• PC World
• » Web

The New York state attorney general's office is monitoring a dispute between customers of a phone company in Rochester, New York, and America Online after more than 50 complaints from customers who got phone bills in the thousands of dollars after an area code switch changed their dial-up connections to long distance.

The dispute surfaced in January when customers of Frontier Telephone in Rochester began receiving huge phone bills after an area code change that went into effect in November.

Frontier spokesperson Tor Constantino says the problem arose because the phone company was required under state law to connect phone calls made with the old area code. AOL's dial-up software used the old area code and the calls went through, but instead of being billed as local Rochester calls they were billed as long distance calls to Buffalo, he says. The result was phone bills in the thousands of dollars for customers who didn't change their dial-up connections to local phone numbers.

In addition, Constantino says many phone customers are reporting that even when they did switch the area codes on their dial-up connections, AOL's software would often self-select a long distance number if the primary and secondary dial-up numbers were busy.

Attempts to reach an AOL representative for comment on Friday were unsuccessful.

Fifty Times the Fee

Debbie Sanza of Webster, New York, an AOL customer, says her family of four uses a second phone line solely for their PC. The average bill for the second phone line was about $25 per month.

In January, Sanza says she received a bill for more than $1400.

"I looked at it, and I thought that was really weird, and I thought they made a mistake," Sanza says. "I thought this was impossible."

Sanza says Frontier told her the bill was accurate. She then called AOL looking for relief but was told it is an issue between her and her phone company. While fighting the first bill, Sanza says she has since received a second bill, which put the family's total phone bill at more than $2500.

What infuriates Sanza, she says, is that a neighbor who uses AT&T as her ISP received a phone call from an AT&T representative inquiring about a sudden jumps in long distance charges. The neighbor then changed her dial-up connection to a local number.

Sanza didn't receive such a call from Frontier. But when she called the phone company, Sanza says Frontier told her it did notice the jump in long distance charges but because she was a customer in good standing, didn't feel it had to notify her.

Phone Company Caught

Constantino says Frontier warned customers this might happen in advance of the area code switch. He says literature and a special company Web site includes ISP numbers in its checklist of "telephone services that may need to be reviewed."

Although the company understands the situation is "obviously uncomfortable for the customer," Constantino says, Frontier doesn't know what else it's supposed to do. "Another issue that is important to point out is that Frontier is not responsible for these long distance charges," he says. "If they had a neighbor who uses their phone and makes a long distance call, they are responsible. Only in this case, it was AOL's software that has dialed the number."

Constantino says Frontier has tried to discuss the matter with AOL but as far as he knew, AOL hasn't responded. He adds this is a familiar issue to AOL, citing a class-action law suit pending against the ISP in Tampa on the same subject.

Similar Case: Florida

Brad Maione, a representative for New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, says the office has received more than 50 complaints from residents in the Rochester area. He says the office will watch the situation closely, but hasn't begun an investigation into the high bills. "We're taking a closer look," Maione says.

In February 2000, attorney Lance Harke at firm Harke & Clasby in Miami filed a class-action lawsuit against AOL in U.S. District Court in Tampa on behalf of Marguerite Miles of Florida and Patty Colclasure of Kansas after the pair received phone bills for thousands of dollars after signing up with AOL.

The suit stems out of "a carpet-bombing campaign" when AOL offered 700 hours of free service to consumers across the country. "'Carpet bombing' is what [AOL] called the campaign in their own internal documents," Harke says.

The suit charges AOL offered the 700 hours of free service knowing it didn't have local access connection numbers for subscribers. As a result, many consumers called long distance numbers without knowing it until the bills came in, he says.

Harke says other ISPs have pop-up screens that tell consumers they may be calling a long distance number when choosing a dial-up connection, but AOL does not. He says he believes that the Rochester customers will be covered in the Tampa class-action lawsuit, which was certified in August and survived an AOL attempt to have it dismissed in November. The practice of not having the dial-up connection numbers change when an area code changes is covered in the original suit, he says.

• See more like this:
• aol,
• fee,
• frontier,
• area code,
• phone bill,
• attorney general,
• Rochester,
• new york,
• ny,
• tampa,
• constantino,
• sanza,
• maione,
• harke