The Kansas CW | Cox Communications Notifies Customers of Error in Phone Book Directory
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by Christina Taylor and Kim Hynes (Wichita, KAN.)
Cox Communications has sent letters to its customers notifying them their address was listed in a recently published phone book despite their request to keep that information private.
Cox says User-Friendly phone book published the information provided by Cox and AT&T, even though "both sets of information properly noted addresses to be omitted."
Eyewitness News spoke with an AT&T customer earlier this summer about the issue. She said she found her address listed in the User-Friendly phone book even though she wanted to keep it private.
By law, phone companies must provide its information to directories. They are allowed to charge a small fee.
Both AT&T and Cox say they when they provided the information they also noted what details should be kept out of the directory.
Since July User Friendly has told Eyewitness News no comment and to stop contacting the company. Tuesday it sent another statement.
User Friendly says when it received Cox and AT&T's information, there were not instructions to omit private information. User Friendly says it asked the companies for only the data that could be published.
It says as an independent publisher, it depends on the phone companies to provide the accurate information ready to publish. User Friendly says in this case it did not occur.
Cox has set-up a website to answer customers' complaints.
Eyewitness News also spoke with the Sedgwick County District Attorney's Office about the situation. Spokeswoman Georgia Cole says, they're looking into complaints they've received from numerous consumers and have been in communication with User-Friendly. "We're in the process of reviewing all the information available to us at this time," Cole says.
