Phone giants' rising rates questioned

NEW YORK — AT&T and Verizon are raising prices for caller ID and other popular phone services by as much as 300%, even as they continue to push regulators to loosen up because of increased competition.

AT&T (T) and Verizon (VZ) have argued they need pricing flexibility to compete with cable TV and others offering Internet-based phone services. Dozens of states have acquiesced, giving carriers freedom to jack up prices.

In California this month, AT&T raised prices for several stand-alone features: Anonymous call rejection now costs $5 from $1.90; caller ID rose to $9.99 from $6.17. Some local toll calls — calls that aren't considered long-distance but don't qualify as local — jumped by more than 200%.

In Ohio, AT&T raised the price of call forwarding and three-way calling from $4 each to $5.99. Automatic call back now costs $1.99 per use, up from 70 cents.

Verizon has made similar moves. Call forwarding now costs $3 a month in Ohio, a 300% increase from 75 cents. Call waiting is now $5 a month, up from $3.

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Consumers and Corporations Unite to Fight Telephone Companies Over Caller ID

Consumers for Fair Caller ID Service organization launches consumer advocacy blog

DALLAS - March 13, 2007 - If you were paying anywhere from $80 to $100 each year on a service, and you found out that the service provider wasn't supplying you with the service 100 percent of the time, you'd be upset, right? Maybe you should be sitting down. If you subscribe to a Caller ID service, you're probably getting cheated. And that's why Consumers for Fair Caller ID Service, a coalition of consumers and companies tired of paying Caller ID service fees without receiving the service, has started a grassroots effort to educate Caller ID users on the truth behind "Unavailable" and "Out of Area" calls.

The truth is that while we consumers are spending millions of dollars every year on Caller ID services, telephone companies aren't necessarily providing us with every name they are capable of getting. Caller ID works by matching the phone number of the person calling with a name that is stored in a database. When a number is stored outside a telephone company's database, that company has to purchase the information from another company that owns the database where the information is stored. Most every wireline telephone number is stored in one of these databases, but phone companies aren’t accessing every number.

Why not?

Typically, purchasing this information costs less than half a penny. But these big telephone companies don’t want to spend any money on their customers, which results in those "Unavailable" and "Out of Area" calls that show up on Caller ID displays. And because most consumers don't even know that their phone companies are capable of providing a higher level of service, they're letting the phone companies continue to profit off of them by providing sub-standard service. That's the purpose for the Consumers for Fair Caller ID Service blog - it's time for consumers to take a stand against these larger telephone companies.

The blog offers Caller ID consumers information on everything from how Caller ID works to contact information for the attorney general's office in each state. The blog includes broadcast and print news coverage from across the country. In addition, it provides users with a forum where they can come together and share their concerns, opinions and experiences. The blog was created both to educate consumers on what they should expect from their Caller ID service and to arm them with the information and strategies they will need to demand 100 percent service.

The blog can be accessed at http://calleridunavailable.blogspot.com/

About Consumers for Fair Caller ID Service
Consumers for Fair Caller ID Service is a coalition of consumers and companies that feel cheated for paying Caller ID service fees but not receiving calling names. Every year, Americans pay up to $120 each for Caller ID service but only get caller names on 30-70 percent of their calls. The technology to fix this problem is already in place. There’s no good reason that phone companies can’t provide it. We’re paying for Caller ID 100 percent of the time. Isn’t it time we got it?

Caller ID Unavailable? click here to do something.....

What Can You Do?

What can you do to get the Caller Id services you are paying for?

You can do three things;

#1 - Click Here to Add Your Name to Our Petition. (No Email Required)

#2 - Call your phone company provider and complain.
Click Here to find your phone companies number.

#3 - Contact your state's Attorney General's Office and ask them what they are going to do to insure that you get the Caller ID Service you are paying for.

#4 - Contact your state's Public Utilities Commision - Click Here for FCC List.

Telephone Customer Help Lines

Embarq (Sprint Residential Service)
Customer Service #- 1-888-723-8010

Verizon
Repair #- 1-800-483-1000
Customer Service #- 1-800-483-4000

AT&T
Repair #- 1-800-246-8464
Customer Service #- 1-800-464-7920

Qwest
Product manager #- 1-800-423-8994

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Caller ID Display Terms

These are the common terms that appear on the caller ID display when a name is not identified through a phone carrier.

Unavailable – un-retrieved number, or truly unavailable
Out of Area - un-retrieved number
City, State - un-retrieved number, or truly unavailable
Private Number - Permanently made private by the caller
Private – made private by the caller
Blocked – Name blocked by caller on a call-by-call basis.
Wireless Call – mobile number
Unknown Name – un-retrieved or truly unidentified number

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Consumers for Fair Caller ID Service

How many times has your Caller ID shown something like “Caller ID Unavailable?” You’re not alone. Consumers for Fair Caller ID Service is a coalition of consumers and companies that feel cheated for paying Caller ID service fees but not receiving Caller ID service. Every year, Americans pay up to $120 each for Caller ID service but only get caller identification on 30-70% of their calls. The technology to fix this problem is simple and cheap. There’s no good reason that phone companies can’t provide it. We’re paying for Caller ID 100% of the time. Isn’t it time we got it?

Caller ID Unavailable? click here to do something.....

What Your Phone Company Doesn’t Want You to Know About Caller ID

Sept 27, 2006
What Your Phone Company Doesn’t Want You to Know About Caller ID
By Greg Smith

Every day, millions of Americans are paying for a specific service, and yet they are completely unaware that they are not getting the most for their dollar.
Customers that subscribe to caller ID services pay anywhere from $6.75 per month up to $9.95 per month, but a number of calls listed as "unavailable," "unknown" or "out of area" continue to appear in the caller ID display. While some calls are genuinely blocked or listed as private, these unavailable and out-of-area calls are simply the result of a phone company not spending the money to gather this data.
A small test of caller ID accuracy conducted by The Boston Globe in conjunction with Accudata Technologies Inc. found several instances where two prominent providers in the New England area didn’t supply a caller’s name because they did not want to pay the extra money to obtain the data from the Line Information Database (LIDB)/Calling Name (CNAM) Database where the data is stored – in some cases these databases are combined.
CNAM/LIDBs house most of the working telephone landlines in North America and contain information ranging from service and operational information to customers’ names, their payment history indicator and their preferred language. This data is vital to the normal operation of the phone line. Telephone service providers need this information not only to display names on caller ID, but also to make credit decisions, ensure appropriate billing and other necessary services that callers take for granted. And with fewer than 20 CNAM databases in North America, including one owned and maintained by Accudata, carriers don’t have to search very far to get this information.
In The Boston Globe test, conducted by reporter Bruce Mohl, five calls were monitored on two telephones in Massachusetts belonging to customers who subscribed to different, large telecom companies. Each of the five calls came from out of state; two from Texas and one each from Missouri, New York and Washington. Of the five calls, the first provider was able to identify and properly deliver the calling name for only two. The other service provider registered an even less favorable score, identifying only one of the calls. Research showed that the names were available to both telecom companies; they just chose not to retrieve the data.
Caller ID works by matching the phone number of the person calling with a name obtained from a CNAM database. For the larger providers, caller ID information is typically easier to retrieve in their service areas since it is likely that the caller is one of the carrier’s own customers and therefore the information is located in the provider’s own database. However, if a caller is calling from outside the provider’s service area, or if he or she subscribes to a different provider, the firm then has to purchase information from the caller’s phone company. For example: Larry and Gail both subscribe to AT&T.
If Larry calls Gail, AT&T has only to dip into its own database to provide Gail with Larry’s name and phone number. However, if Angie – who subscribes to Verizon – calls Gail, then AT&T must pay Verizon to gather Angie’s caller information.
The cost of this information is typically less than a penny, but many telecom companies don’t give their customers what they paid for because they choose not to purchase data from other telecom companies. So why aren’t telecoms providing true caller ID services for their customers? Follow the money. Assume that the average telephone receives 200 calls a month, and 100 of those calls come from within the network. In this case, a phone company would need only to identify 100 phone calls from other databases. At a premium rate of one penny for each call, providers would spend $1 each month per customer. If the customer pays $7 per month for caller ID services, the provider receives a 600 percent profit. And while the pennies can add up to millions of dollars, how many other services have this kind of profit margin?
Another big reason for failing to provide true caller ID services is that phone companies don’t want to give money, even the pennies per call it costs for calling name information, to their competition. But perhaps the greatest reason is the lack of knowledge by the customers. Most caller ID users don’t know why "unavailable" shows up on their caller ID displays, and since most calls typically come from within the calling area anyway, unknown numbers are pretty unusual. The biggest exception is cellular calls that still do not always have the name stored in an accessible database.
This doesn’t change the fact that caller ID customers are still paying anywhere from $80 to more than $100 per year for a service that is not living up to expectations. Consumers do not typically put up with this type of service; they squeeze every last mile out of their gas tanks, every last gigabyte out of their iPods or every last bit of speed out of their modems. Consumers would complain if the call forwarding feature that they purchased only worked 80 percent of the time, or if it only functioned if it was forwarded to a number provided by the same carrier. People want the most for their money, but if they want the most out of their caller ID, they’re going to have to do something about it, whether by lodging a complaint with the FCC or to their local state public utility commission. Otherwise, phone companies will continue to provide this incomplete service to unsuspecting consumers. Consumer complacency is the phone company’s friend.

Caller ID Unavailable? click here to do something.....

Attorney Generals Contact Info

Alabama:
Troy King (R)
(334) 242-7300
State House, 11 S. Union St. Montgomery, AL 36130
http://www.ago.state.al.us

Alaska:
Talis J. Colberg (R)
(907) 465-3600
P.O. Box 110300, Diamond Courthouse, Juneau, AK 99811-0300
http://www.law.state.ak.us/

American Samoa:
Malaetasi M. Togafau
(684) 633-4163
American Samoa Gov't, Exec. Ofc. Bldg, Utulei, Territory of American Samoa, Pago Pago, AS 96799
http://www.samoanet.com/asg/asgdla97.html

Arizona:
Terry Goddard (D)
(602) 542-4266
1275 W. Washington St., Phoenix, AZ 85007
http://www.azag.gov/

Arkansas:
Dustin McDaniel (D)
(800) 482-8982
200 Tower Bldg., 323 Center St., Little Rock, AR 72201-2610
http://www.ag.state.ar.us

California:
Edmund G. "Jerry" Brown Jr. (D)
(916) 445-9555
1300 I St., Ste. 1740, Sacramento, CA 95814
http://ag.ca.gov

Colorado:
John Suthers (R)
(303) 866-4500
1525 Sherman Street, Denver, CO 80203
http://www.ago.state.co.us/index.cfm

Connecticut:
Richard Blumenthal (D)
(860) 808-5318
55 Elm St., Hartford, CT 06141-0120
http://www.ct.gov/ag/

District of Columbia:
Linda Singer (Acting) (D)
(202) 724-1305
John A. Wilson Building, 1350 PA Ave, NW Suite 409, Washington, DC 20009
http://occ.dc.gov

Delaware:
Joseph R. "Beau" Biden III (D)
(302) 577-8338
Carvel State Office Bldg., 820 N. French St., Wilmington, DE 19801
http://www.state.de.us/attgen

Florida:
Bill McCollum (R)
(850) 414-3300
The Capitol, PL 01, Tallahassee, FL 32399-1050
http://myfloridalegal.com/

Georgia:
Thurbert E. Baker (D)
(404) 656-3300
40 Capitol Square, SW, Atlanta, GA 30334-1300
http://ganet.org/ago/

Guam:
Alicia G. Limtiaco
(671) 475-3409
Judicial Center Bldg., Ste. 2-200E, 120 W. O'Brien Dr., Hagatna, Guam 96910
http://www.guamattorneygeneral.com/

Hawaii:
Mark J. Bennett (R)
(808) 586-1500
425 Queen St., Honolulu, HI 96813
http://www.state.hi.us/ag/index.html

Idaho:
Lawrence Wasden (R)
(208) 334-2400
Statehouse, Boise, ID 83720-1000
http://www2.state.id.us/ag/

Illinois:
Lisa Madigan (D)
(312) 814-3000
James R. Thompson Ctr., 100 W. Randolph St., Chicago, IL 60601
http://illinoisattorneygeneral.gov/

Indiana:
Steve Carter (R)
(317) 232-6201
Indiana Government Center South - 5th Floor, 402 West Washington Street, Indianapolis, IN 46204
http://www.in.gov/attorneygeneral/

Iowa:
Tom Miller (D)
(515) 281-5164
Hoover State Office Bldg., 1305 E. Walnut, Des Moines, IA 50319
http://www.IowaAttorneyGeneral.org

Kansas:
Paul Morrison (D)
(785) 296-2215
120 S.W. 10th Ave., 2nd Fl., Topeka, KS 66612-1597
http://www.ksag.org/index.shtml

Kentucky:
Greg Stumbo (D)
(502) 696-5300
State Capitol, Rm. 116, Frankfort, KY 40601
http://ag.ky.gov

Louisiana:
Charles Foti (D)
225-326-6000
P.O. Box 94095, Baton Rouge, LA 70804-4095
http://www.ag.state.la.us/

Maine:
G. Steven Rowe (D)
(207) 626-8800
State House Station 6, Augusta, ME 04333
http://www.state.me.us/ag

Maryland:
Douglas F. Gansler (D)
(410) 576-6300
200 St. Paul Place, Baltimore, MD 21202-2202
http://www.oag.state.md.us

Massachusetts:
Martha Coakley (D)
(617) 727-2200
1 Ashburton Place, Boston, MA 02108-1698
http://www.ago.state.ma.us

Michigan:
Mike Cox (R)
(517) 373-1110
P.O.Box 30212, 525 W. Ottawa St., Lansing, MI 48909-0212
http://www.ag.state.mi.us

Minnesota:
Lori Swanson (D)
(651) 296-3353
State Capitol, Ste. 102, St. Paul, MN 55155
http://www.ag.state.mn.us

Mississippi:
Jim Hood (D)
(601) 359-3680
Department of Justice, P.O. Box 220, Jackson, MS 37205-0220
http://www.ago.state.ms.us/

Missouri:
Jeremiah W. (Jay) Nixon (D)
(573) 751-3321
Supreme Ct. Bldg., 207 W. High St., Jefferson City, MO 65101
http://www.ago.mo.gov/

Montana:
Mike McGrath (D)
(406) 444-2026
Justice Bldg., 215 N. Sanders, Helena, MT 59620-1401
Jon Bruning (R)
(402) 471-2682
State Capitol, P.O.Box 98920, Lincoln, NE 68509-8920
http://www.ago.state.ne.us/

Nevada:
Catherine Cortez Masto (D)
(775) 684-1100
Old Supreme Ct. Bldg., 100 N. Carson St., Carson City, NV 89701
http://ag.state.nv.us/

New Hampshire:
Kelly Ayotte (R)
(603) 271-3658
State House Annex, 33 Capitol St., Concord, NH 03301-6397
http://www.state.nh.us/nhdoj/

New Jersey :
Stuart Rabner (D)
(609) 292-8740
Richard J. Hughes Justice Complex, 25 Market St., CN 080, Trenton, NJ 08625
http://www.state.nj.us/lps/

New Mexico:
Gary King (D)
(505) 827-6000
P.O. Drawer 1508, Sante Fe, NM 87504-1508
http://www.ago.state.nm.us

New York:
Andrew Cuomo (D)
(518) 474-7330
Dept. of Law - The Capitol, 2nd fl., Albany, NY 12224
http://www.oag.state.ny.us

Northern Mariana Islands:
Matt Gregory
(670) 664-2341
Caller Box 10007, Capitol Hill, Saipan, MP 95960
http://www.cnmiago.gov.mp/

North Carolina:
Roy Cooper (D)
(919) 716-6400
Dept. of Justice, P.O.Box 629, Raleigh, NC 27602-0629
http://www.ncdoj.com/default.jsp

North Dakota:
Wayne Stenehjem (R)
(701) 328-2210
State Capitol, 600 E. Boulevard Ave., Bismarck, ND 58505-0040
http://www.ag.state.nd.us

Ohio:
Marc Dann (D)
(614) 466-4320
State Office Tower, 30 E. Broad St., Columbus, OH 43266-0410
http://www.ag.state.oh.us

Oklahoma:
W. A. Drew Edmondson (D)
(405) 521-3921
State Capitol, Rm. 112, 2300 N. Lincoln Blvd., Oklahoma City, OK 73105
http://www.oag.state.ok.us

Oregon:
Hardy Myers (D)
(503) 378-4732
Justice Bldg., 1162 Court St., NE, Salem, OR 97301
http://www.doj.state.or.us

Pennsylvania:
Tom Corbett (R)
(717) 787-3391
1600 Strawberry Square, Harrisburg, PA 17120
http://www.attorneygeneral.gov

Puerto Rico:
Roberto J. Sanchez-Ramos
(787) 721-2900
GPO Box 902192, San Juan, PR 00902-0192
http://www.justicia.gobierno.pr

Rhode Island:
Patrick Lynch (D)
(401) 274-4400
150 S. Main St., Providence, RI 02903
http://www.riag.state.ri.us

South Carolina:
Henry McMaster (R)
(803) 734-3970
Rembert C. Dennis Office Bldg., P.O.Box 11549, Columbia, SC 29211-1549
http://www.scattorneygeneral.org

South Dakota:
Larry Long (R)
(605) 773-3215
1302 East Highway 14, Suite 1, Pierre, SD 57501-8501
http://www.state.sd.us/attorney/

Tennessee:
Robert E. Cooper, Jr. (D)
(615) 741-5860
500 Charlotte Ave., Nashville, TN 37243
http://www.attorneygeneral.state.tn.us

Texas:
Greg Abbott (R)
(512) 463-2100
Capitol Station, P.O.Box 12548, Austin, TX 78711-2548
http://www.oag.state.tx.us

Utah:
Mark Shurtleff (R)
(801) 538-9600
State Capitol, Rm. 236, Salt Lake City, UT 84114-0810
http://attorneygeneral.utah.gov/

Vermont:
William H. Sorrell (D)
(802) 828-3173
109 State St., Montpelier, VT 05609-1001
http://www.state.vt.us/atg

Virgin Islands:
Elliott Davis
(340) 774-5666
Dept. of Justice, G.E.R.S. Complex 488-50C Kronprinsdens Gade, St. Thomas, VI 00802

Virginia:
Bob McDonnell (R)
(804) 786-2071
900 E. Main St., Richmond, VA 23219
http://www.oag.state.va.us

Washington:
Rob McKenna (R)
(360) 753-6200
900 Fourth Street, Suite 2000, Olympia, WA 98504-0100
http://www.atg.wa.gov/

West Virginia:
Darrell V. McGraw Jr. (D)
(304) 558-2021
State Capitol, 1900 Kanawha Blvd. , E., Charleston, WV 25305
http://www.wvago.us/

Wisconsin:
J.B. Van Hollen (R)
(608) 266-1221
State Capitol, Ste. 114 E., P.O.Box 7857, Madison, WI 53707-7857
http://www.doj.state.wi.us

Wyoming:
Pat Crank (D)
(307) 777-7841
State Capitol Bldg., Cheyenne, WY 82002
http://attorneygeneral.state.wy.us/

Caller ID Unavailable? click here to do something.....