Fire chief: Check your telephone bill

People don't want to give up their old rotary phones.
By TIM YOVICH
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
NILES -- Fire Chief Gary Brown is suggesting that telephone users check their bills to assure they aren't being charged for unused services.
Why would a fire chief be issuing such a warning?
Because the Niles Fire Department had been paying $4.35 a month to rent a rotary telephone it hasn't had for at least 22 years.
That's $1,148 in rental fees paid over more than two decades.
Brown, who was promoted to chief two months ago, said he was looking at a telephone bill the department had been receiving. The billing was for $4.35 each month.
Brown, who has been in the department for nearly 26 years, asked himself: "What's this?"
The chief contacted AT & amp;T and was asked if he wanted to cancel the rental fee. The city has been charged since at least 1984.
Phone not returned
Because the department hadn't had a rotary phone in years, Brown said, the department was charged $17 because it couldn't return it to the phone company.
Brown said the $17 was required to halt the billing.
John Skalko, a spokesman for Lucent Technologies, which operates AT & amp;T's Consumer Lease Services, said the $17 is termed a "set recovery charge" and is charged customers who don't return the phone when the lease is terminated.
"It's the first time I've heard about it," Skalko said of a lease running for 22 years without service. "There have been people leasing that long."
Lucent still leases rotary phones for AT & amp;T, Skalko said.
"People don't want to give them back. They love them," the Lucent spokesman said.
The phones were manufactured by Western Electric Co., Skalko explained, and they had a seven-year expected life span when built.
"They're still working," he said, noting Lucent wants them back when no longer used so they can use the parts to refurbish those that are still functioning.
No longer made
Skalko said Western Electric stopped manufacturing the phones in the late 1970s or early 1980s.
Brown figures it's part of his job to look at the bills.
"I don't like things slipping past me since I'm the financial officer" of the department, the chief explained.
Brown said that phone customers used to rent their phones. When they broke, the customer went out and bought a new one.
"I'm sure that they [telephone providers] aren't going to tell you to cancel the rental charge," the chief noted.
"They've got to be taking in millions," he added.
'Union phone'
Brown explained that when he joined the department, there was a rotary phone at the department. It was termed the "union phone" because it was used by firefighters to make personal calls so a department line wasn't tied up.
Who paid for it at that time isn't clear, but eventually the phone was removed and the rental fee kept on being charged.
"I hate spending the money if you don't use it," the chief commented.
Although it isn't much of a monthly fee, there are people on fixed incomes who could use the money for something else, the chief said.
"People aren't paying attention. You get a bill and you pay it," Brown added.
yovich@vindy.com