Bills For Sex Line Calls Baffle Gte Customers Woman Gets Bill After Requesting Block On Line; State Investigating Company, Billing Contractor

Lynn Hopkins thought she’d made it impossible to call “sleazy phone sex lines” from her telephone.

More than a year ago she asked GTE to install a 900 block on her phone - a feature designed to prevent calls to the costly numbers.

So Hopkins was surprised when her December phone bill arrived with more than $400 in calls to a 900 phone sex line.

And she was just plain angry when her January bill brought another $120 in charges.

“I thought I was protected, I thought I was safe,” Hopkins said. “It’s just as if they came into my home. It’s an invasion of my rights.”

Hopkins is one of many North Idaho residents who have been billed for calls to a 900 sex line they insist they never made.

GTE has received complaints from 30 people living in the Hayden area. All the residents have phone numbers that begin with 772 and all received their suspicious bills from a Florida company called North Star Communication Inc.

The Idaho attorney general’s office and the Idaho Public Utilities Commission are investigating the activities of North Star Communication and its Las Vegas-based billing contractor, Long Distance Billing Company Inc.

But officials from North Star Communication insist the bills are correct.

“These people made the phone calls, it’s plain and simple,” said Tom Harrison, a spokesman for the company. “We are definitely going after these people.”

Harrison doesn’t like to refer to the 900 line his company keeps track of as a “phone sex line.” Instead, he calls it a “chat line.”

“People talk about all kinds of things … political issues, automobiles. They talk about things they might not be able to talk about with their wife.”

North Star Communication accepts the call, keeps track of how long the caller is on the phone and then sends the records to Long Distance Billing Company, which sends the charge to customers via their phone bill.

In the Northwest, the charges arrive in the GTE phone bill.

Hopkins had seen horror stories on television about 900 calls. Just to be on the safe side she keeps her number unlisted and asked the phone company to put a block on her phone. GTE officials confirmed they received that request on Dec. 9, 1993.

Then a year later, five 900-line calls appeared on her December phone bill. Two more appeared on the January bill.

Hopkins has spent the last month trying to figure out where the calls came from. She’s convinced they weren’t made by her husband or two children, 13 and 8.

“These calls were never made from my home,” she insists. “I don’t even know where you acquire a number like that - out of one of my Good Housekeeping magazines?”

GTE confirmed Wednesday that because of an administrative error on its part, the 900 block was never put on Hopkins’ phone line as she requested.

“We process thousands of customer calls and orders each day and, unfortunately, errors do occur,” said Bob Wayt, public affairs manager.

In addition to clerical errors, the computer system can go down, disengaging the block, said Arlene Loop, a customer consultant for GTE.

“How do I protect myself?” Hopkins said. “It is very scary to know you can not protect yourself from these scams.”

“This is genuine out and out fraud,” she said. “The company is just out billing any number.”

The bills sent out by Long Distance Billing Company do not appear to follow the requirements laid out by the Idaho Public Utilities Commission.

Beverly Barker, director of consumer assistance, said the billing company must list where the call goes when it is dialed. Hopkins’ bill lists the 900 number but does not tell her what city or state was supposedly called.

A spokesperson for Long Distance Billing Company refused to comment over the telephone. North Star representative Harrison said he was not familiar with the requirement and still insists the calls came from Hopkins’ home.

Barker said the IPUC will forward the information from its investigation to the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission for possible action. Meanwhile, the attorney general’s office and GTE are looking into the complaints as well.

“The problem may be technical or of some other nature,” Wayt said. “If these calls are fraudulent, we’re trying to figure out how the perpetrator is accomplishing this.”

GTE will not hold their complaining customers responsible for the 900 bills from North Star, Wayt said. Long Distance Billing will have to pursue the charges itself.

As for Hopkins, she has no intention of paying for the calls.

“I took all the precautions,” she said. “There’s something just really not right about this.”