TCI CHANGES BILLING

A cable television company, which serves 13 Missouri cities including Cape Girardeau and Jackson, is changing its marketing strategy for a movie channel amid legal challenges and consumer complaints.

A spokesman for the Denver-based company announced the change Wednesday.

Roger Harms, manager of the TCI system in Cape Girardeau and Jackson, said the change may end up costing consumers down the road. "I think the customers may be hurt over the long run," he said.

Denver-based TCI Cablevision was sued Wednesday by the Missouri Attorney General's office. Missouri is at least the seventh state to take steps to stop or delay marketing of the Encore channel.

The channel's commercial-free movies from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s are being offered free to TCI subscribers this month. But under the original marketing plan, subscribers would be billed for the service starting in July unless they contacted TCI to cancel the channel.

Officials from Missouri and other states said that violated fair merchandising laws.

Kansas Attorney General Bob Stephan filed a similar lawsuit Monday against TCI of Kansas Inc.

"TCI has given new meaning to the old adage that `silence is golden,"' Missouri Attorney General William Webster said in a statement after his office filed its lawsuit in Cole County Circuit Court at Jefferson City.

"Missourians never agreed to pay for this service and should not be billed for it," the statement said.

But Lela Cocoros, director of media relations for TCI and its parent company, Tele-Communications Inc., said steps taken this week by the company are intended to settle the legal questions.

She said TCI would alert subscribers in at least two prominent places on their July bills that not paying the $1 fee for Encore would alert the company that the service isn't wanted. She said a similar advisory would appear on the August bill.

The movie channel would continue to be received free of charge by the subscriber through August, unless the customer tells the company to cut the service before then, she said.

"What we want to do is not charge anybody for Encore that doesn't want it," Ms. Cocoros said in a telephone interview. "We hope this extra billing feature will contribute to some sort of resolution to the legal actions."

Ms. Cocoros said the $1 monthly charge for Encore is the least expensive fee for a movie channel in the cable television industry, which usually charges at least $10 a month for such services.

The lower charge was possible because of the distribution of Encore to all TCI subscribers, saving the $30 to $60 cost of switching on customers individually, she said.

She said there will be no charge to the customer for canceling the service.

"We investigated ways we could offer this service at the lowest possible cost to our customers. But it is something that is coming under question in several areas. We want to strictly comply with all of the states' laws," Ms. Cocoros said.

Harms said critics of TCI's original marketing plan "are really confusing the issue. The issue is this is a great service at low cost."

Said Harms, "If we wanted to make money on the deal, we could have charged everyone." He explained that TCI could have chosen to add the movie channel to the basic cable service and then pass the cost on to the customers.

But, he said, that was not done because TCI "wanted to let everyone have a choice."

"I think what is happening is a few attorneys general may not be looking at the customers' point of view," said Harms.

TCI operates cable systems for thousands of subscribers in Arnold, Cape Girardeau, Clinton, Columbia, Hannibal, Hazelwood, Jefferson City, Knob Noster, Mexico, Moberly, Nevada, St. Charles and St. Louis. The company has 6.5 million subscribers in 46 states.

The attorney general's office said TCI's Missouri contracts don't have any provisions that silence constitutes acceptance of a change in service.

State attorney general's offices in Florida, Iowa, the state of Washington and Texas have also sued the cable company. The billing practice was being reviewed in several other states, including Wyoming. The consumer advocate's office in Montana has asked the cable television operator to stop the promotion.

Some information for this story was provided by The Associated Press.