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If you’re a phone company customer and you take advantage of a cheap promotion from a cable competitor, the cable company has to call the phone company to initiate the transfer of your phone number from your phone company to the cable company.

Verizon, a phone company, decided to use the information to target customers who were leaving with sweet promotions to try and keep them. Verizon says acceptable practice, the FCC could be poised to decide that behavior is illegal and explotivie of its customer’s information.

Check out the article in USA Today.

The dispute stems from the fact that a cable company that wrests a phone customer from Verizon must contact the carrier to transfer the customer’s phone number. During the several days when the transfers take place, Verizon has illegally used information about the switch to persuade customers to stay by offering discounts and other perks, the cable companies say.

But Verizon says it’s simply offering consumers more choice. “Cable rates keep going up, and consumers want choice,” says Tom Tauke, a Verizon executive vice president. “It’s hard to believe a majority of the FCC believes consumers have real choice if people only get information from the cable company.”