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Will the California PUC Provide All Telephone Consumers Equal Protection on Friday?

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By Richard Holober
Executive Director
Consumer Federation of California

When AT&T, Sprint, Verizon and T-Mobile look at our state’s growing immigrant population, they see one thing – money, and lots of it.

These corporations spend a fortune advertising their products in Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog and other non-English languages. You can’t blame them. After all, 40% of Californians speak a language other than English at home, according to the 2000 US Census.

But when it comes time to close the deal with a non-English speaking customer, the big phone companies don’t want to put their verbal promises in writing in a language that the customer can read.

It’s tough enough for an English professor to understand the fine print in a cell phone contract. For the one in five Californians who have difficulty understanding English, it’s out of the question.

On Friday, the California Public Utilities Commission will vote on regulations to protect telephone consumers who make their purchase in a language other than English.

The PUC’s draft provides meager consumer rights. The draft does not require a telephone company to provide a contract and summary of key terms and rates at the point of sale in the language used to advertise and consummate the deal. Instead, it allows phone companies to provide this “in-language” contract information through any two of these methods: on a website, through a recorded phone message, in the mail ten days after a contract is signed, or by calling a live customer service representative. These options are available only after the contract is signed, leaving limited-English consumers with the burden of requesting or finding the information, and then having to cancel a contract if they find they were victims of bait and switch sales tactics.

The big phone companies seem to have convinced the California Public Utilities Commission that the costs of translation services are unfairly burdensome. We believe that any company that can spend tens of millions of dollars a year advertising and selling in a non-English language can pick up the few bucks it would cost to translate the contract into that same language and give it to the customer when it makes the sale.

Requiring a contract in the same language used to pitch a product is nothing new. California law already requires “in-language” contracts for an automobile purchase or lease, time share, prepaid phone calling card, insurance product or annuity. Translation requirements haven’t caused these industries to go bankrupt.

The cell phone industry is the number one industry for consumer complaints logged by the Better Business Bureau year after year. Difficult to read contracts and bills are common complaints. These difficulties are compounded for non-English and limited-English consumers.

On Friday, we ask the California Public Utilities Commission to take the side of consumer rights. The PUC should strengthen its proposed rules, and require phone companies to furnish the contract and a summary of rates and terms in the same language used for its sales materials at the point of sale. These companies make big profits running ads and hiring sales personnel to market in many languages spoken in California. All consumers need the protection of a readable document that spells out the company’s verbal commitments.

The Consumer Federation of California is a non-profit advocacy organization. Since 1960, the Consumer Federation of California has been a powerful voice for consumer rights. CFC campaigns for state and federal laws that place consumer protection ahead of corporate profit. Each year, CFC testifies before the California legislature on dozens of bills that affect millions of our state's consumers. CFC also appears before state agencies in support of consumer regulations.

Posted on July 25, 2007

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