COMMISSION WASHINGTON UTILITIES AND ) TRANSPORTATION COMMISSION, ) Docket No. UT-970766 Complainant, ) Volume 4 ) Pages 134 -211 vs. ) U S WEST COMMUNICATIONS, INC., ) Respondent. ) ----------------------------- ) A hearing in the above matter was held on November 17, 1997 at 6:45 p.m. at Kent City Hall Council Chambers, 220 Fourth Avenue South, Kent, Washington, before Chairwoman ANNE LEVINSON, Commissioner WILLIAM R. GILLIS and Administrative Law Judge TERRENCE STAPLETON. The parties were present as follows: U S WEST COMMUNICATIONS, INC. by Theresa Jensen, Director of Regulatory Affairs, 1600 7th Avenue, Room 3206, Seattle, Washington 98191. FOR THE PUBLIC, ROBERT F. MANIFOLD Assistant Attorney General, 900 Fourth Avenue, Suite 2000, Seattle, Washington 98164. WASHINGTON UTILITIES AND TRANSPORTATION COMMISSION STAFF, BY GREGORY TRAUTMAN, Assistant Attorney General, 1400 South Evergreen Park Drive Southwest, Olympia, Washington 98054. Cheryl Macdonald, CSR Court Reporter I N D E X WITNESSES: EXAM BURLINGAME 136 BRODEEN 143 WOLFRAM 152 RUHL 155 LAMPHEAR 158 MORISETT 162 HECKERN 169 BUTLER 171 O'CONNOR 175 SULLIVAN 178 R. GRASAR 182 S. GRASAR 185 KEMMAN 186 WEST 191 DICKS 194 WHITE 201 SMITH 205 EXHIBITS: (None marked.) P R O C E E D I N G S JUDGE STAPLETON: Let's be on the record. This is a public hearing in the matter of the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission versus U S WEST Communications, Incorporated, Docket No. UT-970766. Today's date is November 17, 1997 and we are convened in Kent, Washington before Chairwoman Anne Levinson, Commissioner William R. Gillis, and Administrative Law Judge Terrence Stapleton. At this time I'm going to call on public counsel, Mr. Manifold, to begin calling forward our public witnesses tonight. MR. MANIFOLD: Joan Burlingame. THE WITNESS: Good evening. EXAMINATION BY MR. MANIFOLD: Q. You previously signed in at the front desk, right? A. Yes, I did. Q. Would you -- are you a customer of U S WEST? A. I am both a business and a residential customer of U S WEST. Q. And are you speaking on behalf of anyone other than or in addition to yourself tonight? A. I'm speaking on behalf of my company which I am the president of. Q. And that company is? A. It is Idyll Arbor, which is actually a couple of different groups together. One is a publishing house. We're listed by R. R. Bowker and at Writer's Guide as a medium-sized publishing company and also as a health care consulting firm portion of Idyll Arbor. Q. And you're located in Ravendale? A. Ravensdale, that's correct. Q. And were you contacted by anyone in order to come here tonight? A. I believe I got a letter from your office just notifying me of the meeting. Q. Thank you. Please go ahead. A. My name is Joan Burlingame, and as I said before, I'm the president of a company that has both publishing and health care consulting as our two primary parts of the company. In the fields of recreational therapy and also activity professionals we are the largest publishing house in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Spain, Australia and seven other countries. Sixty percent of my editors commute via modem and the phone, living in the country of their choice. Orders from books come from all over the world 24 hours a day, probably about 50 percent of them via either fax, phone or E-mail. The rest come through U.S. postal service. Idyll Arbor also consults with health care issues in that we have two different categories. We are considered experts in facilities that are in trouble and we frequently are consulting with facilities that have civil rights violations of patients' rights. We also then consult with patients who have very extremely complex medical issues including talking about HIV status and how it affects other parts of their treatment. My company has been negatively impacted by U S WEST's ability to provide me with the most basic phone service, and I understand they're asking for a rate increase and that their records were audited but my question is, what are they doing with the money they actually have? The bottom line is that with U S WEST, in my opinion they have wasted thousands of dollars of their resources trying to solve what I think are some basic pretty easy problems. What they are not dealing with is inadequate policy and procedures and inadequate staff training. Last April, we went through what we thought was a simple process of adding one additional line to our company. In the Maple Valley area we have a 2BE switch, I understand the oldest switch in the state of Washington, and the only kind of services are through the Centrex or Centron system. For three weeks the home office staff would type in the orders for our additional service, but because they were not aware of the limitations of the service every single day all four of my phone lines would crash, and they would not go back up until the repair service swing shift staff knew how to get it back up. This went on for three weeks. Finally, I figured out how it should be typed into the computer, faxed the instructions to U S WEST home office in Arizona and the phone system worked, but it took three weeks of the phone system crashing. We anticipate that during those three weeks my company actually lost thousands of dollars in both sales and consulting fees because of our lines down. In addition, when each time the lines went down there was a recording that told our customers that our lines had been disconnected and we are no longer in service. During this fall we began to experience two additional problems now that we actually had our lines in place. One was that we would have frequent disconnects. We would have people calling from all over the world. We would pick up the phone and the line would disconnect, and I know that they were not hanging up on us because I do a lot of traveling. I would call the office and I would get disconnected. That's an irritation. The biggest concern I have is the second problem is cross talk, and it's not just between our lines. In the middle of a conversation all of a sudden another conversation totally unrelated to us from someplace else would come and cross over our lines. We could hear the complete conversation that people were having, and this even happened sometimes when I had U S WEST on the telephone, so they experienced it. They tried to yell and get the people's attention. There was no way that the individuals who we were hearing their conversation knew that we could hear the complete conversation. U S WEST told us that this was only 32 lines including our four lines affected. Turns out that I also know another customer who was having the same problems. In fact she did record the conversation between two individuals who were talking about a third individual's health care problems. Since October 6 we have now ceased giving health care consultation either about court cases or about patient's status over the telephone. What has -- the problem that I have found with U S WEST with their policy and procedures is starting the 6th of October until currently we still have those two problems. They have not been fixed. U S WEST would record the problem and say they would have someone out within three days to fix the problem. They would come out and look at our system and say, well, it may be this, it may be that, but it wasn't, and it just took them a couple of days to decide, a couple of visits to decide, it was within their own lines and not our own. However, each time I would call in a trouble report they would list it as a new problem. They would send another repair person out, and we're kind of out in the boonies. It's not a short drive. And then the person would say there's nothing wrong with the lines and they would close the case. This has happened approximately ten times since October 6. Now, we do know that people can hear our conversations and that's very much a concern to me. In addition to when the other voices come over our lines our customers hang up because they can no longer hear our voices. I cannot get the basic quality of service. It would take three days usually for a repair person to come out and then, like I said, they would close out and immediately I would call again to open it up. No matter how many times I asked for a supervisor to call, sometimes it would be a week for a supervisor to call me back, and I would state to them, don't close my case. It's not fixed. Don't treat this like a new problem and they are still treating it like a new problem. It still exists today. I really am opposed to the increase because I think from a management standpoint if they were to look at their own policy and procedures and do some increased staff training they would be able to make up their 70 million that they wanted. What is that -- less than a month's service time from what they spend on just repair, and I think that's something that they can make up much of it if they look at their own wasted time. Thank you. JUDGE STAPLETON: Commissioners, did you have any questions for Ms. Burlingame? COMMISSIONER GILLIS: Not for me. CHAIRWOMAN LEVINSON: Not for me. MR. MANIFOLD: Can you leave me your notes? THE WITNESS: Well, sure. MR. MANIFOLD: Stephanie Brodeen. EXAMINATION BY MR. MANIFOLD: Q. You signed in at the front desk? A. Yes, I did. Q. And you're a customer of U S WEST? A. Yes, I am. Q. What type of customer? A. Both residential and business. Q. What type of business? A. I have actually at the present time a business that I own, which is I am a legal secretary and I do transcription of court documents, and then the other one that I have is I'm managing another business in my home also as well, which is distribution of CDs and tapes and songbooks of a particular project that we had done. Q. Are you speaking for any group tonight? A. No, I'm not. Q. And how did you happen to come to these hearings? A. I contacted Utilities and Transportation Commission myself and asked how I could voice what I felt I needed to say. Q. Please go ahead and make your comment. A. Okay, thanks. JUDGE STAPLETON: Would you please restate your name for us. THE WITNESS: My name is Stephanie Brodeen. A. And presently, as I said, I am a small business owner and manager/owner of my own business and manager of another. I'm located in my home, and the beginning of August I contacted the U S WEST Communications and told them that I would like to add two additional telephone lines to my home. At that time of the order I had a residential line with custom ring for the business -- both businesses. One custom ring for the business telephone number and another custom ring for my fax line. And I had that probably for about a year and a half, and came to the place where I realized I needed to have isolated lines, so at the beginning of August, I believe it was around the fifth or seventh, the first part of August, I called the 1-800 number that you call to place orders, and mentioned that I would like to isolate my business line from my residential line. I would like to have a custom ring on that business line for my fax and also would like to have an additional line for the Internet because I'm on the Internet a lot, my family is on the Internet a lot, and was told that that would be no problem. I found it to be a big problem. When they sent out the people initially to take care of that order they did a partial job. I knew when they were going to come in that they would have to dig a trench and bring in a whole new line, and that first time that they came they only did part of the job, and the technician that was there at that time did not -- I guess it was his responsibility to place an additional order, which he did not do. He forgot to do that. And I didn't realize that until a while later I was supposed to have some jack work done and they said, well, we can't do the jack work because we don't have all of the lines in, and when I realized that then I had to call again and place another order, and when I contacted the same representative -- I was talking to the same person each time -- he didn't even have a record of my initial order. He had my name and he had the amount that I was to pay per month, but he had not listed out what it was, that bill or that charge represented, so I had to tell him what it was that I had ordered, and then of course he said he would send out another technician. Well, to make a long story short, because to be honest with you, it's hard for me to know where to start and where to stop and what to tell you and what to not tell you, but I'm going to just relate a few of the frustrating experiences that I've had and hopefully it will make some sense to you. During -- and this process took over two months. It was close to two and a half months and during that time I had, in addition to the technicians coming in and doing partial jobs and orders being lost, I had technicians show up at times that weren't designated by the representative that I had called. I would ask them, because of the businesses that I had going and operating in my home, to give me a block of time, because they told me that I had to be there, so I said, give me a block of time, I will set this time aside and I will do work at home during that time. And several times they wouldn't show, and I would -- I would call up and find out that they were scheduled the next day. I would be told one day, they would come the next day, and I didn't find that out unless I would -- if I hadn't called I wouldn't have known that. That happened two times when technicians didn't show up and I readjusted my schedule, which I'm sure you understand was very frustrating. There are times when technicians would -- and I'm talking maybe five, six technicians, you know, seven or eight, that would come over the course of these two and a half months that will come on site. They would come in and with blank expressions say, I have this order but I have no idea what it is I'm supposed to be doing here, and so I would have to recount to them or tell them again what the problem is. And, I mean, I would have to do that time and time again, and then I would have to call into U S WEST and tell them that, well, the technician said that he couldn't do anything. He said this is not a transmission problem, it's a translation problem. And so I'm setting aside my time, they're coming and nothing could be done about it. I felt like I had to tell my problem -- I felt like -- this is an exaggeration. I felt like it was hundreds of times that I would have to repeat the problem as many times to different people, maybe five or six different people in one day, hours of time on the phone taken away from my business, hours of time taken away from my family. Time that it was just very frustrating to me. I even had one representative of U S WEST tell me that according to his screen I did not have a problem with my phones, and that was not a good thing to say. I felt the frustration of not being able to just call up another telephone company and say, could you deal with me. I felt very small. There was that inside of me that wondered if I was a large corporation would I be treated differently. Would a supervisor contact me. What that woman said happened to me. I spoke to a couple of supervisors, but they told me that someone would come on site and no one ever did, which I believe would be a very valuable thing for U S WEST to do, particularly in a case like mine as a small business person, I just want service. I mean, I wish I could stand up here and say that I'm well versed in every area of this case. I'm not. I don't know every little detail about the rates. I mean, I couldn't stand up here and quote this statistic and that statistic. The issue that means the most to me is service. And -- because I don't have time to spend just searching out all those and just studying all those details. Service to me was the issue and still is. It took threats to get things done. And I've had customers -- I don't even know the impact on my business. I know that for a good portion of those two and a half months my business came to almost a total standstill. I don't know if I mentioned that the one business that I have has nationwide clientele. They call -- this is the CD and tape part of my business. They call nationwide to order this particular product that I have, and I had some clients who knew me and who would just call my home phone and say, we would call that business number and we would get the fax signal or they would call the fax number and get the business line or they would call my residential line and get my business voice messaging. Everything was mixed up and messed up and it's like I couldn't get there from here. Again, I wish I could estimate, give you an estimation how many calls or the revenue that I lost. I can't do that. The time that I spent was -- it was just a horrendous experience, and that there's a part in me even tonight that thought there is any number of things that I would rather be doing than standing up here talking about this, but I thought that if there's one thing I could do to help somebody else to not go through this I wanted to do it because that was that horrendous of an experience. I think I guess the last thing I would like to say is I am against this particular rate proposal by U S WEST. I will tend to favor the public counsel's, and just for the reasons that I have stated, I would like to see -- I would like to see the difference in service. I would like to know what that means. Because right now I have a very bad taste in my mouth. When I can hear or see the word U S WEST Communications I just -- to be honest with you I just get a very bad taste in my mouth, and at this point -- I'm a very trusting person but at this point they would have to show me very explicitly how service is going to be affected for the little person, and so I appreciate your time in listening to me. Can I say just one extra thing? I just saw this again. This basic service thing I just saw for the first time right now, and I've got to tell you that not once, even knowing what type of a business that I had, not once was I encouraged by them, like U S WEST will additionally provide at no charge call forwarding service to another number or a voice mailbox and a directory listing until the service order is completed. Some of those things, I looked at that and I thought that would have been very nice. They could have for the sake of my business, for the sake of my service, said that they would do something like this, or offering a paging service. I didn't hear about any of this. So, I mean, it would have been very nice to have some help and I'm sure they've got all sorts of records about my case because I spent a lot of time over the last two and a half months talking to them. So thanks a lot. CHAIRWOMAN LEVINSON: One question. Just to be clear, did the company indicate to you in any of these instances where a repair person didn't show up or something else happened that you had a right to a service guarantee? THE WITNESS: No. CHAIRWOMAN LEVINSON: Thank you. JUDGE STAPLETON: Ms. Brodeen, I have one question. Unlike Mrs. Burlingame who is still having an ongoing service quality problem, have you ultimately gotten the services lines installed the way you asked for them after this time? THE WITNESS: I did. JUDGE STAPLETON: Any other questions? Thank you for your testimony. MR. MANIFOLD: S. A. Wolfram. EXAMINATION BY MR. MANIFOLD: Q. Would you please state your name. A. Yes. I'm S. A. Wolfram. Q. And you signed up on the sign-up sheet out in front? A. Yes. Q. And are you a customer of U S WEST? A. Am I what? Q. Are you a customer of U S WEST? A. Yes, I am. Q. What type of customer? A. A residential line. Q. And are you speaking for yourself or on behalf of a group? A. No. I'm speaking for myself. I'm a member of AARP, but I'm not an official spokesperson today. I'm speaking for myself. Q. Please go ahead. A. Well, we certainly appreciate these opportunities to have open testimony. I think it's great and makes you feel comfortable that people are listening. The main thing I want to say is that I think that the $3 increase as requested by U S WEST for residential is far too much. I know, I'm quite aware, that prices are going up. I mean, you can't go to the grocery store without realizing every day that things are getting more expensive, but let me put something in perspective as to how this affected senior citizens, particularly those who are on Social Security, and I'm not at that poverty level because I do have another source of income other than the Social Security, but there are a large number of our citizens in this state who have nothing but Social Security. As of January of this year, we in Social Security had a 2.9 percent increase. As of next January I understand it's going to be a 2.1 percent increase. So now we're faced with the possibility of a 29 percent increase in our phones, and I know, I'm aware of many of our citizens who are on such a very limited income that this is going to be a very great hardship. They're going to have to choose between perhaps something that they needed to get other than telephone in order to keep their phone, because I think that most of those people would insist on keeping their phone if at all possible, even though it would mean a great hardship. For one thing, many elderly people are home bound, and the phone is really the only way they can maintain contact socially with their friends or their children or to call for help. So I just would hope that you would think of this group of people when you're looking at increasing, because $3 doesn't sound like much, but it is for a great many people, and so I would like to point that out. I also noticed that the staff proposal did not include waiving of the increase which U S WEST has agreed to for the people who are on the Washington Telephone Assistance Program. That's a special program for people who are very low income, probably poverty level, and the U S WEST has said that they would waive that for those people and also public counsel has mentioned it, but it wasn't mentioned by the staff, so I just would hope that this might be looked at again. One other thing that I would like to say -- incidentally, I said I was not speaking for AARP, and I'm not, but when I look at the proposal that would be the proposal I would certainly support, and I am a member of AARP. On the directory assistance calls I personally would like to have two free ones, but one seems to be what everybody is suggesting, and perhaps that is a spot where it does need to be increased. I know, unfortunately, I know people who pick up the phone and ask for help in finding somebody when they actually could have read their phone book, and so I don't think there's any problem in increasing that cost or in the fact the free calls are down to one. However, I would hope, and I was told that U S WEST has a system by which people can get that waived. I didn't even know that so I've never told any of my friends who are complaining about not being able to see the telephone book, and I didn't know this was in, so I'm very pleased and so I hope that kind of thing gets maintained. So I think that's about the major points I wanted to make and, again, I appreciate the opportunity to come and speak, and keep in mind your older citizens in this state. That's very important part of the citizenry here. JUDGE STAPLETON: Any questions for Ms. Wolfram? Thank you for coming out tone. We appreciate your testimony. MR. MANIFOLD: Robert Ruhl. EXAMINATION BY MR. MANIFOLD: Q. And you signed up to testify outside? A. Yes, I did. Q. Are you a customer of U S WEST? A. I'm a residential customer. Q. And you live in Tacoma? A. Yes, I do. Q. And are you speaking on behalf of a group? A. I'm not speaking on behalf of any organized group. I'm speaking primarily as a residential customer who happens to work and be around a good many, something that some of you may not appreciate but I do very much, senior citizens. Q. Please go ahead. A. I agree with most of what S. A. has to say, probably with all that S. A. has to say, but my concern at this time really is for those people who are voiceless and vulnerable and they are not in this room. The people in this room are able to get here. My concern is about people that I know personally who retired 1965, 1966. They are on very low fixed incomes and there's no way that there's been a cost of living adjustment which helps people with that length of retirement. I retired in 1979. Doesn't seem like it, but it's a few years ago, and at least once a month, sometimes twice a month, I meet with a group of people, and we can range from 70 to 120, of retirees who for the most part are quite frail and who wouldn't be able to get out, and we appreciate the opportunity to, as an unorganized group, to be able to be at a Commission hearing, to be able to testify on behalf of those people who need the assistance. And many of them are much like S. A. and like myself. We are not in the poverty level category where assistance comes through that way. Our assistance comes through when a price increase occurs is through cutting something else from the budget, and I would hope that the Commission will continue to consider that large number of young people who happen to have white hair and who probably are not very fortunate in, say, 1979 and should have invested in Microsoft when the opportunity occurred. Please consider the people who are at that end of the spectrum. I could speak briefly about my own needs as a private consultant to businesses and to education. I have not had problems with U S WEST on that basis nor have I moved so regularly that I had problems with hookups and long periods of waiting. But I do know people who have had difficulty, especially when they are disabled and when they move from one apartment, for example, let's say in the north end of Tacoma, to one in the south end, the time that it takes to get the hook-up that they need to communicate with the outside world. They all need to have access to 911 or some other emergency type of contact. They also need it for a social reinforcement, I think, as well. Many people, their only contact with the outside world is through their telephone. They don't go anywhere not because they don't want to, either they cannot afford to nor are they physically able to so they are sort of captives in their own home and at the will of whatever happens to come their way. I do appreciate the opportunity. I thank you for your time, and try to remember us old folk. That's for the other people in