II. Background
AT&T Communications of California, Inc. (AT&T) has alleged that Pacific slammed3 thousands of California customers who had presubscribed AT&T or another carrier as their LPIC for intraLATA4 toll service, and that Pacific engaged in unfair business and billing practices to winback customers who had switched their LPIC from Pacific to AT&T.
Pacific, in turn, alleged that AT&T engaged in slamming activities. Pacific based its complaint on numerous verbal and written communications from customers advising Pacific that their intraLATA toll service had been switched to AT&T without the customers' knowledge or informed consent.
These slamming allegations arose out of billing disputes. Neither of the complainants alleged that any customer ever paid a higher rate than the customer otherwise would have paid as a result of an alleged slam.
On April 13, 2000, the original assigned Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) consolidated these complaints. Subsequently, on August 7, 2000, AT&T and Pacific filed requests to dismiss, without prejudice, their respective complaints. Those requests resulted from negotiations and discovery showing that some of their allegations were unwarranted and that other problems could be resolved or avoided by prospectively changing their marketing efforts to reduce customer confusion over LPIC switching. These changes are embodied in a set of "Statement of intraLATA Toll Marketing Principles" negotiated by AT&T and Pacific, and in tariff language clarifications.
By Decision (D.) 01-02-017, dated February 8, 2001, we declined to dismiss the complaints. We found the public interest may be better served by resolving the serious slamming allegations in these complaints. We instead required AT&T and Pacific to retain for three years (from September 6, 2000) all records pertaining to the allegations contained in their complaints, and to provide those records to the Director of Consumer Protection and Safety Division (CPSD).5
We further directed CPSD to review those records, conduct a follow-up investigation, and file a report on its results within 180 days of receiving the records. That report was to address the issues identified in the Assigned Commissioner's Scoping Memo and to recommend whether the complaints should be dismissed. The issues included whether either AT&T or Pacific has slammed California consumers, and whether Pacific's LPIC billing system improperly billed AT&T for unauthorized changes in service provided under Pacific's winback program, when in fact the consumer authorized the change. CPSD filed its report on August 7, 2001.6
3 Slamming is a practice in which a consumer's local, local toll or long-distance service provider is switched without the consumer's authorization. 4 IntraLATA is telecommunications services that originate and end in the same Local Access and Transport Area. 5 At the time D.01-02-017 was issued, CPSD was known as the Consumer Services Division. 6 Parts of that report containing confidential information provided by AT&T and Pacific were submitted under seal. Such information is available upon the execution of a non-disclosure agreement.
