SBC PacBell Sued Over Prodigy Service Fee
A consumer group sued SBC Pacific Bell on Tuesday, accusing the state’s largest phone company of illegally charging customers for Prodigy Internet services they never ordered.
The lawsuit, brought by the Utility Consumers’ Action Network, seeks an immediate halt to the improper billing as well as refunds to customers who unwittingly paid the charges. It is unclear how many customers are affected.
SBC Pacific Bell, which recently changed its name to reflect its ownership by SBC Communications Inc., issued a statement pledging to remove the charges for affected customers.
“SBC Pacific Bell is committed to making sure our customers’ bills are accurate,” the statement said. “Customers can be assured that any inadvertent discrepancies will be corrected.”
This latest complaint against PacBell came on the same day state regulators approved a judge’s ruling that the phone company violated its promise to maintain or improve customer service after its takeover by San Antonio-based SBC. As part of the decision, regulators said PacBell will face fines if the violations continue.
SBC PacBell maintains that its customer service has improved in the years since the merger and has been in compliance for several months.
The phone company was ordered to revise repair service recordings to more explicitly notify customers of their right to a four-hour window for service calls.
Neither development is good news for SBC PacBell, which is trying to convince the state Public Utilities Commission that it is in the public interest to approve the company’s expansion into California’s long-distance market. Opponents of SBC PacBell’s long-distance request have pointed to repeated consumer abuses by the phone company.
UCAN, the San Diego-based consumer group, said it filed the Prodigy complaint in San Diego Superior Court after it became clear that SBC PacBell and Prodigy were resisting customer refunds and not notifying customers of the problem even after receiving a rash of complaints. .
“Pacific Bell hasn’t been forthcoming about what is going on,” said Michael Shames, UCAN’s executive director. “We want the company to stop charging people for Prodigy if they haven’t used Prodigy.”
Prodigy, now a sister company to SBC PacBell, is slowly becoming the phone company’s preferred Internet service provider. However, Shames said the company unilaterally signed many other customers up for Prodigy starting in October, after sending a Prodigy promotional letter that many threw away as junk mail.
Affected customers were billed 50 cents on two consecutive statements, then charged an ongoing monthly fee of $14.95 for the Prodigy service. Shames said the customers’ existing Internet services accounts were not disrupted in the process.
