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Slamming should be criminal offense

If you came home from work and found that your kitchen appliances were gone, replaced by another brand that might be more expensive to operate, you'd be furious. You'd call the police, who would waste no time in tracking down the culprit. Prosecution would be swift and, quite likely, judgment would be severe.

But if a long-distance telephone company illegally switches you to its service, it is an entirely different story.

The practice of switching people's long-distance telephone service without their permission is called "slamming." It's illegal, for obvious reasons. Yet the courts and federal officials, rather than simply treating the practice as the crime it is, are negotiating with telephone companies over "slamming." That's ridiculous.

Federal Communications Commission officials had proposed a set of rules to crack down on "slamming" but, on Tuesday, a federal appeals court suspended enforcement of the regulations. The court's ruling came on an appeal of the rules by one long-distance company, which wants the FCC to consider an industry proposal on "slamming." That plan would establish a complicated system under which customer complaints of "slamming" would be handled by a consortium of long-distance companies and consumer groups. The FCC's proposal didn't sound much better. It would, to quote a news story, give customers "up to 30 days to avoid paying long-distance charges when their service is illegally switched, giving them time to resolve the problem."

Did we miss something? The operative word is consideration of what to do about "slamming" is "illegal." The practice is &emdash; and obviously should be &emdash; unlawful. Long-distance telephone service foisted upon a customer should be treated no differently than, say, premium cable television service the consumer didn't request or a restaurant that delivers steak dinners instead of the hamburgers ordered by diners. Setting up a complicated system in which the very companies accused of "slamming" are trusted to put the problem right sounds very much like allowing the fox to patrol the chicken coop.

Decriminalizing the practice of "slamming" will encourage its practitioners. Prosecuting those who break the law, on the other hand, would bring an end to the practice very quickly. What's wrong with simply enforcing the law?

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