Since launching its initiatives over a year ago, the company has discontinued providing billing services to some 80 telecommunications service providers. The move resulted in a decline of more than 80 percent in the number of cramming complaints from Bell Atlantic customers. And most of those complaints pointed to a few bad apples. Since taking action against these suspected crammers, Bell Atlantic s complaints from residential customers have plunged to roughly 5,000 a month. Bell Atlantic, which serves 22 million households on the east coast, provides billing services for a wide variety of telecommunications providers.
Many customers prefer having all of their telecommunications services on one bill.
Under the new policy, when a customer calls Bell Atlantic with a cramming complaint, the company immediately removes the charge from the bill, instead of referring the customer to the company that initiated the charge. Bell Atlantic routinely screens proposals for billing new services and reserves the right not to bill for objectionable services.