Pacific Bell

I purchased caller I.D. equipment for $39.95 in mid-September '99 from Pacific Bell that included a rebate for $39.95 after you mailed the certificate that arrived with the equipment. Allow 4 weeks for refund. Still waiting 12-3-99, I called and was told they had no record of my form. I remailed a copy of the copy I kept for my records exactly as I had done the first time. Waited 5+ weeks for rebate. Nothing.

Called again 1-10-2000 and Antonia told me there was no record of my form (again). There is a notation on this certificate that it must be completed and postmarked by Nov. 30, 1999. Am feeling completely scammed.

No refund, no help anywhere. Would never have accepted this equipment had I known I was buying it for $39.95 when I could have purchased it anywhere for $10.

In December of 1998 I moved my family from Ventura to San Diego, CA. Part of that process was of course to transfer my Pacific Bell telephone service. My new service went uninterrupted for ten months when I received a letter from Pacific Bell that gave me some 10 days to pay over $200 on an unpaid bill or have my service cut off. When I called them they told me that my closing bill had never been paid. They acknowledged that normally any closing bill on a transfer is moved as well but that I had not paid the bills.

When I indicated how unlikely it was, given that my account was current, that PacBell would allow a debt to go 10 months uncollected and still provide services, the agent said he thought there could be an error and we should be able to clear it up. I told him I'm not inclined to write a check out of the goodness of my heart for over $200 without some kind of accounting. He said he understood and that I was not to worry about it,that my service would not be cut off and that he would provide such an accounting.

A little over a week later service was turned off. There had been no other contact at that point. I called them again and the lady representative I spoke with refused to reconnect my service, wanted to add additional charges (still without some accounting). I then ordered service with a new company that was happy to get a good customer.

Pacific Bell sent my bill to American Agencies. I wrote them a lengthy letter (on file) explaining the situation and disputing Pacific Bell's claim. That letter went unanswered. Yesterday I received another letter from American Agencies claiming that since I never answered there last letter they assume I cannot be trusted. They say they are searching for my current service in my name and threaten to have that service turned off. Their claim that they can do so is CIVIL LEGAL AUTHORITY UNDER ARTICLE 12 OF THE CALIFORNIA STATE CONSTITUTION that "allows termination of existing services without benefit of legal or judicial review."

Well, I found our state constitution online and there is not so much as even a close provision in any of the nine sections under Article 12. This whole situation has caused my family and me great stress and concern. Pacific Bell's disconnection from before Thanksgiving through Christmas made my family miss those memorable holiday phonecalls to and from loved ones in addition to the inconvenience of not having normal phone services at all. Now I'm greatly stressed about this ongoing harrasment and their attempts to rob me of my current phone services in their attempt to defraud me based on Pacific Bell's billing error.

I was billed on the same telephone bill for minutes for two phone calls such that the calls would have had to occur at the same time exactly:

SEP 6 5:10pm 3 minute call to 415 XXX-XXXX

SEP 6 5:11pm 2 minute call to 415 XXX-XXXX

How can a 2-minute call originate when the previous call is still not finished? I have one line and no call waiting or other services.

Possible computer problem or billing error?

The cost was inconsequential ($0.16), but it makes me question the validity of my bill or other customer's bills. If this type of error occurs thousands or tens of thousands or even millions of times, PacBell collects much extra money. I don't trust them now and think other parts of my bill maybe wrong.

The telephone company billing systems are incredibly complex and engineered to prevent this kind of things. But it does make one wonder, doesn't it?

Area code listed in business section of Pac Bell's dirctory is incorrect (619 should be 760) Therefore dialing the number listed gives you a recorded message that this is not a working number! Henceforth indicating I am out-of- business...

This error started mid 1998 when Pac Bell released their phone directiory to the general public. Severe economic damages have been incurred along with emotional damages. (Pac Bell says) They will not offer a referral message to call the correct number!!!!!

I recently contacted Pacific Bell to have a second phone line installed in my new apartment. My daughter and I share the apartment and the primary phone was in her name. I needed a line for my own use which includes heavy internet usage.

Pac Bell charged me $120 for installation and I'm paying the normal monthly charge for a totally separate phone line. I've found out in the meantime that I didn't get an actual second phone line.

The first thing I noticed was that my internet connection speeds dropped from about 36-38k in my old apartment to an absolute maximum of 25k in this one. Since everything worked better at the old place and the only thing different was the new phone connection I decided to look at the phone system as a possible culprit.

That's when I found out that instead of an actual second physical phone line, Pac Bell had tapped me into a system whereby they are able to carry two different conversations or data streams on a single copper phone line. It's called frequency shift/multiplexing and it saves Pac Bell (and the customer?) beaucoup bucks since they don't need to run in an actual physical line for your computer.

According to several telecomm experts however, and as indicated by my own experiences and those of dozens of message board posters all over the net, it also creates a ton of line noise and/or cross interference that effects both of the "lines" involved. We have even heard it during voice calls when both phones were in use, a crackling noise like the crumpling of cellophane. Both lines do not have to be in use for this to occur. This severely limits the modem transmission speeds, in most cases down to about 25Kb maximum. This is not adequate for even normal home use of the internet, let alone business uses.

I called 611 and was told that their phone lines were not "conditioned" for data streams, only voice transmission. Their maximum transfer rate is less than 25Kb and they only guarantee 4.8Kb. My contention is that they are charging me the full amount for a private phone line as they are my daughter, yet we are being forced, in effect, to share a single line.

We feel that Pac Bell should, when filling a request for a second line, especially when it is going to be a computer line, have to inform the customer of the degradation in service inherent in this system over a real, physical second copper line.

This is a complex subject that we could talk about all day. Tom is not actually paying for a second line, he is paying for additional service. How it's delivered is up to PacBell. Although we all use POTS (plain old telephone service) for data, the service isn't designed for that and the phone companies are not obligated to provide clean data lines. The options are DSL or a cable modem, if either is available.

Oh by the way, everything in the telecom world is "multiplexed" or otherwise compressed -- regardless of how many physical lines go into a residence. Nearly all "twisted pair" copper today has four leads -- enough to write two lines, just as was done at Tom's.