SURVEY CALLS SPRINT, WORLDCOM NO. 1; LONG-DISTANCE CARRIERS TOP CUSTOMER-SATISFACTION LIST OF REGION'S AVERAGE USERS.

Byline: Ben Sullivan Daily News Staff Writer

Sprint and WorldCom took top marks among long-distance telephone carriers serving Southland households in a J.D. Power and Associates survey released Thursday.

In the annual customer-satisfaction study, WorldCom scored highest among the region's mainstream households, meaning those that made fewer than $50 worth of calls each month, while Sprint appealed most to high-volume callers. SNET, a New England-based carrier, scored highest overall among mainstream households but the company does not offer phone service in California.

Among the losers locally, GTE and MCI both scored below average among mainstream households.

The survey polled more than 14,000 households nationally about their attitudes toward their long-distance carrier and toward the industry as a whole. Customers ranked phone companies on their reliability, trustworthiness and quality of service, among other factors.

According to Peter Dresch, director of telecommunications analysis at J.D. Power, the survey found nearly half of customers said it was difficult to find a phone company they could trust, while a majority are skeptical that pending mergers between major phone companies are in the customers' best interests.

So leery were customers of long-distance carriers that many based their choice more on a company's image than on pricing, Dresch said.

``It's the credibility factor,'' he said. ``Consumers want honesty, no gimmicks, no hidden charges.''

Feeding customer unease was the fact that one in 10 U.S. households had been ``slammed'' in the past year. Slamming occurs when a long-distance carrier switches a household to their service without the customer's consent.

The proportion of customers who voluntarily switched long-distance providers in the past year increased slightly to 30 percent of all U.S. households, the study found.

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