questioned Nino on that point. He explained that he frequently throws incoming bills into a basket by the door and doesn’t pay them, or even read them, for a month or more, and that was the case with these.

In view of all the late charges these days adversely affecting people’s credit scores, this is probably not a sound practice.

In this case, Siegel said that, in considering Nino’s request for a re-rating of Lauren’s charges, AT&T; would be willing to re-rate the August charges, but not the July ones. He said that by not calling until Sept. 9, Nino, in effect, accepted the July charges.

A condition Siegel said AT&T; would impose before going even that far was that Nino obtain an AT&T; calling card.

Siegel suggested that AT&T; felt Nino, an advertising man, could afford some heavy charges, and he implied that if the customer were less prosperous, AT&T; would have considered this case differently.

My feeling about that is that, in such matters, the rich should not be soaked with charges that wouldn’t be billed to the poor.

I asked Nino Tuesday whether he would accede to AT&T;’s condition for re-rating the August calls.

“This is blackmail,” he answered. “I have absolutely no intention of going back to AT&T.;”

But, in the meantime, Nino had again called AT&T; customer reps to check the status of his account, and this time was informed he had been issued a $1,315.36 credit, and a calling card he didn’t ask for, and doesn’t intend to accept.

Has AT&T; relented, I asked Siegel. He checked, and found it had. He said AT&T; had decided to re-rate, to the 25-cent-a-minute rate, the most expensive of Lauren’s calls, without posing any conditions. Still, he said, Nino owes the remaining $1,593.74. “We do expect payment on that,” he said.

It sounds as if AT&T; is not entirely consistent in all this.

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Ken Reich can be contacted with your accounts of true consumer adventure at (213) 237-7060 or by e-mail at ken.reich@latimes.com.