bills for phone users.

More and more calls are being sent to the wrong numbers, says Mrs. Grace Bell.

And people like her, who use high-tech voice mail systems, are suffering most, she says.

The MP believes now is the time for competition in the local phone industry -- as demanded by new local firms applying for telecom licences.

And angry phone users need to band together, says the UBP member for St.

George's South.

"I believe that the telephone system in recent times, at least the last two years, has proven to be terribly flawed,'' she said yesterday.

"I've exhausted all avenues in talking with the telephone company. I feel like David facing Goliath.

"I haven't been able to get a refund yet.'' Mrs. Bell, who relies on the phone for Parliamentary work and for her cleaning firm HouseProuds, uses Telco's Meridian voice mail service.

An alternative to an answering machine, Meridian is a service which takes messages and records the number of the person calling.

Mrs. Bell said that when she took the service, she wasn't told she would have to pay for incoming local calls.

She said this was especially annoying when she had to pay for wrong number calls she believed were caused by faults in the local network.

Numbers apparently from incoming calls had been recorded by her voice mail system.

But when she had called the numbers back, people had told her they had not phoned her.

One person claimed not to have used their phone that day, said Mrs. Bell.

The MP said her son Mr. Floyd Pitcher had a phone with frequently-dialled numbers programmed into it.

All he had to do was push a button and the call went through.

But even using that method he got wrong numbers, Mrs. Bell said.

She believes this proves wrong numbers cannot always be blamed on people dialling incorrectly.

"How could he misdial when he has the number programmed in?'' she asked.

A friend of hers now kept a log of all calls he made, she said. He had received bills charging him for calls to Chicago that he had never made.

"I'm incensed. Bermuda needs to break up this monopoly.

"Even though we have got all this electronic stuff, I think there's something seriously wrong.

"We Bermudians are so laid back. We don't complain, we just pay the bills.

"The telephone company had better start paying attention and listening.''