ILLEGAL SWITCHING OF LONG-DISTANCE CARRIERS A FREQUENT COMPLAINT

Greg Boyd of Jackson had a shock recently when he attempted to call his daughter in California.

"We were told that the California number was not authorized for the Frontier Network," said Boyd. "This was confusing. I didn't know anything about a Frontier Network."

It took awhile, but Boyd realized that he had been "slammed."

Slamming, the illegal and unauthorized switching of a customer's long-distance carrier, is one of the top complaints about telephone services fielded by state and federal officials.

There are more than 550 long-distance companies in the U.S, and local telephone companies field thousands of complaints about slamming every month.

So does the Missouri attorney general's consumer hotline.

"Complaints have slowed some," said Terry Ball, complaint unit manager with the attorney general's consumer protection division in Jefferson City. "But during the past year we've had numerous complaints from every area of the state."

Boyd contacted his regular long-distance carrier, Sprint, which used a "roundabout" means of finally making telephone contact with his daughter -- an hour later -- and reported his complaint to the consumer hotline late Wednesday.

It wasn't necessarily the $5.68 charge for the switch to Excel Telecommunications that bothered Boyd, but the unauthorized switch to a different long-distance company.

Excel uses the Frontier Network for some of its calling areas, an Excel spokesman said Wednesday. The spokesman could provide no answers as to how Boyd was switched to Excel.

Boyd's experience isn't uncommon.

Thousands of complaints about sudden switches have been logged with the Missouri attorney general's office and with the Federal Communications Commission since 1992, when the FCC adopted rules designed to protect consumers from slamming.

An increasing number of complaints involve long-distance companies that use contests, prize giveaways, checks and other promotions to lure new customers.

In many of these cases, said Ball, people are unaware that by signing the contest form or consenting to a charitable donation, they have agreed to switch to another long-distance company.

"But we haven't entered any type of contest," said Boyd. "I don't know anything about Excel Telecommunications."

Ball explained what could have happened.

"We got a stack of complaints last August," he said. "What we found was that some unscrupulous sales people were submitting names, addresses and telephones numbers to long-distance carriers and receiving payment based on the amount of switches."

The sales people, said Ball, would grab a telephone book, get the information needed, guess at the "required age" and submit forged forms."

"We issued a consumer alert concerning the practice," said Ball. "There were some case where a consumer would receive the telephone bill and find they had been switched four to five times within a month's period."

Complaints started tapering off when the attorney general's office filed suit against some long-distance companies and salespersons.

There is a safety valve to slamming.

"I signed a form which puts an anti-slamming protection on my account," said Boyd. "They have to contact me before they can make a switch."

The new protection campaign is called a "PIC freeze." PIC stands for primary interexchange carrier.

Ball urged people who have been slammed to notify the telephone company and to file a complaint with his office.