Pacific Bell to Face Fines for Poor Service
Pacific Bell will be fined $600,000 a month if it continues to provide poor residential repair service to California phone customers, an administrative law judge ruled Friday.
The San Francisco-based phone company’s service record has declined dramatically since its 1997 buyout by SBC Communications Inc., in violation of an agreement the companies signed with the state Public Utilities Commission to get approval for the deal, according to the decision.
The ruling, handed down late Friday by PUC administrative law judge Karen Jones, is a victory for the Office of Ratepayer Advocates (ORA), an independent consumer advocacy arm of the PUC. ORA filed a complaint against PacBell last November accusing the phone company of violating its promise to maintain or improve customer service for five years after the SBC takeover.
PacBell, which provides local phone service for much of the state, agreed to the customer service requirement to gain state approval of the SBC deal. PacBell and San Antonio,-based SBC announced their merger proposal on April 1, 1996, and the buyout was completed a year later.
Figures on file with federal regulators show that PacBell took an average of 29.3 hours to repair residential outages in 1996. The figure has been higher every year since then, peaking in 1998. Last year, the average was 42.5 hours.
In its defense, PacBell argued that the merger condition should apply only to a narrow set of state service rules and that the company has complied with those.
The company also said ORA took its data out of context, and that the figures don’t reflect extenuating circumstances, such as weather-related outages.
“We haven’t totally absorbed the decision, but it’s frustrating to us to be singled out to have to meet standards that other companies don’t have to face,” PacBell spokesman John Britton said. He said PacBell officials have not yet decided whether to appeal the decision or seek a rehearing.
Jones, the presiding officer in the case, rejected all of PacBell’s arguments, finding that the phone company’s repair service for residential customers has “worsened significantly” since 1996 in violation of its agreement with the state.
Repairs are of particular importance to customers without phone service, Jones said in her ruling. She found that PacBell’s violations “could result in physical harm to Pacific’s ratepayers,” noting that customers who had service outages, on average, were without a dial tone more than 13 hours longer in 2000 than in 1996.
“If customers have no dial tone, they do not have access to 911 service or to other emergency contacts,” Jones wrote in her decision. She ordered PacBell to submit monthly reports on repair service, and fines of $600,000 each month if repair times exceed 1996 levels. If the maximum fine is implemented, it would amount to less than 0.1% of SBC’s monthly profit in 2000.
Britton said fines won’t be necessary. “We feel that we’re meeting those standards today,” he said.
Jones also found that PacBell is not informing its customers of their right to a four-hour service appointment when their presence is required.
When customers call PacBell’s repair line, the computerized scheduling system does not offer or mention four-hour appointment windows, and instead automatically schedules eight-hour appointments.
PacBell tells customers about the four-hour service window in periodic bill inserts and in the phone services section of the phone book white pages. The company said it complies with the four-hour requirement.
She ordered PacBell to alter its repair line scripts to “expressly alert the caller before an appointment is made, that a four-hour appointment is available.”
