The hotel amenity that makes everyone mad these days is the telephone. From the minute you pick it up, it seems to eat money, starting with surcharges for calls to “free” 800 numbers all the way down to charges for calls you try to make but go unanswered.
In many cases, letting a child into the minibar would be less expensive.
The worst situation appears to be dialing long-distance, to be charged to your room bill.
Even when you dial every digit yourself, it probably will be billed at the higher operator-assisted rate, and there will be a surcharge beyond that, which may be as high as 50 percent of the cost of the call.
Sometimes the surcharge is by the call, sometimes by the minute, sometimes a combination. Using a credit card linked to your regular phone company, either to charge the call or to call collect, will get you around this. But the hotel may not let you get away with it without dinging you for the call to reach your phone company: 75 cents is a typical charge.
But hotels still look upon a phone system as a profit center, and new wrinkles appear every day.
An additional Federal Communications Commission regulation went into effect in March specifying that any room phone that could be modified at a cost of $15 or less must be adjusted to allow guests to reach the long-distance companies they want, so they can place a credit-card call, by dialing that company’s 10-XXX code: 10-ATT for AT&T; 10-333 for Sprint and 10-222 for MCI.
After the breakup of AT&T, phone companies had negotiated contracts with hotels to provide exclusive long-distance service, and room phones had been adapted to keep guests from reaching a competing company. That blocking gave rise to FCC intervention, and it now is illegal.
Another part of the FCC rules specifies that while the hotel may impose a surcharge for 10-XXX calls, the surcharges must be applied equally to all the access numbers. If it costs 75 cents to reach Sprint to place a credit-card call, it must cost 75 cents to reach the other companies.
Depending on the instrument in the hotel room, it is sometimes possible to avoid paying the 75-cent hotel charge for each call in a sequence by not hanging up between, but by pressing the (NU) sign between calls.
Some hotels that apply surcharges to access calls do not do so for 800-number calls, and all the phone companies have alternate routes to their credit-card service using 800 numbers: MCI uses 800-950-1022; AT&T 800-321-0288 and Sprint 800-877-8000.
At such hotels, callers can circumvent the surcharge. But it appears that hotels are getting wise to this and are surcharging 800 numbers that are used for access to credit-card calls.
The Westin chain in the United States allows its hotels to set their own surcharges on all outside phone calls-75 cents at the ANA in Washington, 50 cents in Houston, for example-but it modified its chain policy in May to end charges on 800 calls.
But in some hotels, according to Sue Brush, vice president of communications, there is no charge for access to a long-distance carrier either.
The Peabody in Orlando also dropped a 75-cent charge for most 800 calls. But, said Sonya Snyder, a spokeswoman, because there is still a surcharge of 75 cents on access calls, the hotel interprets the FCC rule to require a 75-cent surcharge on 800 calls to reach the long-distance companies.
The Marriott and Hyatt chains also do not surcharge 800-number calls except to the long-distance carriers, charging 75 cents, the same as for a 10-XXX number.
Kurt Schroeder at the enforcement division of the FCC said the equal-cost ruling did not seem to be violated by allowing free calls to all the carriers by the 800-number, but in any case, he said the issue had not come before the commission.
From the standpoint of sensible decisions, including deciding to go in your pajamas to use the lobby pay phone, the most important part of the FCC Telephone Operator Services Act is the requirement that phones intended for consumer use in hotels, hospitals and universities post information that rates are available on request, the identity of the carrier used by the hotel, a notice that another carrier may be used by dialing the access code and the address of the FCC.
Normally, hotels eliminate the need for requests for rates by posting rates and surcharges too. In some states, this is mandated.
Here are some current policies of large hotel groups on phone surcharges at domestic hotels. More changes are in the wind.
Geof Rochester, vice president of marketing for Radisson, says that his chain, continuing to hear that unexpected phone rates rank high as a source of annoyance, is going to reassess the whole picture this summer.
At the moment, Radisson policy opposes charges for access calls and 800 calls, although Rochester said that some of the 200 domestic hotels might not be following the policy.
In June, the Hilton Hotels in the United States adopted a policy of ending surcharges for access calls. As of July 1, 130 of the chain’s 240 hotels had accepted the policy. Hiltons do not charge for 800 calls; local calls are billed at the operator-assisted day rate and long-distance calls billed to the room are surcharged $1.90 a call, plus 18 to 26 cents a minute depending on the distance.
The Holiday Inns in North America, according to Gayle MacIntyre, a spokeswoman, are not permitted to impose surcharges for access calls or for 800-number calls, and “we monitor this,” she said. Individual motels are allowed to make a “reasonable” charge for local calls and a “reasonable” surcharge for long-distance calls billed to the room.
The Westin hotels leave to individual managers charges on local calls, which may be 50 to 75 cents; long-distance calls billed to the room are surcharged by the minute, and in Houston, for example, this is 35 cents.
Marriotts have a 75-cent surcharge on local calls, and long-distance calls charged to the room are billed at the operator-assisted rate, plus a 45 percent surcharge.
Courtyards by Marriott charge the operator-assisted rate for long-distance calls, plus a 50 percent surcharge. This group’s local calls cost 50 cents but are free to members of the frequent-stay program.
Sheraton can specify charges only for its 60 corporate-managed hotels, and the charge for a 10-XXX call is to be not more than $1; the charge for a long-distance call billed to the room is the operator-assisted rate, plus a surcharge of $1.75 for a domestic call.
At the Hospitality Franchise System, covering Days Inns, Howard Johnson and Ramada motels, each place sets its own policy.
The Best Western Group also leaves decisions to its properties, although members of its frequent-stay program get local calls free.
The law is indifferent to the size of surcharges, but not if they are unequal in application or if information about them is not clear in advance. Complaints should be sent to the FCC, 2025 M Street, N.W., Suite 6202, Washington, D.C. 20554.
