14. Consumer Education Program

We find there is no basis or need to order Pacific to conduct consumer education on any of the violations we have found in this case. Pacific is being required to recontact Caller ID customers. We may revisit the issue of an industry-wide consumer education program in R.00-02-004.

In many respects, this complaint case is unlike the 1986 case in which the Commission ordered Pacific to conduct a consumer education program. In that case, Pacific commingled basic exchange service with optional services. It conducted unauthorized trial of enhanced services, engaged in "package selling abuses," improperly administered the Universal Service Program, renamed basic service and sold basic exchange service as a package deal with expensive optional services. Moreover, Pacific failed to seek and obtain authorization from the Commission prior to selling certain enhanced services. In the case before us, Pacific did not sell basic exchange service as a package with optional services. It sold basic exchange service separately from the optional packages and maintained in its offerings a clear partition between local exchange services and optional services. Unlike the 19986 case, Pacific sought and obtained authority to sell the optional packages that are the subject of this complaint. In other respects,

we do not find Pacific in violation of its obligation and rules governing the administration of Universal Service Program.

We do find Pacific in violation of providing incomplete information in its marketing of Caller ID services. To rectify that problem, we have directed Pacific to contact every one of those customers and fully inform them on the choices available to them so that, if they so choose, they can switch to Complete Blocking at no cost. This remedial effort will result in significant costs to Pacific Bell. We have also imposed a fine on Pacific to deter it from engaging in similar violations in the future.

With respect to Pacific's sequential offerings of custom calling services, we find Pacific in violation of §2896 for failing to inform customers of the availability of other options. We have ordered Pacific to fix its Tariff Rule 12 so that marketing of such services will comply with the standards of full disclosure and customers become aware of lower priced options with fewer services and that each component of the packages is sold on a stand-alone basis. However, we do not find this violation warranting any further action in the form of a pervasive customer education effort.