scjones%thor@uunet.uu.net (Larry Jones) (09/15/90)
The following appeared in the September 12 {Cincinnati Post}:
Dad Won't Pay $40,500 Phone Bill
--------------------------------
Martin Kohus plans to make a toll-free telephone call today to try to
persuade MCI Communications officials to let him out of his $40,500
long-distance bill.
Kohus, of College Hill, will argue that his 15-year-old son, Jeff,
made the calls in less than a month to a 900 number without realizing
the cost.
Each call on the MCI Communications network to the Ultimate Pleasure
Connection cost a minimum of $25. Jeff made the calls between June 30
and and Aug. 22. A call to the 900 number for the service allows
callers to talk to other callers.
Kohus, a building mechanic at Star Bank who earns substantially less
than $40,000 a year, is hoping MCI officials will forget about the
bill. "I might pay them $50," Kohus said.
"I don't intend to willingly pay them. The boy is only 15 years old.
He was not told how many times he was being charged and he was not
aware that he was being charged $25 a call. And they never checked
him out. They just let the bills run up.
"I don't feel I should pay for their mistake," he said. "I believe
it's a scam, a legal scam apparently."
Kohus said that his wife, Susan, was even charged $25 for several
calls she made to the 900 number on her bill trying to find out what
was going on.
A citizens group, American Families Association, has offered to pay
any legal costs for fighting the telephone bill.
Bernard Goodrich, MCI's director of public relations, said he did not
know of the Kohus bill, but he said such large bills "have not been
that major a problem. This size bill is very, very unusual."
He said that he doesn't know if the company has ever forgiven any
bills run up by teen-agers. "I suspect at times some have been
negotiated," he said.
"The real responsibility lies with the information provider (the
company that rents phone lines for a 900 number). We are a common
carrier and have to take anything that our lines are hired for,"
Goodrich said.
Jackie Williams, a spokeswoman for American Telephone & Telegraph Co.,
said the company has no general policy for handling such large bills
incurred on the 900 numbers. Each case is handled according to its
individual circumstances.
"We ask them to contact our billing organization about the problem and
the organization works with them. We try to be flexible," she said.
AT&T has received complaints about the 900 numbers, but she said the
company does not keep track of the number of complaints.
Local telephone companies can block any phone from dialing 900 number,
she said.
Cyndy Cantoni of Cincinnati Bell Telephone Co. said that all 900
charges are billed by the long-distance companies such as MCI, U.S.
Sprint and AT&T. Local phone companies, she said, only collect the
charges for the other companies.
She also said that local phone companies in Ohio cannot disconnect a
family's phone for non-payment of a 900 bill. "It's against Ohio
law," she said.
Cincinnati Bell charges nothing for putting a block on 900 numbers.
But Ms. Cantoni said that if the customer asks for removal of the
block, the charge is $11.80.
Needless to say, Martin Kohus contacted Cincinnati Bell after he
learned of his son's $40,500 telephone conversations and had the 900
numbers blocked from his phone.
---------------
The following follow-up appeared in the September 13 {Cincinnati
Post}:
Father appeals to FCC over '900' bill
-------------------------------------
Martin Kohus plans to go on the offensive this week and file a
complaint with the Federal Communications Commission against MCI
Communications for the $40,500 in telephone charges incurred by his
son. Kohus said he will complain that MCI allowed 15-year-old Jeff
Kohus to run up the astronomical phone bill calling a 900 number for
the Ultimate Pleasure Connection between June 30 and Aug. 22. The
pay-per-call service allows people throughout the country to meet and
talk to each other.
MCI should have verified Jeff's age, Kohus' complaint will say. And
the phone company should not have allowed the teen-ager to run up such
a bill without checking on him.
Kohus said he placed three telephone calls to MCI public relations and
legal department officials in Chicago on Wednesday, and none of them
returned his calls. The officials also did not return The Post's
telephone calls Wednesday.
"MCI is not cooperating with me," Kohus said, "I wanted to tell them
what I planned to do."
Kohus also plans to talk to an attorney this week. He said that a
citizens group, American Families Association, has offered to pay his
legal expenses. A national news organization is interested in Kohus'
story.
Cincinnati Bell Telephone Co. has removed the 900 charges from Kohus'
bill. He said that Cincinnati Bell sent the remaining bill of about
$39,200 to MCI to be collected.
Kohus, who earns substantially less than $40,000 a year as a building
mechanic at the Star Bank Center downtown, said Tuesday he hoped MCI
would forgive the bill.
But Bernard Goodrich, MCI director of public relations, said he
doesn't believe the company has ever forgiven a bill entirely. He
said the company has negotiated some larger bills.
He said the collection responsibility really lies with the company
renting MCI communications lines for the 900 service. He would not
divulge the name of the company that rents the 900 lines for the
Ultimate Pleasure Connection.0004133373@mcimail.com (Donald E. Kimberlin) (09/20/90)
In article <Digest v10,Iss647>, Larry quoted an interesting report
from the {Cincinnati Post} about how a 15-year-old boy ran up a
$40,500 bill between June 30 and August 22 on an MCI 900 number.
While I favor no "free speech rights" for purveyors of slime by
telephone, there was something that just seemed strange in the
numbers:
The time period described is 54 days long. If the calls were $25
minimum each, that amount would have bought 1,620 calls. In 54 days,
it would have taken 30 calls EACH day, 7 days a week to run up that
bill.
Again, while I hold no excelsior banner for MCI or Cincinnati Bell,
that amount of usage by a teenager seems to me it should have raised
parental interest.
I think there's more to this story than was printed and we do have an
issue of parental responsibility to investigate before jumping to
conclusions.