THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, March 9, 1996 TAG: 9603090394
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DAVE MAYFIELD, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: PORTSMOUTH LENGTH: Medium: 72 lines
Don Cericola is a self-described ``good Roman Catholic boy,'' a real-estate agent who's just trying to make a decent living in the property-management and relocation businesses.
Last weekend when Cericola double-checked the toll-free 800 number that he's used since August to field customers' calls, he got a steamy shock.
Instead of the recording of his upbeat welcome to callers, Cericola heard this message: ``Ummm. Like it hot and nasty? . . . Oh, yeah.'' A breathless female then welcomed callers to punch in their credit-card numbers for ``live, uncensored phone sex with nasty, naked girls.'' All for $3.99 a minute.
Because of an error somewhere in the complex computer network for assigning 800 numbers, Cericola's number had suddenly been turned over Saturday to a sex line. It wasn't his fault, and the phone companies involved in the switch are trying to fix the problem.
In the meantime, Cericola is angry and embarrassed. And he wonders how much damage has been done to his business, which he has spent several thousand dollars promoting in direct-mail flyers and newspaper ads as far away as Guam.
``At first, I thought maybe somebody was playing a joke and taped something over my recording,'' said Cericola, a Portsmouth resident who works for Realty Executives. ``I was the laugh of the office for a couple of days.''
But by Wednesday Cericola was taking the problem seriously. He hired an attorney and started pressing for answers from his long-distance carrier, Eastern Telecom International of Newport News, which assigned him the number seven months ago.
Lisa Brown, Eastern Telecom's director of network services, said in an interview Friday that company executives sympathize with Cericola.
``We're fighting for him to get the number back,'' she said. ``Every day, several times a day, we are calling and escalating this.''
But she said the problem wasn't her company's fault, and that it isn't easy to resolve. For one thing, the sex service has been reluctant to give up the number, she said. Brown said she learned through an intermediary that the service, whose location she doesn't know, was only willing to surrender the line for $3,000.
Management representatives of the service couldn't be reached for comment Friday. When a reporter called the service and asked a woman identified as ``General Lace'' to forward the call to a manager, she replied, ``For a sex company?'' Then she disconnected the call.
Eastern Telecom's Brown said the problem goes back to April 1995. She said that at the time, WilTel Inc., a larger phone company, assigned the 800 number to Eastern Telecom. The problem is, Brown said, another carrier, unbeknownst to Eastern Telecom, also laid claim to the number.
When that other phone company assigned the number to the sex service beginning Saturday, it was instantly taken from Cericola - without warning.
Brown said either WilTel or the administrator of the telephone industry's database of available 800 numbers was to blame for the problem in the first place. But she said that the other phone company that assigned the number to the sex line also shares some responsibility to resolve it.
As of Friday afternoon, the various parties hadn't worked out a fix. But Chris Schein, a spokesman for WilTel's parent company, WorldCom Inc. of Jackson, Miss., said he hopes the problem will be resolved by Monday.
Cericola said he doesn't think he even wants his old 800 number now. The longer it plays ``Oh, baby, baby,'' as he puts it, the more trouble it causes him. ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]
L. TODD SPENCER
Don Cericola
by CNB