Hi All,

Everyone one of us has a life outside of our interest in earthquakes and prediction, but sometimes events can happen in the lives of people that seem worse than experiencing an earthquake. During the last year I've spent far more hours working on consumer issues in research and attempts at problem solving than earthquake research because for me they had a much higher priority. However, I wanted to take a moment and share some of my findings with you. At some point in your lives these issues may affect you or someone you know, thus I think a little information shared is a good thing. Canie, I hope you will indulge me in this off topic post.

13 months ago on a Friday night I came home to find I had extremely limited phone use. I could only call AT&T, phone repair service or 911. A.T. & T. told me I owed them $521.00 and I could pay up or have no phone service until Monday. 3 of their people told me the costs came from my prior residence as I had just moved. My prior bills were around $40.00 a month and suddenly its over $500 in a two-week period. The problem was that they started charging me for "local toll service"and that included our Internet use on two home computers. In the end I paid them a little over $700.00 and filed a complaint with the California Public Utilities Commission. I was assigned a case person and file number from them. But aside from that they kept billing me $7.22 a month for a connectivity charge, when I had switched my service to MCI.

Meanwhile when I signed up for services with MCI, I ordered "long distance only" service and they sent me a notice telling me I had both long distance and local toll calls. I called them and they confirmed on the phone it was only long distance service, but said they had no letters they could give me to confirm this. I told them I thought someone on the premises could write me a letter, but she said it had to be uniform, so that was impossible. It told them to cancel my service, but they wouldn't do that either. They wanted me to connect with someone else, with their knowledge as to whom it was before they would let me go. So I just didn't pay them and that took care of that.

Pac Bell filed an illegal take over complaint with the PUC and waived one month service charge, but said I had to work it out with A T & T to get them to stop billing me. Well, it wasn't gonna happen. But at last, now that Pac Bell has been taken over by SBC and SBC has a different way of handling things, they will block these monthly charges.

In 2001 the PUC received over 32,000 consumer complaints related to long distance carriers and yet they take no action. Why? Because all of these companies are "unregulated." Only companies such as SBC are regulated and must not only tell you what service you have, but must respond to complaints. Therefore A.T. & T.'s offer of $19.99 cost me over $800.00 which I most likely will never recover. If it looks good, make sure it's regulated before you hop onto the cost savings program.

Issue number two affects every person in America who has credit. I received a notice a week ago that I was included in a Class Action suit against all three credit bureaus because they put another person's negative credit information onto my credit report. Through this suit a settlement arrangement has been reached and henceforth if any of the three credit bureaus place information on any consumers report that does not belong to them, they are subject to a $1000.00 fine. They too are "unregulated." About six months ago the Department of Insurance told California insurers they could not longer use a person's credit information to determine if they qualified for insurance over this unregulated issue. Imagine a person who was buying a ten million dollar home to find no one would insure them because they had to many inquires on their credit reports. Of could they did, they were shopping for the best interest rate they could achieve and ended up with policies that cost them 3 or 4 times the price of a normal policy in a high risk market.

So to all of you, watch out for any business that is unregulated. In the end it can cost you more than you would ever imagine, and most of the time the problems cannot be fixed unless they end up in Class Action suits.

What about Better Business bureaus? A good thing? NO. After taking a mover to court for failure to return a $500 overpayment, I sent the local bureau the entire case file which showed I won the award and seized the money from the mover's bank account. The bureau's on-line report about them simply says, "they failed to respond to their inquiries."

Please excuse the length of this message, but I think all of these issues are important to so many consumers and if you know going in what could happen and how marginal your chances of recovery are, then being informed means you have some measure of protection. Use it.

Anyone curious about my current research endeavors? Gosh, I hope so. Presently I'm working on the Deadbeat Parents issue. Just doing some random number calculations I have estimated this problem affects 150 million children and their custodial parents. So while one parent has excused their selves from being responsible, the custodial parent must work endless hours to manage and in the end the child suffers from only having one part-time parent. The results are poor health, no medical benefits, limited education, low self esteem, a higher percentage of teen pregnancies and teen suicides. In the richest country in America, a lot of children are doing without when it is totally unnecessary. I like to say, "for every problem, there is a solution." There is a solution to this one and that's streamlining tracking from state to state and putting some serious teeth into the law for offenders. In doing so, it will save American tax payers millions because it will take less staff to work on these cases.

I'm sorry to say this issue has come about because my ex decided to play deadbeat dad 13 months ago. Today I'm starting my third job. The good news is that I am very organized and have an abundance of life skills. Believe me when I say, being a single mom and losing $1600 a month in income is quite difficult to manage, but hey, I'm hanging in there.

I have a lot of inspiration from many other women who have had problems and learned to over-come them and change the way American's view important issues. If Candy Lightner who created MADD could make drunk driving in America an unacceptable behavior, believe me when I say, at some point in the future, being a deadbeat parent will hold the same societal view.

Everyone wish me success....this is one big banana....Petra