OCR Text |
Show Weekly Specfiafl crson MUIIIMIIIIIIM Government ignores Bell aftermath Washington At least once a month the American public is reminded that it is paying a high price in money and aggravation for the Justic Department's breakup of the world's most efficient telephone system. As consumers try to puzzle out the , ..multiple phone bills with their cryptically worded explanations for :;r various,, changes, they; can, -.with feeling, echo President Reagan's v question when he was first briefed on the telephone divestiture: "If it isn't broken, why are we fixing it?" It's too late to undo the initial mistake, of course. All the president's presi-dent's men can't put the Bell System back together again. But what makes the government's decision to break up Ma Bell doubly exasperating is that the resulting confusion comes at the very time when the administration is enthusiastically enthusi-astically pursuing its long-range goal of deregulating as much of the economy at is can. This puts the government in the position of causing the chaos and then walking away from any responsibility to help the public deal with it. "There should have been the largest consumer information campaign cam-paign in the history of the country to go along with the breakup of the laigest consumer service in the country," Sam Simon, executive director of the Telecommunications Research and Action Center, told our reporter Scott Barrett. But the Justice Department has left the poor consumer at the mercy of what is now highly competitive industry fighting over the shattered Bell empire. Should you buy your own telephone or continue to lease one from the phone company? Pay a monthly fee for maintenance or take a chance that nothing will break or wear out? Stick with the company's long-distance service or go with one of the rival systems? Which TV sales pitch should you believe: Burt Lancaster's, Cliff Robertson's or Andy Griffith's? We find it incredibly irresponsible of the Justice Department and other federal agencies to provide no guidance to the millions of Ameri-'1'1 cans who are now through ' no ' ' choice of their Own-Tacecr witlf the necessity of picking and choosing among all the bewildering options available. The situation is particularly difficult for elderly Americans. It's not just that they don't have much money to spend. They can remember a time before dials and computers, wiien operators would ask, "Numb-ber "Numb-ber please?" and the monthly bill was a one-line charge. The pseudo-scientific pseudo-scientific language favored by the phone companies' sales pitches leaves them cold. Small wonder that a recent survey showed that more than nine out of 10 older customers make the easy choice and stay with AT&T's services. But even a determined, sophisticated sophisti-cated consumer has trouble figuring out what long-distance service to buy. When Telecommunications Research and Action asked one company how many cities it covered, it got three answers in three calls: 20 cities, 128 and 269. No wonder the public is confused. CLOTHING CONSPIRACY?: We are among those who suspect the . worse when the width of neckties changes or when dresses go out of style. Is there some secret cabal of fashion designers conspiring in some elegant Paris salon to make sure we'll either be paupers or objects of ridicule? We asked our associate Vicki Warren to check out the conspiracy theory. It didn't pan out. "It is hard to imagine that you would have collusion among the top designers," said a conservatively dressed official at the Federal Trade Commission. Not one fashion expert knew of a case where designers had conspired to set a new trend and render everyone's clothes out of date overnight. ' ' a ir':- ' ' '' " J What happens, however, is 'sorhithihg the',anHtrusTraU,yeYs call "constructive parallelism." In plain English, that means "copying." Entrepreneurs make cheaper look-alikes look-alikes by using cheaper material and mass-production methods. The result re-sult is that whether your new new outfit is custom-tailored or bought off the rack at a discount store, it is going to look much like everyone else's. The one area where the clothing industry has demonstrably conspired to bilk the consumer is price-fixing. Some of the finest stores in the country have been indicted in recent years for conspiring to fix the prices of women's clothes. They pleaded "no contest." CHILLY WAR: The Cold War is getting downright frigid literally. The Reagan administration's arms control chief, Ksnneth Adelman, discovered this when he and some aides visited Romania recently on an official swing through Eastern Europe. The American delegation landed in Bucharest in the midst of an energy emergency. Public buildings were practically without heat. Automobiles including diplomats' cars had been ordered off the streets as a fuel-conservation measure. mea-sure. The Soviet Embassy had reportedly reported-ly sent its dependents home because of the lack of heat and hot water. But for some reason (a capitalist trick?) the U.S. Embassy had enough h |