PUC Head Contests PacBell Ruling

The president of the state Public Utilities Commission is challenging a judge’s decision to absolve Pacific Bell of deceptive advertising charges for its voicemail service and has asked the PUC to review the case.

Richard Bilas, president of the five-member PUC, in a regulatory filing last week questioned an administrative law judge’s Dec. 22 ruling that PacBell had not violated state law but must nevertheless take “remedial steps” to alleviate customer confusion over its voicemail pricing.

The case stems from a complaint filed against PacBell a year ago by the Greenlining Institute and Latino Issues Forum.

The two San Francisco-based community groups complained that PacBell misleads customers by advertising its business voicemail service at a flat rate of “only $21.95 per box, per month--just 73 cents a day” and doesn’t adequately disclose separate charges that apply each time the product is used.

PacBell, a unit of San Antonio-based SBC Communications Inc., argued that the additional charges are mentioned in a footnote that it added to the fine print in its advertising.

The Greenlining Institute estimates that Pacific Bell has as many as 400,000 customers who subscribe to its business voicemail service and that the extra per-call charges could amount to between $2 and $8 per month per customer.

The judge said that although the tariffs “are not user-friendly,” a business customer “could piece together the total . . . costs.”

Last week, the institute filed an appeal of the decision, adding its objections to those of Bilas.

“We’re confident that the judge’s decision is correct, and that it’s going to be upheld,” PacBell spokesman Steve Getzug said.

The case involves at least three versions of PacBell’s business voicemail service. Customers who order one of those products are charged a per-month fee, plus local phone charges for each incoming call forwarded to the voice mailbox and for each call the customer makes to the mailbox to retrieve messages.

Critics say PacBell’s billing system makes it hard for customers to discover the true total cost.

In August, the PUC held hearings on the Greenlining complaint, and the administrative law judge released her decision Dec. 22.

The judge’s ruling went unnoticed until recently because it was not publicized and its release coincided with another PUC decision that hit PacBell with $44 million in penalties in a long-running sales abuse case.