Qwest slams Peter Pan

A case of mistaken identity exposes how a long-distance telephone company is targeting Asian immigrants.

By Deborah Scoblionkov

Oct 16, 2000 | My last name can be something of a challenge to pronounce (Sko-blee-onk-ov) and a brain twister to spell. So, in consideration of people who may want to contact me, I've listed my phone number in the telephone directory under my name, as well as the more whimsical, unforgettable and mnemonic alias: "Peter Pan."

Over the years, I've gotten my share of prank phone calls -- adolescents identifying themselves as "Captain Hook," asking for "Tinker Bell," that sort of thing. I'll respond as "Wendy," and we both usually crack up in laughter before hanging up.

But in recent years, the benefits of having a phone book alter ego have been outweighed by the growing annoyance of telemarketers targeting the Asian immigrant community. The phone will ring during dinner, and when I answer I'm greeted with a long marketing pitch in Chinese -- the only words I recognize are "Mr. Pan." Worse, as the callers rarely speak English, they can't even get the joke.

Then, on a Friday evening in late August, I received a call (in English) from my long-distance provider, MCI WorldCom. Dismissing it as yet another telemarketing call offering me "additional services," I instructed the woman not to call again. But just as I was about to hang up, she explained that she was calling to inform me that I was no longer a customer of MCI.

What? For not taking her sales call?

No, according to her records, I had changed my long-distance service provider two days before and she was calling to verify it.

Her words sunk in: I'd been slammed.

Grrrrr.

Slamming is the sleazy byproduct of intense competition unleashed by deregulation of the telephone industry; it's an illegal practice in which unscrupulous and unethical long-distance telephone carriers switch someone's preferred provider without their knowledge or consent.

Unfortunately, she could not provide me with the name of the company that slammed me. For that I'd have to wait until the weekend was over and request the information from my local phone company.

When I called Verizon a few days later to learn the identity of the new long distance provider that I had supposedly authorized to provide my service, it turned out to be Qwest -- the upstart telecommunications company based in Denver, Colo., that recently merged with US West. Sitting on a newly laid 18,500-mile, high-speed fiber optic network, Qwest has -- in a remarkably short time period -- grown to be the fourth-largest long-distance carrier in the nation, and that's merely a quarter of its business as a broadband, Internet-based telecom.

So I called Qwest. The company representative I spoke to confidently assured me that the change had been properly authorized. In fact, he could prove it to me by accessing a tape recording of the actual conversation.

Then he let out a chuckle. "What's your name?"

I told him.

"Well then, who's Peter Pan?"

The tape recording we listened to revealed a man with a distinctly urban, African-American accent claiming to be "Peter Pan," who agreed to have his (my!) telephone service changed to Qwest. "Yeah, yeah," he said hurriedly when asked if he was responsible for authorizing the change.

Who was this mystery Peter Pan? Had Qwest purposefully faked the authorization? Or was it someone's ideas of a prank? I still don't know for sure -- but I did learn later that Qwest has been repeatedly fined for questionably authorized slamming, even as it claims, at an executive level, to have "zero tolerance" for such abuses.

Next Page: Zero tolerance or reckless abuse?

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