Regulators attempt to clarify telephone bills

"It appears to have been written by a retired IRS agent," the Port Charlotte, Fla., retiree said with a sigh.

Even experts confess they have difficulty decoding their bills.

Larry Irving, President Clinton's top telecommunications policy adviser, leaves that job to the family MBA - his wife, Leslie.

"I'm just a lawyer," Irving said. "A college degree and a law degree are not enough to decipher it. I need somebody who has had accounting and finance."

Telephone regulators - led by Federal Communications Commission chair Bill Kennard, who says he has trouble understanding his own bill - are expected this month to issue proposals aimed at making phone bills less confusing. It's not clear how to accomplish that. The agency now lets companies decide how to list and explain charges.

"Reading your phone bill should not be like reading Ulysses - long and complicated," Kennard said.

Phone companies, meanwhile, insist they are trying to make bills easier to understand. They don't want regulators dictating bill formats.

One reason phone bills have gotten more complex in recent years is because there's a growing number of companies offering a wider variety of services, including Internet access, second lines and voice mail.

Many of these charges usually end up in one big bill customers get from their local phone company.

Also, phone companies, fearing customer backlash, are breaking out the government-ordered subsidies that once were included in rates and itemizing new federal charges from last year's government overhaul of phone fees.

"There are so many more different things being charged for, it's hard to figure out the bill," said Bell Atlantic customer Matthew Davis of Washington.

Most phone customers say they don't mind that charges once hidden in rates now are spelled out. Some think bills should state in plain English where these and other charges come from and what they finance.

Phone bills should be simpler and more informative, Kennard says, because that makes it easier for consumers to shop around and figure out if they're charged for something they didn't buy.

Bell Atlantic, the nation's largest regional Bell telephone company with 30 million customers along the East Coast, plans in late December to begin providing some customers with a more readable bill. All customers should have the new format by 2001.

In a 1994 Bell Atlantic study comparing its own bills against utility and credit card and other types of bills, consumers ranked the phone company's at the bottom, said Frank Bennett, vice president of customer billing.

"I think medical billing is a good analogy to telephone billing in that it is a fairly complex discipline that the customer doesn't necessarily understand," Bennett said.

Davis complained that his Bell Atlantic bill is "printed on little teeny papers, which are hard to read. And, there's no attempt whatsoever by the phone company to explain charges in plain English."

Bell Atlantic's new bill will be larger - 7 1/2 by 10 1/2 - about the size of credit card statements, and printed on both sides. The first page will have a summary of charges with a tear-off payment coupon. It will include longer and clearer explanations of charges.

After customer complaints, Sprint redesigned its long-distance bills in 1995, including listing the amount due with a tear-off payment coupon up front, and summarizing charges by service - residential phone, paging and phone card. The company also is considering a redesign to local phone bills, said Steve Dykes, a spokesperson for Sprint's local phone business.

Cline, who is billed by Sprint for local service and for long-distance provided by AT&T, wants the FCC to make all phone companies use the same format.

The administration's Irving thinks phone companies should agree voluntarily to use "plain language," and believes federal legislation may be warranted if they don't.

Roy Neel of the United States Telephone Association says all customers really need to do to understand bills is give them a careful review.

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