A Midwestern phone company is offering what it says is a first-of-its-kind service to help screen out those annoying sales calls that always seem to come during dinner.

"The message is loud and clear: Our customers simply want control over telemarketing," Diane Primo, president of product management for Ameritech Corp., said Tuesday, the first day the service was offered in parts of Chicago and Detroit.

It will be expanded to Ameritech customers throughout the Great Lakes region next year and also will be offered to other phone companies.

Here's how the service, called Privacy Manager, works:

First, a customer must have Caller ID. A call from someone whose number is blocked is intercepted before it rings. The caller hears a taped message that asks callers to state their name, or the company they are representing. Once they do that, the call recipient's phone rings. If no name is given, the call is disconnected.

When the recipient picks up the phone, he or she hears a recording identifying the caller and is given three push-button options: accept the call, decline the call, or decline the call and have the Privacy Manager tell the caller not to call again.

Under the third option, aimed at telemarketers, a recording tells the caller that the person being called does not accept phone solicitations. It then requests that the person's name and telephone number be added to the "do not call" list -- a message which Ameritech officials say serves as a legal and formal request with which the telemarketer is obligated to comply.

One reason for the pairing of Privacy Manager and Caller ID is that many telemarketers arrange to have their numbers blocked from being recognized by Caller ID.

Ameritech officials said the beauty of the system is that based on product testing, seven of every 10 unidentified callers, often salespeople, simply hang up. That means the phone never rings.

"That's a lot of dinners, movies and bedtime stories that went uninterrupted," said John Rooney, president of Ameritech consumer services.

The Privacy Manager costs $3.95 a month in addition to the approximately $7.50 charged monthly for Caller ID.

There are some inconveniences, namely for friends and family members who have their numbers blocked from Caller ID or who call from pay phones or states that don't transmit their phone numbers. These people will have to go through the screening process every time they call.

Privacy Manager is similar to Anonymous Call Rejection, a service Pacific Bell began offering last week and which GTE has offered to Southern California customers for about a year.

Both products require customers to subscribe to Caller ID, and are designed to block calls from those who have their numbers blocked. But Privacy Manager adds an option specifically designed to stop telemarketers.

Under Anonymous Call Rejection, callers who have their numbers blocked hear a recording stating that their call has been blocked. The call can be completed if callers reveal their phone number (disable the blocking) by dialing star and 82 (*82), then the number, or change their blocking option from complete to selective blocking. If callers don't want their number revealed, they must call from a pay phone or, for a charge, have an operator place the call.

Both GTE and Pacific Bell offer Anonymous Call Rejection free to residential customers who subscribe to Caller ID. GTE charges $7.95 a month for Caller ID, Pacific Bell $6.50 a month. Anonymous Call Rejection also is available without Caller ID, but costs $1 a month through GTE. Pacific Bell has proposed a charge of $2 a month for the service to those who do not subscribe to Caller ID, but that fee has not yet been approved by regulators.

While Ameritech said it plans to offer Privacy Manager to other phone companies, neither GTE California or Pacific Bell -- the major companies providing phone service in the Inland Empire -- were aware of the product, officials said.

GTE spokeswoman Julia Wilson said the company "will fully review its service" in light of Ameritech's product. Pacific Bell officials had not heard of the product, "but we're interested," spokesman John Britton said.

Chet Dalzell, a spokesman for the Direct Marketing Association, a New York-based trade group for telemarketers, said there is no need for people to pay extra to screen out sales calls.

For one, federal law requires telemarketers to refrain from calling again for 10 years if they're told not to. The group also keeps a "do not call" list of people who make a request in writing.

"Basically, consumers have free options," he said. "The industry's already regulating itself."

The Associated Press and Press-Enterprise staff writer Rick Burnham contributed to this report.

Published 9/23/1998