Patrick,
I stumbled upon your Telecom Digest while doing a search on Google; I hope you might be able to provide help. You have my permission to post this in your Digest.
Please call me with questions! My contact info is at the end of this email.
When did it become legal for telephone companies to solicit listings which are deceptive? A company in New Jersey that has a "local listing" in a Concord NH telephone book calling themselves "Concord Florist"? A locksmith or a towing company that lists in one phone book, but is actually nowhere near that location?
Bell Atlantic/Verizon is knowingly and intentionally facilitating and disseminating deceptive business telephone listings. This creates unfair trade practices for legitimate businesses. This practice is in violation of state and federal consumer protection laws, and also violates state and federal regulatory tariffs.
The ruse employs 'remote call forwarding' which Verizon pro motes by saying 'Remote Call Forwarding' allows you to establish a "local" presence in almost any location, just by having a local phone number, even if you don't have a physical office in that area.
The following contains Verizon's Directory Listing Standards (policies and procedures) applicable to white page business directory listings. Listings for Remote Call Forwarded (RCF) telephone service may include whatever address the business customer wants to list, whether it is local or not.
If the customer selects the OMIT ADDRESS option, encourage the appearance of at least the local community in the listing.
Call Joe's Towing Company at a local phone number in your local phone book but he's really 75 miles away. Call a plumber, locksmith, florist; they all have a local appearance but are actually many miles away.
Verizon allows customers who buy this service to assume hundreds of fictitious geographically local business names. One business in New Jersey who uses this service has local appearing listings in nearly every major city in the country, and lists a fictitious name: 'Concord Florist' 'Manchester Florist', 'Rochester Florist'. All calls are routed back to one central number, unbeknownst to the consumer.
By selling this service of RCF, allowing it to be used in an unlawful manner, and publishing the listings in Verizon Directories, the following situations have occurred:
Consumers are being deceived as to the origination of the goods or services associated with the businesses using RCF.
Legitimate, local businesses stand to lose business due to this unfair trade practice caused by RCF.
Verizon is unjustly profiting from the service charges and extra listing fees associated with RCF.
Verizon is facilitating and disseminating the deception by selling their RCF listings to other publishing services. State and Federal laws prohibit misleading consumers as to the origin or source of goods or services. The FTC determines "deception" by looking at the intent of the information being presented.
What is the intent behind "Remote Call Forwarding"?? To make people think they are calling a location that is really located somewhere else! If it was just to save the consumer a toll call, why not use an 800 number? In an a separate email, I have attached a couple documents with our Verizon Tariffs, and State laws.
Valerie Dawes, President New Hampshire State Florists' Association
24 Albin Ave. Allenstown, NH 03275603-738-5691 (cell; leave message)
603-485-9833 (home - evening calls welcomed!) [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I'll bet when the order taker answers the phone for 'Concord Florist' or 'Manchester Florist' they answer the phone with the more generic phrase 'Florist'; the same way that secretaries for a group of lawyers or doctors tend to be generic in their answers many times. After all, unless the answering party is tipped off by caller ID or the ringing cadence on a line (or in fact a separate line for each incoming 'business' they have no way of knowing _which_ florist (doctor, lawyer, other person) is being called.I do not think it is against the law to use remote call forwarding (with an entry in the phone book for same); whether a given 'assumed name' for your business is deceptive or not depends on how you use it and in many communities one has to file legal papers to be allowed to use certain names; anyone can examine these papers and object to the inappropriate use of a name on the grounds it may be misleading.
The choice of a name for a business is a decision one makes (assuming one intends to follow the law) based on laws pertaining to 'assumed names'. Does the term 'Manchester' or 'Concord' (for example) _absolutely_ refer to the towns by those names in New Hampshire, or are those generic phrases anyone can use to call their business (assuming the owner has the appropriate business licenses, etc?)
What if a person has two places of business, both essentially the same, and they use _regular_ call forwarding (star seven two and all that) to forward one of their phones to the other location? Is that deceptive? Suppose the same person has a 'foreign exchange' line from one community which terminates in another town? Is that -- in and of itself -- deceptive? Or to use your example 'why not have an 800 number?' suppose my business has an 800 number, ostensibly to save on toll charges for my customers, but in fact most or all of my customers are local people and would not incur any long distance charges by calling me anyway? For _honest_ business people, there are several modes of handling telephone calls which might incur toll charges: 800 numbers is one such way, FX (foreign exchange) lines are another way; Call Forwarding (reglar or remote) is a third way. 800 numbers are not necessarily the least expensive, depending on your volume of calls and your specific usage patterns.
On the other hand, deceptive business people may wish to use these various modes on the phone for less than honorable reasons. There are business places which place much importance on being listed in a certain place in the telephone book; apparently they feel their customers are idiots and cannot search alphabetically for them, so they feel it is important to be in first place in the phone book under the business name "A" or "AAA" or possibly, like one firm in Chicago, in last place as "ZZYXZY", often times with no addressses given. Most of the time, to get a listing as "A' or "ZZYXZY" telco will insist on seeing legal papers which give you the right to use those names in your business. But telco is not usually in a position to divine your motives for choosing one mode or another in the way you receive calls from your customers. If you subscribe to telephone service and insist 'so many of my customers live in Concord and I want a convenient way for them to reach me by dialing just seven digits instead of having to dial eleven digits', telco is rarely going to question that motive. I guess telco's assumption is if your business practices are deceptive there are other government agencies which will catch up with you sooner or later. And because telco is a common carrier they really cannot get too inquisitive, if you get my point.
And how do you know -- if you know -- that a call to 'Concord Florist' (to use but an example) which gets picked up by an order taker '75 miles away' does not get wire-transferred to a a truly local florist for handling? Or that 'Concord Florist' is nothing more than an agency for one or more local florists truly in the community, sending wire transfers around all the time on some sort of commission arrangement? And since we are talking about it, what is _your personal opinion_ of the service 1-800-FLOWERS (otherwise known as
If you can demonstrate where actual fraud or deception has occurred as a result of this, it would be interesting to hear actual examples. But as stated above, I do not feel that merely a desire 'to have a presence in a community' is in itself a sign of fraud. For instance, I personally would love to have 'branch offices' of TELECOM Digest in all sorts of places. As it turns out, although I have phone numbers in Chicago, in London, England, and Winfield, KS, my _only actual office_ is in Independence, KS; all the other locations named above funnel in to me using RCF through Vonage. PAT]