Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 17, 1993 TAG: 9303170036
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SANDRA BROWN KELLY
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
STATE'S PAY PHONES GETTING SOME SERIOUS NEW RULES
Mary Fochtman was at Smith Mountain Lake on the job for Appalachian Power Co. when she needed to call home to check on a sick child. She found a pay phone at the convenience store at Virginia 122 and 616 and dialed her long-distance access code.It wouldn't work.
She tried again. It still wouldn't work.
Frustrated, Fochtman dialed direct and fed the Pacific Telephone Corp. machine $1.85 for a two-minute call about 65 miles to Troutville.
The price of the call seemed steep, Fochtman said, but she mostly felt ripped off because she couldn't use her own long-distance service.
Others have reported similar recent experiences:
A calling-card call via Capital Network from Winchester to a town in New York lasted three minutes and cost $6.44. The caller was unable to access his long-distance service.
A one-minute calling-card call from Rocky Mount to Roanoke via United Tele-Systems was billed at $4.64. This telephone also wouldn't respond to the AT&T access code.
It could have been worse.
Some pay phones won't allow a caller to dial 911 for emergency help.
That's what a state audit committee learned in December when it checked 118 Virginia pay phones operated by 21 different companies. Not a single telephone among the 118 was operating the way it should have been.
The report from the State Corporation Commission and the Virginia Office of Consumer Affairs committee said the most serious violations, in addition to no access to 911, were:
Restricted or no access to local exchange company operators.
Extreme overcharging in the handling of local calls; rates quoted ranged from 50 cents to $4 above the authorized rates.
Failure to inform consumers of charges prior to completion of calls.
The upshot was legislation passed by this winter's General Assembly. Beginning July 1, providers of pay telephone service will be required to register with the state, and the SCC will have the power to establish regulations for pay phone service.
Among the guidelines planned for the Customer Owned Coin Operated Telephones are:
They must furnish local directory information at a maximum charge of 30 cents per call.
They must be equipped to provide a free dial tone and free calls to 911 and the operator.
They can add a surcharge above the allowable rate for long-distance calls provided the surcharge is posted on the phone; for example, "AT&T plus 10 percent," or "MCI plus 5 percent."
Pay phones must be hearing-aid compatible and installed to accommodate disabled persons.
The maximum rate for local calls may not exceed the rate approved for the local telephone company.
As a part of meeting federal guidelines for labeling bottled water, Quibell Corp. finally is finding a place for Roanoke's name on its spring-water products.
Labels will carry Roanoke as the site of the bottler's corporate headquarters. The water still comes from Sweet Springs, W.Va., which is near The Greenbrier resort at White Sulphur Springs.
Quibell promised to put Roanoke's name on the labels several years ago, when it moved bottling operations and offices into the city's Centre for Industry and Technology. It just hasn't been as high a priority as selling water, said Bruno Rolando, Quibell vice president. The company building doesn't even have a name on it yet.
To meet one guideline or another, or just to improve the looks of a label, Quibell has made 180 changes, said Rolando. The company has 60 different water products.
Among the changes:
Little fruit vignettes were added to the soda labels.
"Made with spring water" replaced "spring water" on sodas.
All French terms have been removed. Federal guidelines say if a company uses any foreign language on a label, the entire label must be repeated in that language - and there wasn't room on Quibell's labels to do that.
The government "didn't like `natural sweet springs sparkling' " terminology, so it is being changed to "natural spring" water, said Rolando.
Some label type also is being enlarged.