• Qwest
continued from page 1
package exists and instead push
more expensive service packages
with special features.
“It is ongoing,” he said. “We have
had a lot of those complaints in our
consumer section about people get
ting charged for Qwest services they
did not want or approve. This is a
problem not confined to students —
it appears to be statewide.”
Qwest spokeswoman Barbara Faul
haber said Qwest sales consultants do
not have to specifically state the price
of a basic line, but employees are re
quired to offer the basic service option.
She added that Qwest employees
are prohibited from giving people serv
ices they don’t request and should can
cel unwanted services immediately.
“Typically we ask what their needs
are and try to match those needs,” she
said. “ Representatives should walk
them through it and ensure they’re
getting exactly what they wanted. ”
Jan Margosian, Oregon Department
of Justice spokeswoman, said the de
partment is investigating 573 Qwest
consumer complaints. Many of those
have included allegations that Qwest
employees “crammed”—added serv
ices to customer accounts without ap
proval or misrepresented its services.
"We have a large investigation con
cerning Qwest and many different as
pects of its operations,” she said.
The state’s Unlawful Trade Prac
tices Act prohibits “false or mis
leading representation.” The De
partment of Justice can ask a court
to fine Qwest up to $25,000 per vio
lation of basic consumer protection
laws. In April, Qwest paid more
than $75,000 to the state to settle
other alleged violations.
Meyer’s mother has since filed a
complaint with PUC, which was
passed on to the Department of Justice.
It took her two hour-long phone calls
with Qwest to cancel the unwanted
services and get a refund, he said.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if they
just do that to everyone—try to give
you as much as they can and see if
you notice,” Meyer said. “My ad
vice to other people is to make sure
their bill is reasonable and that they
got only what they asked for.”
Lorraine-Michelle Faust also experi
enced problems with the phone com
pany this year. Like Meyer, the senior
journalism major ordered a basic line.
But a week later she realized her service
included features she was unaware of.
“A friend told me they left a mes
kage on my voice mail — I said r
don’t have voice mail,’” Faust said
“They said ‘Yes, you do.’ So I called
and found out I did. I just --
wanted a dial tone. ” I Qv
But Faust’s difficulties be* l
came even greater when she l sk
called to fix the problem. The l
Qwest sales representative told 1 A
Faust that her address did not ex-Itt
ist in the computers and the 1 ^
phone line she had belonged to a \
business, she said. The represen- l ;
tative told her that until she had a 1
“real” address, she could not have l
her own phone line. 1
“I’m getting someone else’s l
calls,” she said. “It’s really frustrat- I
ing. I have no idea what to do.” l
She added that many corpora-1
tions such as Qwest have national I
headquarters that she believes do not 1
provide efficient local customer serv
ice. She’s had several customer serv
ice problems with Qwest in the past.
“I wanted to boycott them, but I
didn’t have the choice,” she said.
But in the last year, Qwest has
made some strides in improving
customer service. In response to
several complaints about Qwest’s
sales practices, PUC worked with the
phone company in June to develop a
six-month plan to answer customer
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Students complain about Qwest’s practices
The Oregon Public Utility Commission and
the Oregon Dept, of Justice have received
several complaints from customers,
including students, about the business
practices of Qwest Communications.
OPTIONAL SERVICES are provided
by Qwest. These charges are not
part of basic telephone service.
The costs show up on the
customer's biil, and must be
paid unless the customer
cancels the services.
OTHER COMPLAINTS from
students include difficulty in
cancelling services, difficulty
contacting customer service
and problems getting refunds.
service calls faster. Valdez
said the commission guessed
that longer sales pitches were slow
ing down response times.
Qwest was also one of the phone
companies in compliance with an
agreement in Marion County Circuit
Court in April — which demanded
that long-distance service providers
throughout the country cease mis
leading business practices.
In a press release that same month,
Oregon’s Attorney General Hardy
Myers warned consumers to read
phone bills carefully and to check for
unauthorized charges or changes.
Margosian said students who have
experienced any problems with
Qwest services or believe they’ve
been wrongly billed are encouraged
to file a complaint with the Oregon
Department of Justice online at
www.doj.state.or.us, or call its toll free
hotline at (877) 877-9392.
Beata Mostafavi is the student activities
editorforthe Oregon Daily Emerald.
She can be reached at beatamostafavi@dai
lyemerald.com.
Nike
continued from page 1
Gassama said corporations start
ed releasing responsibility reports
during the anti-apartheid protests
of the mid-1980s, when protest
ers demanded that companies
such as Reebok, Coca-Cola and
IBM divest funds from South
Africa. Since the anti-apartheid
protests, he said, many corporate
watchdogs and non-governmen
tal organizations have used the
court of public opinion to shame
multinational corporations into
becoming better public citizens.
“They have used the moral are
na and the legal arena as a public
relations tool for getting straight
at the consumer,” Gassama said.
“This is the only disciplinary
force left to regulate the conduct
of multinational corporations.”
Whether or not Nike is a tardy
participant in the corporate citi
zen game, public shaming is a
natural fact of capitalism, Busi
ness Professor Mark Phelps said.
“Within the theory of capitalism,
this is exactly what is supposed
to be going on,” said Phelps, who
is the Tykeson senior instructor
of international business, law and
social responsibility. “Social
pressure tells companies how
they should be behaving.”
Over the past few years, this
shaming has taken a new form, as
corporate watchdogs and media
groups have exposed a series of
documented environmental law
violations at Nike’s contracted
factories. In 1997, the Transna
tional Resource & Action Center
found and released a secret audit
of a Nike facility in Vietnam. In
October 2000, the British Broad
casting Corporation aired a story
about a Nike-contracted factory
in Cambodia using child labor.
Some monitoring groups are
beginning to see changes in the
way the company does business.
Scott Nova, executive director of
the Worker Rights Consortium, a
labor watchdog group, said he
was impressed by Nike’s conduct
during a worker management
standoff at a factory in Mexico.
Nova said workers at the Mode
mex factory in Atlixco, Mexico,
were permitted to form an inde
pendent union because of Nike’s
pressure on management.
“There is no doubt in my mind
that this would not have happened
without the intervention of Nike
and Reebok,” Nova said.
John Liebhardt is the higher education editor
for the Oregon Daily Emerald. He can be
reached at johnliebhardt@dailyemerald.com.
Investigation
continued from page 1
jacker Mohamed Atta’s visits to
Spain in January and July. Atta
spent several days in a resort town
south of Barcelona and was sus
pected of meeting with Islamic ex
tremists.
Atta also met in Spain with a
Tunisian man now in Spanish cus
tody who is believed to have been
sent from Afghanistan to supervise
Osama bin Laden’s terrorist opera
tions in Europe, Spanish authori
ties said.
Ashcroft told reporters Sunday
that a crop-dusting plot to disperse
toxic substances on U.S. targets
might have been averted by
grounding the planes and alerting
commercial sprayers to safeguard
their equipment.
“We felt that there was some
pretty serious information - the
president, I think related this the
other night - that there had been
very significant interest (by terror
ists) expressed in crop dusting,”
Ashcroft told reporters. “We took
steps to alert the industry.”
The FBI warned last Thursday
that another terrorist attack may oc
cur in the United States or overseas
“over the next several days” and that
the public and law enforcement offi
cials should remain on the “highest
alert” for suspicious activity.
Although several days have now
passed, the warning remains in
place, an FBI official said Monday.
The FBI is also looking for a pilot,
believed to be Saudi Arabian, who
in August bought two small planes
at an airport near Fort Campbell, Ky.,
where the Army’s 160th Special Op
erations Aviation Regiment is sta
tioned, officials said. The 160th is
expected to play a key role in any
Special Forces campaign to locate
Taliban and al-Qaida leaders.
— Knight Ridder
correspondent Kevin Murphy
__contributed to this report
© 2001, Knight Ridder/Tribune Information
Services.