Tuesday, May 19, 1998

Hanging up on telephone 'slammers'

The Senate has unanimously - and belatedly - passed a bill aimed at cracking down on the practice of "slamming."

Slamming is the unauthorized switching through fraudulent or deceptive practices of long-distance phone service from one provider to another. The con game has gone beneath the radar screen of regulators and lawmakers largely because the victims are individual phone customers.

Last year, the Federal Communications Commission received 20,000 complaints about slamming, over a 50 percent increase from the year before, but given human nature and the time and hassle of making a complaint, probably only a tiny fraction of the number of actual offenses.

Many victims don't know they've been slammed until they start receiving outsized bills from unknown phone companies. And as with many phone scams, the principal victims are likely to be the elderly, a generation that grew up in the security and certainty of the pre-deregulation Ma Bell era.

Mesmerized by the massive changes in telecommunications, Congress and the FCC took a largely hands-off attitude toward slamming. After all, the victim wasn't an industry giant getting ripped off but ordinary Joe and Jane Schmo faced with an inflated phone bill and a threat to cut off their service if they didn't pay up.

If the House acts, and it should, quickly, the FCC would have a new array of fines and penalties against slammers plus new complaint and reporting procedures that would identify the size of the problem and the worst perpetrators.

The FCC may have its hands full with $66 billion mergers, but the big guys can look after themselves. If the regulators don't look out for the little guy, no one will.