[antidote] Verizon OSS under legal assault

From: "Daniel Berninger" <dan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <antidote@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 21 Aug 2003 17:20:00 -0400
Verizon OSS under legal assault
http://telephonyonline.com/microsites/newsarticle.asp?newsarticleid=2693350&;
srid=11357&pageid=5736&Siteid=3&magazineid=7

 By Tim McElligott

, Aug 20, 2003, 12:00 a.m. ET

Calling itself a defender of the public interests in telecommunication and
broadband issues, TeleTruth, an organization led by founder and president
Bruce Kushnick, charged Verizon today with violations of the New Jersey
Consumer fraud Act during a press conference to discuss two pending class
action lawsuits recently filed with State Superior Court of New Jersey in
Middlesex County.

The two lawsuits have been filed and await an August 29 ruling on Verizon's
petition to dismiss. Kushnick said the parties have engaged in discussion
and negotiation. The first suit, Junto Investments and James Dennis Cogan
vs. Verizon New Jersey, alleges that Verizon knowingly billed residential
and business customers for non-existent special circuits. The second suit,
Risha Enterprise Engineering and Planning, and Winfred Donahue's Answering
service vs. Verizon New Jersey alleges that Verizon failed to apply a
tariffed discount for small businesses instituted by the New Jersey Board of
Public Utilities in July of 1994.

TeleTruth's Kushnick has expanded what began as a crusade on behalf of his
Aunt Ethel in 1992 to address what he says are industry wide problems with
billing by telecom carriers. He enlisted the help of Tom Allibone, president
of LTC consulting and acting director of auditing for TeleTruth and hired
attorney Steven Skalet, partner at Mehri & Skalet to litigate.

"We wanted to focus attention on these billing practices and problems
through litigation to try and remedy what we see as consumer fraud issues in
billing," Skalet said. "Our goal is to make Verizon and other Bells focus
more on providing accurate and fair bills to their consumers."

Allibone claims to have a proprietary technique that drills down into
consumers bills and the back office processes of phone companies to identify
the causes of incorrectly billed charges. "We look at these computers
systems and the underlying technologies they deploy and find out where
things fell through the cracks," Allibone said.

An audit of a division of the government by his company (LTC Consulting)
claimed to have identified a 40% error rate in applying discounts, Allibone
said. Preliminary investigation by TeleTruth includes the examination of
about 100 telephone bills submitted by Verizon customers.

"The carrier chose to implement this discount plan in a certain fashion and
it appears that the underlying systems they used to deploy this were not
failsafe," Allibone said. "As a result, these discounts seem not to be
applied in a substantial number of cases here."

While charging fraud, Kushnick lays the blame on Verizon's support systems.
"This is a problem with their OSS, their billing networks," he said. "They
have serious problems and have covered them [up] over the years, especially
when trying to get into long-distance."

The fraud comes in, Kushnick said, because the error rates were so high, the
company must have been aware of them. "They just haven't bothered to take
any action."

The FCC and state public service commissions that were informed of these
mistakes by TeleTruth also have taken no action.

Verizon would not comment on the case. Nor would it confirm that it had
entered into any sort of discussion or negotiation with the plaintiff. A
Verizon spokeswoman did, however, suggest the company change its name from
TeleTruth to Telebaloney.


Copyright 2003, PRIMEDIA Business Magazines & Media Inc. All rights
reserved.  This article is protected by United States copyright and other
intellectual property laws and may not be reproduced, rewritten,
distributed, redisseminated, transmitted, displayed, published or broadcast,
directly or indirectly, in any medium without the prior written permission
of PRIMEDIA Business Magazines & Media Inc.





>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The antidote list discussion covers issues related to getting beyond monopoly 
in telecom.  Unsubscribe by sending message with 'unsubscribe' in the Subject 
field to antidote-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx or via web at 
http://www.intercommunication.org
[antidote] Verizon OSS under legal assault

Other related posts:
