The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall.
Radio call, Steve.
And a very good evening to one and all.
The program is Off the Hook.
This is Emanuel Goldstein, and during this hour we're going to prove a couple of things.
We're going to prove that it's now no longer necessary for you to call a number to get
ripped off.
You can get ripped off just by picking up your receiver.
We'll show you how easy it is.
Stay tuned.
The number you have reached has been disconnected.
The number you have reached has been disconnected.
The number you have reached has been disconnected.
The number you have reached has been disconnected.
I give you my affection and I give you my time.
Time to get a connection on the telephone line.
You're so close, but far away.
I call you up all night and day.
I give you my affection and I give you my time.
Time to get a connection on the telephone line.
You're so close, but far away.
I call you up all night and day.
You're so close, but far away.
I call you up all night and day.
The number you have reached has been disconnected.
Well, we come on here week after week and we talk about new forms of technology, new
forms of technological abuses and ways in which we, the consumers, are affected by all
this and ways in which people that don't really understand it all that much might be victimized.
Tonight is a prime example of that, and yes, we are going to name some names and provide
you with some first-hand documentation and evidence of just what's going on.
Now, there are many automated systems out there.
We come across them in increasing numbers as the years go by.
It used to be that directory assistance was read to you by some old lady in some part
of the country, but now it's read to you by computer.
It used to be that you got intercept operators that told you the number you have reached
has been disconnected, but now you get a machine that tells you all the information you want
to know, and now you get automated collect calls.
Automated collect calls are those creatures that sometimes give you a call and ask you
if you want to accept a call from somebody else, except there are no humans involved,
except for, presumably, the human on the other end.
I can't think of a better place for the record to skip.
All right, enough of that.
If you look at the CoCod Corner article in the current edition of 2600, you'll see that
some hackers uncovered some rather interesting things by jumping into the trash bins.
This is something called trashing, and it's a way of getting information, a way of finding
out secret things sometimes, bits of information that companies throw out, and sometimes in
those bits of information are things that they really wish we hadn't found.
One of them is a letter, a letter from a CoCod representative.
Now, I should explain what CoCods are for people that might not know.
When you walk down the street and you see a pay phone, but it doesn't look like a normal
pay phone, like a regular Bell operating company pay phone, for instance, New Jersey
Bell or New York Telephone, those kind of pay phones.
If it's a crazy-looking one, then that's a CoCod.
It stands for a customer-owned, coin-operated telephone.
Now, they're not all bad, and I don't want to say that they are all evil creatures, but
a lot of them are being abused, and not being abused by the end users, namely customers
like you and me, but being abused by the people who run them, who want to rip people off.
Okay, and using CoCods is one way of getting ripped off, and also using alternative operator
services, which are the long-distance companies that both CoCods and regular pay phones can
also use.
For instance, if you dial zero plus a long-distance call, depending on what the default carrier
is for that particular pay phone, whether it's a normal telephone or a CoCod, you might
get ripped off if you use the wrong company.
So that's something that we'll warn you about.
But in any event, this letter came from one of those representatives of a CoCod company,
and it was to a customer, meaning somebody that runs a pay phone himself, not the customer
that actually puts money into the phone, the person that is renting or leasing the pay
phone and hopes to get people to put money into it.
It's a letter to that person explaining how the operator-assisted calls work, and basically
what this letter admits to is that if you place a collect call on this system, and the
person you call does not say anything or does not hang up the phone within five seconds,
then the call will automatically be accepted.
And that means that if you leave your answering machine on, or your fax machine picks up,
or if your little child picks up, or whatever, it's now possible for you to get a phone bill
simply for picking up your phone.
It used to be you had to say, yes, of course I'll accept, or words to that effect, and
the operators were very careful to make sure that it was the person on the called end saying
yes, and not the person who was calling that says, yes, I'll accept, because that happens
too sometimes.
Anyway, I'd like to read some excerpts from this letter to point out pretty clearly where
this company stands.
This letter is to explain how our pay phones work with regards to store and forward technology.
We refer to this type of phone as an Intellistar pay phone.
The caller has many choices in placing collect and credit card calls.
They are prompted as we will show how to place these calls and how these calls are billed.
The caller may use 10XXX, 950 numbers, and 800 numbers.
It's not necessary to really know what all that is, except meaning that they can dial
these numbers, 800 numbers in particular, or operator-assisted numbers to use the long-distance
carrier of their choice.
Now, in addition to these choices, we have programmed a speed dial number, star 3, to
reach AT&T, which is very unusual.
Most coca companies don't do that, so that's something to their credit.
A caller is able to reach AT&T by dialing 00, again something very few co-cots allow,
or 102880, and I have yet to see a co-cot that allows that.
Other long-distance carriers have similar 10XXX numbers for their cardholders to access
their networks, ensuring freedom of choice on our pay phones.
All phones have labels instructing customers how to dial in a conventional manner.
Now, we would like to take you through each type of 0-plus call that can be made on our
phones.
There are three types.
The first one is called 0-minus, which means the customer only dialed 0, 0-plus-7, which
means 0 plus 7 digits, usually a local call, or 0-plus-10, which in most cases is interstate.
When a call, and this is quoting from the letter, when a call is placed by dialing 0,
local or toll, the customer will hear the familiar bong, followed by the name Integritel.
This is known as branding.
This is to identify the billing company, and the dialogue is as follows.
This is what the person placing the call will hear, and in fact, we will hear some demonstrations
of this ourselves.
This is your operator.
Please enter your calling card now, or to place a collect call, dial 1.
For operator assistance, please dial 0.
If the calling card number is entered, the phone will say, thank you for using Integritel.
The call will be completed and charged to the card holder by Integritel, and if the
call is a collect call, the caller's name is recorded and then played back to the terminating
number.
The call party answers the call and hears, hello, you have a collect call from, and then
it plays your name.
To accept this call, press 1 or hang on.
Those are the key words right there.
To accept this call, press 1 or hang on.
To refuse, dial 0.
This message will repeat again.
If the call is accepted by dialing 1, the telephone will state, thank you for using
Integritel.
In the case of collect calls, the call party is charged for the call, obviously.
If the call party is equipped with a rotary type phone, the call will be accepted after
5 seconds.
This is an absurdity right here, because obviously they don't know if you have a rotary phone
or not.
So basically, you can wipe out the whole first part of that sentence, if the call party is
equipped with a rotary type phone, and simply keep the last part as fact.
The call will be accepted after 5 seconds.
So what we have now is a service that calls people and assumes after 5 seconds if they
don't hang up or dial 0 on a touch-tone phone, that they mean to accept the call.
Never before has anything so blatant actually been tried.
And it's interesting to see how such a thing will be looked upon by the American consumer.
Now, how will you see this?
Well, you'll see it as a weird page on your phone bill.
How many of you have gotten weird pages on your phone bills?
I've gotten plenty of weird pages on my phone bill.
And every time this happens, it's a collect call from somebody.
And I never accept collect calls.
So I ask them, how can I have a collect call on my phone bill if I never accept collect calls?
And invariably, the response is, well, sir, you must have accepted it.
Do you have a dog or a cat or somebody that might have accepted a call?
Or could somebody else have done it?
Or could you be crazy and just be lying?
All these kind of things.
And you have to go through the third degree.
Sometimes they go through your past records and say, well, you said this last month,
and now you're saying this this month.
And it can be horrible.
But it's gotten even worse.
It's gotten even worse because it's becoming almost impossible to do anything about it.
Now, the first thing I'd like to play for people here is the sound that you get
if you're lucky enough to be home when one of these calls comes through.
And I take it a lot of people leave their answering machines on.
And if you're unfortunate enough to do that,
your answering machine might very well accept a collect call for you without your knowledge until you get the bill.
If you are home, though, you might hear something like this.
This is a collect call from.
To accept this call, dial 1.
To receive, dial 0.
Or, a lot.
Now, that was from an Integritel pay phone.
We left the name blank on that particular one,
but the name would be filled in where it said you have a collect call from X.
And that one gave you the option of hanging up.
But if you did not hang up, if you stayed on, you got connected.
Now, if you were to get this on your phone bill,
of course you would want to call up and complain and get it off your phone bill.
Now, let's have a scenario here.
Let's say that we've just gotten a phone bill,
and we're mad as hell,
and we want to call the company and have it taken off.
And let's say, for the sake of argument,
that we're calling from a rotary phone.
Okay, let's call Integritel.
We have the 800 number, and we have our rotary phone.
It's going to take us a little while to dial it,
but all right, we've finished dialing.
Here we go.
The customer is always right.
An Integritel ring. Here we go.
Hello, you have reached Integritel's customer service line.
All of our customer service representatives are busy at this time.
You have reached an automated system designed to take your information
in place of a customer service representative.
You will be asked to enter information using your touchtone telephone.
If you have a touchtone telephone, please press 1 now.
Well, I don't have a touchtone phone, so I guess I'll just sit here and wait.
I'm sorry. This system is designed for use with touchtone telephones only.
Please hang up and redial 1-800-736-7500 at a later time.
Now, if you can imagine the utter gall of a customer service representative
Now, if you can imagine the utter gall of a company to hang up on people
that don't have touchtone phones.
That is what we are dealing with here.
If you refuse to go out and get a touchtone phone,
then you won't even be able to communicate your problem.
And let me tell you, calling Integritel at that 800 number,
you will get that message more times than not.
It's very, very difficult to get through to a customer service representative.
You are given that option and that option alone.
There's not another number to call. You can't be put on hold.
You have to do it their way or not at all.
And this is after you've been charged for something that you don't want.
Alright, but let's say that we've decided to play their game
and that we've gone out and we've gotten a touchtone phone.
Alright, should be no problem now.
Hello, you have reached Integritel's customer service line.
All of our customer service representatives are busy at this time.
You have reached an automated system designed to take your information
in place of a customer service representative.
You will be asked to enter information using your touchtone telephone.
If you have a touchtone telephone, please press 1 now.
Please follow the simple instructions using your telephone
and we will contact you within 3 business days.
If you know your billing number located at the top of your statement,
press 1 now. Otherwise, press 2.
Well, we looked around for a little bit, couldn't find it, so we pressed 2.
Please enter the 10-digit phone number where our customer service representative
can contact you between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m.
And we entered the number for $2,600, so they could call us back.
You entered 5-1-6-7-5-1-2-6-0-0.
To confirm, press 1. To re-enter, press 2.
If this contact number belongs to a residence, press 1.
If a business, press 2.
Thank you for calling the Integritel customer service line.
A customer service representative will contact you within 3 business days.
To ensure prompt service, please have your statement available
when our customer service representative returns your call.
Well, we stayed by the phone for 3 business days with our Integritel bill in hand
and waited for the call, which never came.
Actually, that's wrong. It did come, but it took 2 weeks.
It took 2 weeks to come, and it actually came in the form of a message
left on an answering machine, so we had to call them back.
And guess what? We had to call the same 800 number.
But this time, instead of getting the friendly lady saying
you had to enter all this information with your touch-tone phone,
we got something else.
Thank you for calling Integritel's customer service department.
Integritel will be closed today for routine computer maintenance.
Please call back Friday, March the 13th,
and a representative will be happy to assist you.
Be on the line.
It doesn't take long to get extremely frustrated
and start taking it out on the people you care most about.
That's just what these kind of companies will do to you.
And Integritel, in case people are curious, is located in San Jose, California,
and their real phone number, where a human being will answer,
is 408-296-8959.
It doesn't stop there, folks. It gets worse.
First of all, let's hear how a real phone company does it.
And I complain all the time about New York Telephone,
but at least when they rip you off, they let you know they're doing it.
This is how a New York Telephone collect call sounds
to the person making the call.
New York Telephone.
If you want to place a collect call, dial 1-1.
To charge this call to your calling card, dial your calling card number.
To place a person-to-person call, dial 0 for the operator.
We chose collect.
At the tone, click on the operator.
At the tone, please say your name.
And we said Emanuel Goldstein here.
Please wait to see if the charges for this call will be accepted.
Now, what we did in this particular case was pick a phone number that did not ring
to see how the phone company would react to this.
Would they be confused?
Would they try to play a message for somebody that obviously wasn't there?
This system is much more intelligent than the ones that the Colcats use.
It uses voice recognition and can tell if a recording is playing and not a human being.
So this machine was not fooled.
Take a listen.
Your call could not be completed.
Please hang up and try your call later.
And that's the way it goes if you try to fool the New York telephone system.
They'll also give you that message if you call a busy signal
or if you call a phone that does not pick up.
Now, we tried this calling and answering machine
to see if the answering machine might inadvertently accept the Colcat call.
And I can tell you right now it does not.
In fact, what you get is an amusing comedy of errors.
As one machine talks to another, you'll hear the answering machine pick up.
You'll hear the New York telephone computer talking to the answering machine,
the answering machine listening to the New York telephone computer,
and eventually thanking the New York telephone system for calling and hanging up
and New York telephone giving up at that point.
Hi, we all stepped out for a moment.
Please leave a message and we'll get right back to you.
Emanuel Goldstein.
Press 1 now or after the tone, say yes.
You have a collect call from...
Emanuel Goldstein.
If you would like to receive this message,
press 1 now or after the tone, say yes.
You have a collect call from...
Emanuel Goldstein.
Emanuel Goldstein.
If you will pay for the call, press 1 now or after the tone, say yes.
If you want to refuse the charges, hang up now.
For operator assistance, please stay on the line.
Please hold for operator assistance.
Now, while this might sound a bit confusing and maybe even annoying,
nobody got hurt.
Nobody got billed for something that they did not want to accept.
Enter into the picture a company called Amnex.
Amnex is like Integritel in that you'll find them on various co-cuts if you dial 0+.
They have their own carrier access code.
In fact, you can try what we did yourself from your home phone by dialing 10730.
10730 plus 0 plus the 10-digit number or 7-digit number that you want to dial,
and you can play the same games that we play.
However, if you try to select 10730 as your long-distance carrier dialing option,
you'll get an artificial error message.
I'd like to play that for you so you can hear what one of those sounds like.
We're sorry. You have dialed an invalid authorization code.
Please hang up the phone and try your call again. Thank you.
Now, anyone worth their salt in the phone company can tell you that that's not a real phone company recording.
That's generated by a company to try to convince you that you haven't actually reached a number that you called.
It's kind of irrelevant to this story,
but it's interesting because it shows that they're not really interested in getting people as long-distance customers.
Rather, they want to snag the O plus market.
Now, let's say you make a collect call on this service, just like we did with New York Telephone.
This is what you will hear.
Dial 1 for collect or hold for an operator.
We dialed 1 for collect.
At the time, please state your name.
Yo, it's Emmanuel.
Your call is being processed.
Now, at this time, the other phone in the office that we were calling began to ring,
but this is not the ring. The phone had not yet even begun to ring when these strange sounds were heard.
What they are doing is playing a recording of a ring and trying to convince you that the phone is actually ringing.
You can even hear the edits.
Eventually...
The phone did start ringing. We picked it up, and within 5 seconds, we found the two lines were connected.
The person making the call is thanked for using Amnix,
and the two parties are happily connected together, even though it was never desired that way in the first place.
Now, what does the person picking up the phone hear?
Well, we have an answer to that.
Hello, this is the Amnix Automated Operator. I have a collect call from...
Emmanuel Goldstein.
If you do not wish to accept the charges, please hang up.
Hello?
Hello.
Did you accept the collect call from me?
Why, no.
Well, I find it hard to imagine why I'm speaking to you then.
Well, I was just sitting here, and the phone rang.
And I picked it up, and I said hello.
And the next thing I knew, some strange sound was coming from the other end.
I guess it was a computer or something.
And I just waited, and all of a sudden, here we are talking.
So, you expect me to believe that I just called you to collect,
and you did not accept the charges, and yet we were connected anyway.
Unbelievable. What is this world coming to?
Well, I sure hope you have that on tape, because I don't think anyone's going to believe you.
As a matter of fact, I just happen to have a tape recorder right here.
Well, gosh darn it all, isn't that amazing.
Now, a tip to you folks at home, if something like this should happen to you,
and you wish to experiment like this, don't stay on the phone too long,
because it's awful hard to contest a collect call that lasts longer than a couple of minutes.
So, we're going to hang up now and go back to the studio.
Well, we have the tape for evidence.
That's right. I'm going to use it too.
And that is what happens.
If you stay on the phone for too long.
Note that the company did not warn you that if you stayed on the phone, you would accept the call.
It said, hang up if you want to refuse, and that was all it said.
Now, in case folks want to call Amnex, you won't get their real phone number unless you dig around a bit.
They're in Orlando, Florida, and they can be reached at 407-246-1234.
They're very quick to refer you to their legal department.
They have a big legal department, but when we tried to talk to them,
all of their representatives were tied up, no doubt, by angry customers.
They're in Connecticut, 203-322-7300.
We did try talking to Amnex. We did try talking to Integritel.
We received no phone calls back from them.
However, we did talk to Mark Green.
Mark Green is the Commissioner of Consumer Affairs in New York City.
We've just heard a demonstration of one of these automated pay phones calling somebody,
and the person obviously not accepting the phone call, yet the phone call was connected,
and obviously billing will begin at some point, and the person will receive a bill for this call.
Have you been aware of such things in the past, and what can a consumer do about this?
Well, my only experience with that are the famous, infamous 900 numbers,
where they don't tell you until the very end that there's an exorbitant, extraordinary charge per minute.
This is absolutely outrageous.
You know, when I was in law school, I learned offer and acceptance.
A consumer in the marketplace can reject an offer or accept it and then pay.
With these automatic new technologies, they can reach into our home,
and before we're aware of it, we have accepted their offer unknowingly
and are paying vast amounts, really unwillingly and involuntarily.
I don't know that we need new legislation to prohibit it.
In my mind, it's per se deceptive because you have never consciously accepted their offer to start paying money.
But once you do accept it by paying without questioning,
it sort of becomes the standard and a lot harder to break out of. Is that right?
Sure, but right now, why should anyone presume that not objecting in the first five seconds is acceptance?
There's no cultural habit to do that.
If somehow 100 million American homes were educated overnight,
then unless you object that instant, your bill, well, that would be different.
But obviously that's not going to happen. That is not true.
I think it's inherently deceptive to bill somebody when they don't say no right away.
There's a couple of reasons I can think of.
One is obviously sheer greed, but another would be they don't have the technology to have voice recognition like New York Telephone does,
and they can only say press 1 to accept, and I believe the other option is 0 to reject or hang on if you want to accept.
The reason they say that, at least this is what they claim,
is so that rotary callers will have the privilege of accepting a collect call.
So it's kind of we have to feel sorry for them because they don't have the technology to make something voice activated.
So the rest of us with our fax machines and answering machines that pick up the phone and keep talking,
unknowingly accepting a collect call, we have to suffer.
They created the technology. They better come up with a technological fix.
You cannot expect individual consumers to pay because the people who invented this technology say,
oh, we can't find a solution. They came up with the device. They better come up with the solution.
Does Consumer Affairs get many complaints about CoCOTS and their related companies?
Well, I don't know how you define many.
A little over a year ago, we got enough complaints to begin an investigation,
and we found that the good news of CoCOTS, so-called customer-owned, coin-operated telephones,
is that they increase access by two phones in places that otherwise wouldn't have them.
Poor communities, for example, hospitals, for example, where for whatever reason New York chose not to go.
The bad news is they carry huge hidden charges.
Often, we found in our study, violate the Public Service Commission rules that require them to disclose their rates,
to have an access code so you can find an operator to learn their rates, an access code to get to New York Telephone if you want,
a phone number to complain to the Public Service Commission if you want.
Ninety-one percent of the CoCOTS violated the Public Service Commission rules in one way or another.
These were, we thought, instruments of deception, and it led to thousands of customers literally getting fleeced by phone.
We blew the whistle on it.
The good news is the industry then created a trade association to weed out the bad apples,
which was giving the whole industry a rotten reputation.
Consequently, the leading firm in the industry, USC, in Westchester, went bankrupt
because they were by far and away the number one object of the complaints that we received.
Ninety-five percent of the companies, though, were violating the law in some way.
Ninety-one percent.
Ninety-one percent. That's incredible.
And even beyond the literal violation of Public Service Commission rules,
which the Public Service Commission wasn't enforcing because they had too little staff, so we did it.
We brought 114 counts of deception against these phone companies, which motivated them to start complying with the law.
But then there is the lawful deception.
For example, New York Telephone has a famous design that most of us recognize.
It's white lettering against a blue background.
Lo and behold, these co-cots have a blue lettering against a white background.
And to all but the trained eye, you can easily think the phone you're using is New York Tele,
when, in fact, it's a co-cot charging not, let's say, $2 for a 10-minute call, but $10 for a 10-minute call.
And the only way you know is two, three months later when your bill tells you.
That's wrong.
That's true, and there are quite a few phone companies there.
When you get the operator, they have such names as The Phone Company or AT&D or something like that
to fool you into thinking that you're getting a real phone company on the other end.
And they know what they're doing.
They know if they reverse white on blue to blue on white that the eye will tell the brain,
oh, good old Ma Bell, New York Telephone, when, in fact, the rates are far higher.
And there's no way the discerning consumer can easily tell,
with the result that right now the best course of action for consumers is eternal skepticism.
Always look at the phone and study whether it's New York Tele.
I'm not endorsing New York Tele, but at least we know their rates because they're published and they're modest.
If it's a co-cut, well, you can use it, but you may want to look around for a cheaper competitor within sight.
And if you use it and you use an operator to make the call, you should first check on the charge
so you don't get hit with $10 for a $10 local call with operator assistance.
Well, I should point out, though, that with New York Telephone pay phones,
it is possible to select one of the sleazy companies as a zero-plus carrier,
so you could still get ripped off that way.
Right.
So people should beware of that.
That is supposedly carried at the bottom of every New York Telephone pay phone.
But is there any kind of an acid test that consumers can run to see if something is a co-cut or a real phone?
Well, you know, the best solution here is the proposal of the New York City Office of Telecommunications and Energy,
designed by Commissioner Bill Squadron.
He wanted a registration system so all co-cut phones, one-fourth of the pay phones on our streets are co-cuts,
would be registered so you know where they are, you know who owns them, and you know how to complain.
Until we have that, customers out there, listeners, should look at the phone and see if it's New York Tele or another firm.
If it's another firm, make sure they have a phone number so you can reach them
if you have a complaint about your bill or a complaint about the phone.
And the placard on these phones, as a result of our investigation,
now are supposed to have either the rates or a number you can access to tell you the rates for your prospective call.
If they don't have that, walk away.
If you can avoid making that call, walk away, because you're basically playing roulette,
and it's a game you'll lose if you're not aware of the phone company or the likely rates.
They're also supposed to have phone books, is that right?
Telephone books, because they don't provide free information like New York Telephone pay phones.
To the best of my memory, they're not required to have phone books for the following reason.
We can't ignore we're dealing with New York City.
This is not in the middle of a rural town in Minnesota.
There's a lot of vandalism in New York.
A very high percentage of the phones are out of service at any time because they're not vandal-free.
And phone books are ripped up or ripped off.
And let's face it, it's rare that you cannot be assured of having a phone book every time you have a cold cut,
which is why the Public Service Commission requires a placard or access to an operator to give you the rates.
It's interesting because we were trying to discover the location of Amnex, which is one of the carriers,
and the operators that we were talking to said they weren't allowed to give out that information.
They weren't allowed to tell us where the company was headquartered.
We had to talk to a supervisor, and she wound up transferring us to another person that told us in hushed tones where they were.
It's in Florida, by the way.
But that kind of secrecy certainly doesn't make you feel too confident when you're talking to them,
and they certainly don't give you rates as easily as regular New York telephone or AT&T operators do.
That's ridiculous.
Why are there corporate CIAs?
If they're public entities taking our money in public places, on public streets, they certainly should tell you their rates.
This should not be a game of hide-and-seek.
If it is, the consumer will always lose.
Are you aware of cold cuts that are good deals?
Well, the answer is I don't keep a list of all the cold cut companies that I can then rate good and bad.
It's not my job.
I should stick to condemning and taking legal action against those that violate the law
or engage in deceptive advertising or practices.
I am pleased, however, that after I testified against the worst cold cuts at a city council hearing,
a couple of owners of some of the firms came up to me and congratulated me for my testimony,
and I said, well, gee, why?
And they said because we're good firms, it's a startup industry, and the buccaneers are giving us a bad name.
And so we are starting, as I mentioned, a trade association to weed out those that are hurting all of us.
So I don't have their names at my fingertips now during this conversation,
but I would urge people not to discriminate against all independent pay phones for the sins of some of them.
I like the idea that if New York Tel chooses not to go into certain places,
that smaller firms fulfilling these niche markets with different technologies flower.
That's the whole idea of the AT&T deregulation decision by Judge Green in 1984.
Still, when I first heard that there were going to be these different pay phones run by different companies,
I thought of price wars.
I thought they'd be undercutting each other.
Instead, they're tricking consumers into paying much more than what they'd expect to pay.
It didn't quite work out the way I expected it to.
Well, I think the reason we don't have price wars is that you rarely have phones next to each other that you can choose between.
In other words, if you have four barbershops next to each other, there may be a price war.
Four gas stations next to each other, you may have a price war.
Here, though, if you're in a hospital or a restaurant or a clothing store or in a street looking for a quick call,
you just use the instrument at hand since few people price compare when you think the difference is $1 or $1.20.
Convenience wins over cost.
However, if people take that attitude when they're making a longer operated assistance call,
don't complain when a couple months later you see a $6, $10, $20 bill on your phone bill.
For the people that know they're taking a risk, for the people that see that they're using a strange company and they don't really know anything about it,
I would have less sympathy for them.
But it's those people that get things on their bills and they have no idea how it got there.
For instance, Amnex has been widely reported for years not to have even checked calling card numbers.
They would take what looked like a regular telephone number and virtually any phone numbers after it.
And this has been tried because people have tried mixing up the numbers after the phone number.
And it would blanketly accept almost anything.
And, of course, it would bill to those numbers.
And the people who would wind up paying would oftentimes have no idea how those calls got there.
And they were probably banking on consumer acquiescence.
That is, some people raise a stink.
Most people don't.
Most people think if it's billed and it's computer type, well, it must be true.
And if you take that attitude, you'll lose more of your income than you should.
Well, now, how hard should it be for a consumer to get their money back?
Because for us to get credit on some collect calls that showed up on our phone bill, which we certainly didn't accept,
at first we used to have to go through New York Telephone.
And there must be one lady that works there because we always wound up talking to the same person.
And she'd argue.
She'd say, well, you know, you had one of these last month.
And, you know, I find it hard to believe that this could happen twice.
And you'd have to go through a real debate with her, but eventually you could win if you stuck to it.
That's been changed.
Now you have to call an 800 number that if you don't have a touchtone phone, you can't do anything with.
Because 95% of the time you get a recording saying enter all your information via touchtones.
And if you don't have a touchtone phone, it will hang up on you.
Now, what is a person to do at that point?
Not be happy.
It happens with any regularity.
Write your consumer affairs office.
But there's no legal requirement that a company, private company, have 220 or 200 people answering their complaint line.
Ideally, the marketplace would discriminate against firms that didn't respond well to complaints
because consumers would know not to use them.
But since these co-cots don't have insignia indicating which firm owns which one,
and since so many of them intentionally confuse themselves visually with New York telephone,
the consumer is really at sea.
This industry is like the steel industry in 1900, the television industry in 1940, the CD industry in 1980.
It's brand new.
And standards are being developed right now.
That's why a trade association with common criteria, a public service commission enforcing its rules,
ideally will enable us to have both more access at lower prices instead of more access at ripoff prices.
To the best of your knowledge, what are co-cots required to do?
Are they required to access certain phone numbers for free and provide certain services?
Well, co-cots, according to the public service commission rules, which have the effect of law,
are supposed to enable the caller, first, to reach a cheaper New York telephone line if they want.
They have to provide the cost of local calls after the initial five-minute period
when all phone calls are supposed to cost no more than a quarter.
After the first five minutes, they can charge whatever they want, but they should tell you.
Third, they have to have a toll-free number so you can obtain potential rates and surcharges before you make your call,
especially for collect credit card and third-party billing calls.
And finally and fourth, you should be able to get the public service commission number to register complaints if you want to make them.
Those four pieces of information help even the playing field between the technological marvel, that's the phone,
and the customer who may not know what they're doing.
Now, are they required to give access to 911?
That's interesting.
When we initially looked at it, they weren't.
And we started correspondence with them to encourage them to do that, because obviously in an emergency,
most everyone knows 911, but you know what?
Some people who are functionally illiterate, some tourists, certainly foreign tourists, may not know that.
And there should be something on the placard indicating emergency.
There are people who don't know 911.
Outraged consumers in New York City that feel they've been affected by this, who do they write to?
What do they do?
Well, if you think that you really have gotten a bill that's not your own,
or a huge bill that they never told you about and you couldn't find out about,
you can write to the Department of Consumer Affairs at 42 Broadway, 1004.
A year and a half ago, we did take the first action ever against deceptive practices by this industry,
and we want to continue to monitor it.
Or you can contact the Office of Telecommunications in New York City,
because they're the ones who legally can decide whether co-cops go on a public street or not,
because that's within their exact jurisdiction.
Mark Green is Commissioner of Consumer Affairs in New York City.
We also spoke with David Ruderman, a writer for 2600 Magazine,
who's had his eye on this kind of thing for quite some time.
Now, you had an interesting experience very recently
with something that makes the unauthorized collect call pale by comparison,
and it probably involved one of these companies as well.
What exactly happened?
Well, recently I got a phone call, and it was a recording.
From what purported to be an astrology company.
And I'm listening and listening, and waiting for the pitch.
I want to know, you know, what's in it for them.
And finally they say,
So if you would like your astrology told to you,
just say yes at the tone, and you'll be charged a certain amount per minute.
Do you have any idea how much that was?
I think it was something like $9.95.
$9.95 a minute?
Yeah.
So if you had stayed on the line, and presumably said yes,
but as we've seen from some of these companies, you don't even have to say yes.
You just stay on the line, that's enough.
You could have somehow racked up a phone bill of $9.95 a minute just by picking up your phone.
Yeah, that's true.
Now, to do this though, the company would have to have some way of being able to bill you, right?
Yeah, I was trying to figure that out.
I was thinking, how could they bill you for calling you?
They didn't know who I was, because you know, it's just a recording.
It's not as if they knew my name or my credit card number.
But they did know my phone number,
and the only people I know who can bill you for calling you would be a phone company of some sort.
So it had to be a phone company that was involved in this scam.
Unfortunately, I don't believe you got the actual name,
or maybe they never said the actual name of the phone company.
No, they never did.
They had it named something like Astrology Incorporated,
which doesn't sound like a phone company to me.
But I could imagine forming a phone company just for the simple profit-making pleasure of calling up people and collect.
Let me ask you, Dave.
What did you do when you heard that if you just said yes, you'd be charged $9.95 a minute?
Well, I was very curious, but I didn't really feel like paying for it, so I had to hang up.
And didn't go near the phone again for a few days.
It's amazing.
It used to be that you had to call a 900 number or a 540 number or one of those other exchanges that are kept secret to rack up huge phone bills.
Now, you can rack up huge phone bills by simply picking up your phone.
It's amazing what technology is bringing to us.
Now, you had another experience several months back with something similar.
Not quite the same, but a similar kind of a scam, right?
Well, I have gotten calls from...
See, I have two lines in my house, and I'm used to getting calls from machines all day long whenever I get home from work.
Machines are always calling you?
Yes.
And sometimes they'll call from one line to the other because the lines are in sequence.
So, it's like 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-5, it'll just keep going up and up until it finds some poor sucker.
And usually it's some insurance company or something like that, the kind of recording that says,
So, if you're interested, say so at the blank.
And then they record you.
But very often it's somebody who sounds like he's from a radio station, I'm afraid to say, about to give you a large prize.
He actually says,
You won this prize. I'm calling from W something or other.
And they actually give out their local name and address for their company.
But, of course, to claim the prize, you have to call up a 900 number or a 540 number.
It's usually, what do you win?
A genuine 35mm camera or one of those fake diamond rings that you see on TV a lot.
Right. Now, this is a different kind of a scam because you have to make a phone call to a particular number.
And it's a phone number.
And if you know what you're doing, you'll know that that particular phone number costs money.
But if you don't know, and there's really lots of valid reasons why you wouldn't,
for instance, if you were from out of town, you wouldn't know that this particular exchange is immensely expensive.
If you don't know, you'll rack up a huge bill.
But the idea is the same as the unauthorized collect call
and the fortune-telling scam that called you and wanted to charge $9.95 a minute.
It seems that consumers are increasingly being ripped off by these companies, these new companies.
Do you think there's something going on that has to do with, say, the breakup of the phone company?
Now, all of a sudden, we've unleashed this Pandora's box of evil companies.
Do you think this could have been stopped, or can it be stopped?
Oh, I think it might be hard to control without being fair.
Because I guess we have a lot of little companies out there
that are probably really providing phone service for people.
We have a lot of people who have now anyone can get a 900 number or an 800 number.
And that's all good.
But it really should be clear to people how much a phone call will cost
before they make any other decision.
I mean, having some recording coercing me into following the astrology
and then telling me I might be charged something if I say yes is not exactly fair.
No, it certainly isn't.
What do you think the future will hold for us?
Do you think these companies will be weeded out?
Well, I think certainly the ones that go beyond the law will be, or I hope they will be.
I know that there's been a lot of big movement lately to remove those companies
that call you at random or call you in your home or call you repeatedly.
And I find them annoying. I don't think that should be allowed.
No, it certainly should not be.
Let's hope that future years bring us less such run-ins with computerized machines
that call us unrelentingly.
I'd like to finish by saying that I'd like to see things in the future
like something that happened to me recently.
Recently there was an assembly election where I live,
and we got a phone call with a recording from the former state assemblyman
who endorsed the current candidate.
And his message was something like this.
Hi, this is a recording of your assemblyman.
I want to remind you to vote, and I'm sorry for disturbing you.
And if you would like, we will delete your phone number from our list for any future calls.
To do that, say yes at the tone, or otherwise hang up.
And so something like that shows some consideration.
You won't get a call from them again,
and there's actual apology for calling you instead of this frenetic attack
to get you to do something you don't want to do.
David Ruderman is a staff writer for 2600 Magazine.
And that's going to just about bring our program to a close tonight.
We'd like to hear your experiences on things like this.
If you have any problems or questions regarding COCOTS,
Alternative Operator Services, or new technology in general,
send them to Off The Hook, care of WBAI, 505 8th Avenue, New York, NY 10018.
Special thanks to Scott Skinner and WUSB Radio for their help in producing this program.
Stay tuned for the Personal Computer Show.
This is Emanuel Goldstein. See you next week.