Nathan VanderKlippe
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (May 03/01) - NorthwesTel spent the first part of this week putting out fires after numerous customers discovered opened envelopes with new calling cards inside.

The company has fielded calls from hundreds of customers concerned that someone had stolen their calling card number.

But NorthwesTel spokeswoman Anne Grainger said the letters weren't opened fraudulently. Instead, what happened is the company stuffing envelopes forgot to include an explanatory letter in about 20 per cent of them.

Rather than use new envelopes, the company opened them, inserted the letters, and then resealed them.

But the glue used didn't work properly and many of the envelopes came open. Compounding the problem, some of the envelopes were opened on the short side, making them look even more suspicious.

The letters were sent on April 24.

In Yellowknife, about 2,500 envelopes were held back and resealed. But elsewhere, they all ended up in people's mailboxes.

NorthwesTel isn't apologizing for the incident, but it is offering to change the Personal Identification Number. Clients concerned can call 811 to have the PIN changed.

The company is also beefing up its calling card security. Working with the National Telecommunications Fraud Centre in Ottawa, the company is lowering the threshold for detection of fraudulent card use.

NorthwesTel issued a new card to everyone with a calling card. The new cards emphasize the access number to use the card: 1-800-555-1111.

A national battle between long-distance communications companies forced the re-issue of the calling cards.

In the past, all Canadian telephone companies gave mutual "zero plus" rights. That meant that a calling card could be used simply by dealing zero before a number.

However, Telus recently disallowed zero plus dialling for customers of other phone services.

This April 1, Bell made a reprisal move to cut off Telus customers from its system.