Phone Bills...

For the past several months, Karen Stolzberg has been fending off an assault from the local phone company, which is sending her direct mailings at a pace that would make the Dursleys (Harry Potter's evil aunt and uncle) cringe.

Stolzberg, a lawyer with a solo practice, isn't sure when she started receiving the unwanted come-ons for Qwest long-distance service, advertising offers for Qwestdex.com and "unlimited" wireless plans, but she was annoyed enough on May 27 to request that a block be put on her account to prevent any more direct mail. She was told the mail would stop in mid-June, but it didn't. On July 14, after more runaround from Qwest, she sent a letter to the state's consumer-protection office seeking help, only to find the attorney general has no jurisdiction in such matters. On Aug. 7, she received a letter from Billie Ranger, a local Qwest representative, apologizing for the tsunami of envelopes and assuring her it would soon stop. But still they came.

On Sept. 3, she wrote to Ranger informing her that since July 10 (when she started keeping the missives) she'd received 30 pieces of mail. Then, she gave the ultimate warning: "Make this stop," she wrote. "If my count gets up to 50, I'm going to send all these letters to Willamette Week."

On Nov. 17, the mailman brought seven more envelopes from Qwest, bringing the total to 56--and sending Stolzberg to our doorstep.

The Rogue desk dialed up Ranger, who was polite but not very helpful. "Gosh," she said, "I really can't explain it."

Qwest spokesman Michael Dunne says Stolzberg was taken off the mailing list--but only once. He says either the phone company or one of its direct-mail contractors erroneously assigned multiple numeric codes to Stolzberg's name, so most of the mailings continued. "We don't want to treat our customers like numbers," he said. "But in this case the numbers were more important than the name."

Dunne promised the problem would be cleared up in a week. Heck, we'll give him two. However, if any more Qwest mail arrives after that, we'll bundle up the parcel sitting under the Rogue Desk and send the 56 envelopes to his office.