User Complaints Aired at Pacific Bell Meeting

SAN DIEGO — Despite claims by Pacific Telesis Chairman and Chief Executive Donald E. Guinn that the problem had been “blown way out of perspective,” state regulators on Friday stood by their charge that Pacific Bell salespeople have used abusive marketing techniques to pressure thousands of customers into buying expensive telephone features.

“To the best of my knowledge we’ve had only 12 complaints to either the (state Public Utilities Commission) or Pacific Bell,” Guinn said during Pacific Telesis’ second annual meeting Friday in San Diego. “That’s a very small percentage based on hundreds of thousands of accounts.”

However, on Friday, a spokesman for the PUC division that represents consumers repeated the results of a study which indicated that 38% of Pacific Bell’s Southern California customers are paying for telephone features that they would like to drop.

Statewide, 25% of Pacific Bell’s customers probably are paying for unwanted telephone features, according to David Shantz, a member of the PUC’s public staff division.

“The figure of 12 complaints is a ridiculously small number,” said Shantz. “Offhand, I’d say it’s a phony number.”

Guinn, who described high-pressure sales techniques as “isolated,” promised that guilty employees would face “disciplinary or supervisory action.”

Although Guinn said that it is Pacific Bell’s policy to “market to people those services that they need and can use,” he added that “it is not company policy to sell to anybody anything they don’t need.”

However, Guinn acknowledged that there is a “delicate balance, a delicate line” between the two policies, and he credited employees with successfully handling “a very complex job.”