bills and customer service, are we being robbed?
 

I have taken over the billpaying chores this month since SWMBO has fallen behind. Five of our bills had bogus charges on them which required phone calls by me to straighten out.

All the errors were on the parts of the various companies, and were along the lines of improperly credited accounts, or small $15-20 over charges.

I'm wondering, since I see this frequently from many different companies, if this is a new strategy on the part of the bean counters. Add $20 worth of charges to a million or so accounts, and bet that a percentage of people won't question it.

Subtract the cost of customer service to handle the complaints and voila! instant profit for doing nothing.

I remember when Kodak lost the suit brought against them by Polaroid for patent infringement.

Kodak intentionally infringed knowing that by the time the case was settled and reparations were made they'd still clear an enormous profit. This was in the mid 80's as I recall.

I read about it in a trade magazine; after the dust settled Kodak still made several hundred million dollars.

I wish I had a larger customer base, if I overcharge one of my customers, they're likely to know. If I overcharged several million customers...

Has anyone else seen weird accounting practices on their bills?

I have a tough time believing a company would deliberately overcharge a customer. If that's the case, it's criminal and should be prosecuted.

More often than not it is simply a mistake or a misunderstanding. It's just unfortunate that the power is all on the company's side.

While I have heard of a handful of incidents, I've never personally experienced this problem. The two or three times I have called and complained about mysterious charges, they ended up being my fault anyway.

You're right that this may be a business strategy of some sort. Err on the side of doubt and see what the customer says. If he pays, he pays. If he complains, see if the problem can be fixed. If it cannot, risk losing the customer (I have a feeling most people, despite getting really pissed off, end up not switching companies because of the switching costs involved). I'm sure whatever contract/agreement you entered into permitted such action.

And I don't think the Kodak case is relevant here.

Yeah, I'm hoping it's just the kind of garden variety incompetence that comes with hiring low bid subcontractors and minimum wage employees.

I've worked in some pretty lame jobs when I was younger (think "clerks") and some of us cared because we had a certain amount of integrity, others really didn't and couldn't be bothered to do a good job or care what the results of their inaction might be.

I thought Kodak's case may be relevant only as an illustration of a company putting profit ahead of any sense of morality. I agree that the analogy isn't direct.

I just got off the phone with Verizon to straighten out a $79. charge for unreturned equipment.

They told me not to bother returning the equipmnet when they sent me a replacement modem. (glad I didn't throw it away)

They sent me a replacement modem because I wasn't getting 3Mb download speeds that they promised, they faulted the modem.

After a half dozen tech calls and over three hours of fiddling/ new modems etc. They send a tech guys out to my house.

He explained that when I subscribed they needed to send someone out and put the correct wiring in the box outside the hosue. (he did) and that the routing of the wires in our neighborhood went zig zagging all over creation, he doubted that we'd ever get 3Mb, but re routed some wires, shortened the route they travelled and we ended up getting 1.5Mb on a good day.

He was the only one who seemed to have any idea how the system worked.

Anyway, maybe it's just incompetence.

Yes, Last year Qwest charged me double for unregulated and regulated services for DSL.

Unregulated fees are completly legal because this administration deregulated lots of stuff so the companys can stick it to us.

This is why I dropped cable. Time Warner stuck it to me, then acted like assbutts when I contested it. So, they didn't get the original unsolicited money, and lost revenue for how ever many years I would have cable and road runner.

I have three gas meters in my flat. One for me, one for the flat upstairs (they're in the basement) and one check meter installed before my time as there was a problem with fraudulent readings.

I have notes through my door on a regular basis saying that someone has come to read the meter and I'm not in. I call the number to reschedule, only to find that no-one has been sent out. I explain ad nauseum that there are three meters and could they please check their records via postcode and house number but it always baffles them.

They tell me not to worry, then I come home the next week to a threatening (standard) card saying that I have denied them access and if I do not reschedule they can request a warrant to enter the property.

It doesn't cost me anything - except in terms of hassle - but it does prove the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.

Medical bills are routinely sent to the patient and insurance company. If they both pay, so much the better. :mad:

We had a nightmare getting the electric bill sorted out right when we moved in, because of meter location problems.

The previous owner had created an enclosed porch at the back of the house, which surrounded the electric meter, blocking access to it. No problem, our city has a read-it-yourself program for people with vicious dogs, etc., where you just turn the dials on a little card to match the meter and put it out on the fence for the meter man to see. If you forget to put your card out, policy is that they way over-estimate the usage--that is, add a huge number to whatever you had last month--and then you get a very low bill the next month, when you put the real reading out like you're supposed to.

The first month we moved in, we didn't know about the card. So our first reading was one of those crazy-high estimates. Only the reading itself wasn't out-of-line with what the dials actually said. Logically, this meant the previous reading they were "adding" to was incorrectly low: i.e., the previous owner was cheating on their numbers, lying to get lower bills. However, this situation was complicated enough that it was completely over the head of every customer service rep at the phone company, especially when they were all programmed to assume I was complaining because the bill was so high, and they kept trying to explain to me how their over-estimating policy worked. I literally had to call 3 or 4 times in a row, every day for two weeks, until I had talked to every single customer service rep, and they all agreed together to forward my complaint to their boss just to get me off their backs. Fortunately he was smart enough to get it, and fixed the bill.

I was pleasantly surprised to actually receive a refund check from a doctor's office recently, because my insurance finally decided to pay for something I'd already given up on and paid myself.

:eek:

Time Warner Cable has me personally red flagged and listed on their customer account list as hostile! Their A/P dept. wouldn't know a goose if it bit them in the arse, and when they came to get their equipment I hummed it out the front door into the road like a Medieval mace. Currently happy with DSL.

You know, doog...I've heard countless others complain about TW Cable. Can't we break them down like they did to Ma Bell? There are other options, of course, but any other cable related still uses TW's lines, still giving them profit.

Do you think they'd catch on that their PR is bad and they should change? No, they don't have to.

Have you looked at the size of SBC lately? It'll just reform under one of the baby TW's.

That's true, and all we're left with is 20 phone books instead of one inclusive one!

My mother is 82. She lives with my wife and I. She is in pretty good health for her age and has a decent retirement income. She likes to shop. Some time ago she purchased a very nice music box from a company (Ardleigh Elliott). She paid via her bank card. She received her merchandise. The next month she received another. She kept it and mailed it to her granddaughter as a gift. With the catalog, she purchased another and in turn mailed that to another granddaughter. Then she received another that she didn't order. She had me call and cancel the "automatic" orders and we sent that one back. Her bank card was credited - minus the shipping and handling. She then received another. Again we repeated the same process of calling, canceling future shipments, getting her account credited, etc... So what happens? She gets another one of these damn things in the mail yesterday! Now I have to call these shitbags again. This time I'm going to close her account. The next step is to change her bank card. Talk about a scam. Cancel all orders my ass. They just keep sending the shit and charging her. Then we have to mail the shit back. I'm taking a fucking hammer to it! :rant:

Did she join some sort of club where they send these each month? If not, and she didn't order these, they are free gifts from the company, and the company has no right to charge her bank card.

I'd change her bank card, and keep all future music boxes. (Assuming she didn't join some sort of club or agree to some sort of contract.)

That I can't be sure of. Even if I were to ask her directly. I'll just have to continue returning the merchandise.

I think my mum got into a hole like this with a posh chocolate company. They kept sending her boxes of chocolates that she hadn't ordered and she kept eating them. Then they sent bills, then red bills, then threatening letters. I think she signed up to a "club" thing without knowing it :3_eyes:

As far as the modem thing goes, probably incompetence. However, there were quite a few scams which involved adding $1 or $2 charges to the phone bills of millions of customers on the theory that most people wouldn't bother to fight it.

If I remember correctly, this is why you have a line of text on your phone bill assuring you that your phone cannot be disconnected over a billing dispute. This is probably a combination of a response to a regulatory decision over the various phone scams and the fact that you can now move to a different local carrier.

I know a guy who owns a corner store. He was taught by his Dad that when you get someone coming in regularly, you treat them fine for a while, but constantly give them lots of dimes and nickels. THEN after a while, when they stop counting the change BECAUSE THEY START TO TRUST YOU, start shorting them a nickel here, a dime there. Adds up very quickly, and if you get caught it all seems very innocent...

I have been offline lately due to a $1.75 charge from QWEST. I paid my bill from them for $73.30, and thought all was well. HAH! It was just the beginning of the most unbelievable nightmare. My phone got cut off, and I called customer service to find out why. They told me that I owed an additional $12.25 which hadn't posted on my first bill. Snarling, I went over to the customer service at the grocery store where you can pay your phone bill, among other things, and Western Unioned them their $12.25. They claimed my service would be turned back on in two days. It wasn't. I called again and THIS time was told that I owed $1.75 from an old cell phone bill (I no longer haver the cell phone) back in 2003. I said. "You're joking, right?"

They weren't. Back to the grocery store to send off $1.75. A few more days wait and still no phone service. I called customer dis-service again and was told that they never got their $1.75. I had the receipt in my hand and read them off all the numbers. They were not impressed. They said that I had to fax a copy of the receipt to some special QWEST Pay Center. By this point I was so filled with hatred and frustration, I considered just doing without a phone, but I finally went down to the US Post Office and sent off a special US Postal Service Fax with all the seals and receipts and numbers. I also got the QWEST manager's name who required me to do this.

Guess what? A week later, my phone was still not connected. I called and asked for a manager. I told them the entire story and read off all my documentation and serial numbers and asked them if they thought I was in a conspiracy with the Postal Service to rob QWEST of $1.75. This time I finally won, and am now typing this response on the Cellar.

Yeah, companies will rip you off any chance they get.:eyebrow:

Sounds like degulation has worked wonders...

Again. Today in the mail is an invoice from a lumberyard that I buy from. I have a cash account meaning I pay cash or they don't deliver the material. I like it that way.

Delivery. Pay. Done.

You'd think. The invoice is for the last delivery I accepted, and paid for, except it doesn't reflect the credit I had for some returned items, nor does it reflect my 5% cash discount.

After a ten minute chat with the bim from accounts rec'able, she informs me that she can't figure it out and will have to send all the paperwork to the dispatcher.

Yeah sure. And the coda?

If you don't hear back from us in a couple of days you may want to call us.


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Any astrologers out there? Does Mercury have its head up its ass?

Yar! Ye better be havin the script from the driver.