Telephone Co. Overcharges Students For Installation of Centrex Phones

Harvard students can get a refund on their telephone installation fees if they live in a room occupied by summer school students who had the centrex system installed last summer.

Mrs. Sluben, supervisor for the New England Telephone Company, said yesterday that the telephone company made an "error" in charging students the full installation fees for rooms where centrex phones had already been installed over the summer.

Sluben gave a rough estimate that only 100 phones had been installed by summer school Students.

Instead of seven dollars these students should only have to pay a fifty cent charge.

Under the new Centrex plan, Sluben explained, students will pay fifty cents every year once the phone has been placed in a room for an original installation fee. The fifty cents charge will cover having the phone turned on from a central office.

Computer Mix-up

Miss Bohan, service representative for the phone company, attributed the error in billing to a computer mix-up, saying that the changeover in students from the summer school to the winter session was so rapid that the computer could not keep up with where the centrex phones had been installed over he summer.

Sluben went on to say that the phone company has talked to many students who complained about the seven dollar fee and added that the phone company would adjust the bills "immediately" If the company could prove the phone had previously been installed.

"The girls in the business office will check to see if the phone had been recorded in our files; and if it is, they will adjust the bill immediately," she said.

Sluben added that this readjustment would not apply to most students in the University since only those rooms occupied by summer school students would be affected, and since "not too many of the students take telephone service during the summer".

Last summer students from the summer school were housed in the Yard, in the Graduate Centers and in Quincy House.

Elliott Gilbert '74 of Thayer Hall said that when his roommate had called the phone company about a long distance call, he was informed that the company would subtract $6.50 from their seven-dollar installation fee which they were charged last fall.

He added that most of the students in Thayer House found centrex systems installed when they arrived last Fall.