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What Inept Billing Software Have You Encountered?
Chris asks: "I am a Sprint customer signed up for automatic payments, and over the past week I've found that Sprint has a computer system that does three ridiculously inept things from a programmers standpoint. First, they send a 'Do not send payment...this amount will be charged' bill then a 'Disconnection Imminent' notice for the same amount, within a week of each other. When customer service is called about this, everything appears fine to the customer service rep, and they assure the client that everything is fine. Finally, the computer system shuts down the customer's cell phone for lack of payment, even if the customer has a credit card on file and has given Sprint authorization to use it. What's the worst experience Slashdot users have found with billing systems that don't make any sense?"
I had an account with a small local company and due to a payment / full refund I ended up owing them nothing however their billing system didn't accept that so they sent me a bill for £0.00. So I ignored it until I got a nasty gram saying they were taking me to court for literally nothing. Despite repeated rings they still said that I had a balance. I ended up sending a cheque for £0.00 and then heard nothing more on it..
Cheap UK and US VPS
...just because some idiot manager made decisions that someone else wrote into software. Blame the company.
And by the way, have you ever tried to write a phone billing system? There's a lot more to it than meets the eye.
What do you think they make more money from, you paying your bill on time, or you paying your bill plus a reconnection fee?
Take a look at credit card company websites, if you're paying online, both of the ones I've used make you jump through extra hoops to reschedule your payment to transfer now instead of at the last second before the due date (that many more days of interest, plus the chance that something goes wrong at the last second, and bam! Late fees!).
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
I've seen Excel being used as a billing system before.
:)
It was a resourceful effort for a family owned business with a "smart teen", but it goes against my beliefs that Excel should be used only for number analysis, not data management. A billing system is data management.
Excuse me now, while I get back to my VHS tape collection worksheet.
I had a worse experience with Web.com's (used to be Interland.com) billing system. When my account came up for renewal, my credit card on file was declined. (Never signed up for auto-renew, anyway.) After getting a couple of automated email messages about it, I entered a new credit card number.
A week later, I still get phone calls at all hours of the night from some automated system identifying itself with an 800 number only. Some of these calls were between 3 and 4 in the morning. I assume the didn't check time zones.
A call with customer service (at the 800 number) went well -- they apologized and cleared my "support ticket" and said everything was paid up. The next night, I got another call.
Instead of screaming at customer service, I have started filing complaints.
Yeah, but these guys doing automatic billing don't get away with charging late fees due to their error, and they're not going to make it a problem because word will get out and people will stop using the automatic payments.
I've had a few things like this happen to me, but I've never had service disconnected. I think the worst was software that wouldn't allow me to prepay. I get discount gift cards through work for my termite control service, but they only sell in $50 and $100, and my bill is $75 every three months. So I just get $150 and pay twice a year instead. They have to make special note in my file. I've gotten billed after paying and had to call.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
I just had a customer ask me yesterday if it is normal to pay $10,000 to have your address changed in your billing software. Apperently, another office that they deal with must have some custom software, and to get the address changed (that goes on every form they print), it is going to cost them that much. I told her that it was probably because it was a custom written program, and they no longer support it, and want to write another one. I don't think it would be a very good idea if the programmer made it that hard to change an address the first time around.
Kernel Krunch - Part of a Complete OS
I had an issue with automatic billpay and "paperless" billing with Verizon. Firstly every time I logged into my account in a given month it would NOT automatically pay my bill, without any warning. Second, I was "paperless" so I did not recieve a paper bill OR the guarunteed e-mail notifying me that a payment was due / had automatically been paid. After a late fee I returned to recieving a regular paper invoice with automatic billpay. I complained about the late fee but they did nothing, luckily it was only $5 (not worth more than the 30 minutes I had already spent complaining). Everything seems to be working fine now but I'm not sure I'll be renewing my contract in a year when it expires, even if it means I have to give up talking to my girlfriend for free.
My recent favorite is Comcast. I got a bill stating that as of Sep 25th my account was overdue and would I please pay for two months? After checking around my accounts I found that yes in fact, I had paid them and they cashed the check on the 10th or so. After calling the customer service rep I determined that the billing department must be getting their data in advance, and that little 'as of the ________' line just sounded good. No real meaning.
I had a similar experience with AT&T Wireless when I changed my phone number to a new area code. They tried to charge me like I had two different phones, and when I called to correct them they charged me a $300 fee for early closure of the first account. Then, I got really mad and cancelled the new-area-code account also (another $300 fee). It was a nightmare dealing with those customer service people.
The whole experience made me so mad I quit my programming job and enrolled in law school. After my first semester classes, I sued them in small claims court. Of course, they promptly agreed to remove all the charges and fees in exchange for dismissing the lawsuit.
I guess that means I am stubborn, $60k in tuition just to get out of a $600 phone bill.
"If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
If you get the chance, and if you're still a Sprint customer, could you please ask them *which* billing system you are running on... they currently have three that I am aware of. MacroCell, P2K, and an AmDocs solution (thier new one, post-merger) I wouldn't be surprised if these errors are on the new system... I've heard a lot of grumbling about it from several people...
Logic is the beginning of reason, not the end of it.
I've had lots'o experience with telco billing SE & dev. All billers have what i'll charitably call odd quirks. since these systems have long life times & they are constantly being tweaked to add support for new offers they end up with tons of misfeatures. beyond that, there is always a cut line for what gets fixed & what doesn't. "minor annoyances" generally don't make it.
My wife and I have two accounts with Bank of America-- a checking and a savings. When we signed up for them, the deal was we would not have to pay any service fees if the combined value of our accounts was $800. My wife and I have kept considerably more than that in our accounts but for the first three months we had the $2.00 service fee for being under our balance.
Every time we would call the operator would tell us that 'every appears to be normal' and they would remove the service fee. It was very frustrating to have to sit on the phone for an hour over $2.00!
After about the third month they realized that there was still some type of policy rule being applied that stated that we needed to keep $2000 in our savings-- a statement that wasn't in our service agreement when we signed up.
Other than BOA, we've also had issues with TimeWarner of North Carolina. What amazes me the most is that all of my complaints, and it seems many of everyone elses, are for major corporations. You'd think that they would have the resources and knowledge to create systems that could prevent a lot of what we all see. I know that no system is flawless but just about everyone who has used auto-billing has a story.
I've had a nightmare with my billing for my health insurance. I received 3 different bills from my hospital for an emergency room visit (Case of Vertigo, so I had an MRI on my head to check for tumors, had the bed in the ER, and had some Valium and other IV fluids). I only received 2 at first, so I paid them, and then received a 3rd bill which was the same amount as one of the other bills. I called the hospital, asked for the billing department and asked them if my account was clear, as I received another bill for the same amount as one of the others. They checked my account and stated that everything was just fine.
Fast forward to 30 days later, when I receive the classic "Pay this bill immediately or it goes to collections". I look on the bill, and on the back there's a completely different number (but in the same exchange and area code) to contact, and it's in tiny print too. I call them and ask about the bill, and state that the hospital told me that my account was paid up. Turns out they have THREE DIFFERENT BILLING OFFICES, and due to HMO laws, they have to bill separately for different services. Even better, their billing offices don't share information. How the fuck are you supposed to know what's going on then?
I was working for an IT firm and one of our customers had an SBC (prior to AT&T name change) ADSL circuit. Just a few office computers and a server. Somehow SBC started billing them for DSL circuits on both lines (Voice and Fax). The active DSL was on the FAX. I called the company exlained the situation. SBC said they would cancel the other one right away. They cancelled the wrong both. So that left them with no working DSL. It actually took them over a month to get it all squared away. They claimed the way their system worked was that it had to be readded at the beginning of the month for some billing reason. To this day I don't know why it happened and I try not to think about it. It was not only frustrating for the customer but myself for having to deal with SBC on their behalf.
In a world of acronyms, the words are the real victims.
I used to have a Sprint phone. I had electronic billing. I haven't had a Sprint phone for 3 years, but I still get an email every month helpfully letting me know that my SPrint bill is ready online. I've called Customer Service and they have said there is nothing they can do about it. Good thing for procmail.
Spencer Ogden
A UK one for you, but more down to their piss poor staff. Force9 internet (aka, plusnet etc.) continued billing my card after I had cancelled over the phone. 6 months later and it was doing it again. They say they never recieved that phonecall - but as one of the 3k+ users they ACCIDENTLY sent out customer details of (human error apparently) - I`d say they`re full of crap and this seems to be common with anything web based, it becomes an excuse to purposefully give cheap and poor service.
When we moved into our house our Propane account with Amerigas got all transferred and happy into our names. They setup an auto debit from our checking account of $75 saying it was our expected monthly use. Any fees due at the end of the year would be billed or credited to us if we overpaid. At the end of the year they automatically pulled $1450 out of our checking account with no notice. Apparently they severely underestimated our propane use and never noticed the bill building up. And they never actually notified us of the pending charge. Fortunately we had just gotten paid so it cleared. But we had to do a fair amount of shuffling to keep the rest of the monthlies from bouncing.
You are not up-to-date...
P2K has not been called P2K for a long time, at the moment I think Convergys calls it Atlys.
Amdocs has been kicked out about 2 years ago, they prolly have some legacy left tho....
You sound insightfull, but you don't have a clue!
Back when I worked at the callcenter for Sirius Satellite Radio, we used a web based solution called TimelyBill. It was absolutely terrible. I was one of the senior agents, that is we took calls from agents on the floor who needed help (or had a customer asking for a supervisor) and also ran the local intranet knowledgebase site. Half of the site was devoted to helping agents understand the software.
Ultimately, I was fired from the callcenter partially because of the way that the billing software worked. The service that they (Sirius) wanted us to push were the annual plans, which the customer could save a bit of money on in the long haul, but the terms dictated that the annual plans had a $75 cancellation fee. I'm sure if there are any Sirius customers that have been around for a while that read this, you probably know all about it. It worked like this:
1.) Customer calls to activate a satellite receiver of some kind, chooses annual plan to save a few bucks. Cost is about $143 bucks, at the time.
2.) Customer uses the service for a few months, and then something happens to the radio, I.E it breaks, it gets stolen, the customer decides to upgrade to a new radio.
3.) Customer calls in to the callcenter to inform us of the change in receiver, so they can get their plan transferred to the new unit.
4.) Agent stops the service on the new unit. Now, this is where the magic happens. If the agent is seasoned, and knows what they are doing (or, just plain gives a shit) they remember to credit the account for the $75 cancellation fee. The old service is terminated by TimelyBill. If the customer used the service for, let's say 6 months, they end up with a credit on their account for un-used service, about $70 bucks.
5.) TimelyBill waits until the customer's billing cycle date (the day of the month that they activated in) to make any adjustments to the account. On that date, the customer's account would be debited for a NEW annual plan $143 bucks, which collided with the credit for $70. The customer's credit card would be charged again, for the diffrence, about $70 bucks.
6.) Customer calls back. "What the fuck are you charging me for?" Asks for a supervisor.
7.) Senior agent spends, on average 30 minutes attempting to explain to the customer what the system did, with usually around a 30% acceptance rate. The other 70% of the time, the customer becomes infuriated, doesn't understand, and usually screams a few cuss words or an insult, and hangs up. I actually had a customer one time ask where we were located. When I told him we lived in New York, he proceeded to tell me "No wonder the terrorists attack you assholes, you all deserve to die. Im happy they keep choosing you."
8.) Customer (in my case) writes a letter to the corporate office, insisting something be done about the terrible supervisor who handled his call.
So, in my case, terrible software can actually cause you, even though you are not directly responsible for it, to loose your job. Especially with a company like Sirius, who at the time that I worked for their callcenter, was a fairly new company, and hadn't really set their policies in stone, so everything was always changing. We went back and forth several times about the billing system, and wether or not the customers should be refunded anything, and even if they should be given back cancellation fees when they cancelled. When in doubt, I guess, fire a peon.
Anyway, moral of the story: Avoid TimelyBill (OmniOSS).
Windows has more viruses because linux has more virus coders.
In an undisclosed country I lived in, we got cable for home and since it was a startup it was ridden with problems.
Their billing software was totally automated, it didn't send us a single bill for 2 years long. They must have gotten wind of it and hosed their database or so since I started receiving bills afterwards but they were way off. The first one charged me around $180 (monthly was only $45) extra so I called them and they were going to update it. So I got a bill with $45 + 180 = $225 - $180 = $45. Next day the automated part of customer service sent me a bill again: $45 + $180 + $25 late fees. I wasn't even late for my normal payment and customer service had no idea what the extra $180 came up for everytime (neither did I). At one point I received every day another bill with different numbers so they did something to my account in the database (that's what the service rep. explained to me) and I got 2 months free Internet for all the trouble caused. But next month, it started all over again and so did the 3rd month. I ended up not paying anything for another 6 months thanks to that after which they changed billing systems and I got correct statements.
I think their machines had an improbability drive or a random number generator charging random people for stuff.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
I had cancelled my Dish Network system and switched to Time Warner in March of 2005. The lady at Dish Network told me my account was cancelled. Fast forward 9 months later and I started receiving small bills every month. I went on the website and used their email support to ask what the deal was. No reply. I got another bill. I emailed. No reply. Finally, I ended up owing them $90. I told them there was no way I was going to pay it. Turns out they had just put my account "on hold" and then reactivated it after a certain amount of time.
I sent them 3 emails and got absolutely no response from their support. I should have picked up the phone but hey, when people put up email support I use it so I don't have to waste 30 minutes to an hour on the phone. They took me to collections and the dink to my credit was worth it to just not pay the money they tried to extort from me.
I was a Dish Network customer for 2.5 years and paid them thousands of dollars. I should have known better than to think those thousands of dollars would be put into having support people that answered their email. I will never pay Dish another dime as long as I live. Long live Direct TV.
Never mind the fact that you can't schedule to pay the balance the same day each month -- I tried this (with a 5-day window for holidays, weekends, whatever) and Chase thoughtfully moved my due date up by 7 days, wuthout prior notice.
All my charges on that credit card are for fixed monthly amounts, so I had been just verifying the bill amount each month, knowing that my payment would go on time...
They were kind enough to waive the finance charges, but it took half an hour of my time.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Bell Canada's OneBill system takes the prize in my book. The idea is that the phone company gives you one bill for all of the services provided by their various sub-companies, i.e. television (ExpressVu), local phone, long distance, and internet (Sympatico).
The problem is "OneBill" is actually a separate company, which means that in order to send the bills on time they have to get the billing information so far in advance that bill payments, and credits, don't appear until the NEXT bill.
For example, ExpressVu was charging me for a PPV movie even though I had a credit for $50 of free PPV for signing up with them. Problem is, the credit wasn't being applied correctly, so when I received my bill it said there was a $5 charge for PPV. So I called ExpressVu and they credited my account, except that they aren't scheduled to send an update to OneBill for 30 days, so the credit doesn't reflect in my OneBill balance, and consequently if I don't pay the amount it says I owe I will be penalized and charged interest (and, theoretically, risk disconnection of service).
Not only that, but the system is even dumber when it comes to disconnecting features you don't want. I didn't want to pay for the movie channels that I'd had for free since joining (as a promotion), and I was told to give 30 days notice to terminate them. I called 32 days before my trial was up and explained that I didn't want the channels after the trial ended. So far so good. Well, I receieved my bill for the month after the trial (remember, TV service is paid in advance) and there was a charge for the movie channels. Even though my service was disconnected on time. So I called the OneBill people and they fixed my bill. But on the NEXT bill ExpressVu ALSO fixed my bill, so I got credited twice. Later on when speaking to a rep about the PPV problem, they explained that in their system, the "stop collecting the fee for Services" message isn't sent to OneBill until the service is disconnected, but the service isn't disconnected until the day it's supposed to be, except OneBill sent that bill out already, because they get their updates 30 days in advance. Dumbest thing ever. Needless to say, I never got around to calling them telling them of their second mistake in the billing.
We have only two Mobile telecom companies here and they suffer from such pathetic problems too...one of them mints tons of money by hooking up customers at an exponential rate while not upgrading their facilities to match, obviously. With one of them, there was a serious problem of text messages not getting delivered, especially on Fridays, and of course you've been charged from them promptly. Even worse, you'd call them and they'd be like "Well, yeah you DID send the SMS and it's possible the SMS wasn't sent successfully but sorry we can't refund you your money because we charge automatically the moment WE receive your SMS- we take no liability as to what happens beyond that"...! I once lost quite a sum of money on an urgent message that I had to send to another country, at double rates of course. And of course, the message still didn't go through! It's a good thing I now have another account with the competing network, which is more reliable.
He sent them a penny in the mail. Let's see; printing and mailing costs for two letters + a ten minute toll-free long distance call to recover $0.01. That's a win.
He blew something like $500 for the math coprocessor a few months later. Bought it somewhere else...
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
I've found in my workings with billing systems, that the problem usually isn't in the billing system itself, but with extensions to it, like payments via an IVR, grafting on some sort of web interface to an old school AS/400 based billing system in a horrendous way, or any number of other "bad" ways of extending the system.
For instance, a friend of mine was signed up for automatic credit card billing for one of her bills. The credit card in this case was her debit card. Because of glitch in the switch of the core system some customers who had disconnected service during say a weeks time frame of the switch, those customers continued to have their accounts debited until the end of time. The company didn't have contracts with the old 3rd party automated debiting system, and the company said pretty much that to her. She had to manually stop payment on each months debit until she eventually got a hold of a 3rd party vendor to the credit card billing vendor.
I'm not sure if this was a programming glitch or just bad policy
I had an overdraft account for a specific job with a bank
When the job was over, I zero'd the balance and told them to close the account, then forgot about the account
Between emptying the account at the ATM and going to the teller to close, I somehow got a $1.50 service charge, which went onto the overdraft.
After 6 months without payment of any kind, the charge was rolled over into a personal loan by the bank
6 months after that, I get a phone call asking why I would take out a loan and not make payments. When I ask for the detales of the loan (fearing identity theft) I was informed that the loan was for $1.50.
Naturally I went down to the bank, pleaded hardship and agreed to make 6 monthly payments of a quarter, once I had taken care of the intrest.
Then, a few days later, we noticed that what would have been our next mortgage payment was marked to be taken from our account. We contacted our bank and stoped the payment, as well as the mortgage company to tell them what had happened. The mortgage company apologised for the error and said our account was clear and we didn't owe them anything. Still, a few more days later we got a letter from the mortgage company saying that we had missed a payment and could we please send them a cheque for the ammount. We phoned them again, they apologised again, and luckily we haven't heard about that account since.
One problem is with systems that automatically fill in forms from a postcode/zip code, customer number, email address... This is why it can be a lottery getting goods delivered in the UK: the postcode is accurate to within a "block" or smaller and, along with a house number, usually pinpoints your address. Except when it doesn't. In that case, however meticulously you provide your company, buidling name, department etc. it is liable to be translated to "Your Name Misspelt @ Random address sharing your postcode". Worse, if the company has other customers at your postcode and the operator mis-clicks the menu, the goods will be addressed to Real Person [Not you] @ Real Address [Not yours].
Software designers who produce forms which assumes that everybody's address is "House Number; Street; City; State; Country; Zip" are also culpable. (I've never worked out what people outside the US are meant to put for "state").
A more "billing" related example: While doing freelance work, I helped a client set up a website, for which they needed hosting. I didn't want to "own" the site myself (one less thing to worry about on the tax form), so I helped them fill out the forms for a hosting account with the ISP I was happily using at the time. The forms clearly gave the client's address for billing and included a purchase order from the client. However, I did include my email under "contact person for technical queries". Big mistake!
Some (probaby underpaid and overworked) keyboard operator just enters my email address and lets the computer fill out all the details, completely ignoring the rest of the form. I am now the unknowing owner of a nice new web hosting account.
Sure enough, along comes an invoice addressed to me. Simple mistake, I think, and call up the provider. Underpaid, overworked call centre droid assures me that it will be sorted. 30 days later, reminder (for me) arrives.
Repeat {Phone/write/fax again - "all sorted"; wait 2 weeks; new nastygram arrives} until (sick)
Just paying up and trying to recover the money from client would just open a new battlefront - they have no contract with me to supply web hosting.
Salvation actually arrives when the issue finally gets passed to the debt recovery department, at which point I get to talk to a human being paid enough to bring their brain to work.
Except when billing time rolls around next year and the whole sorry dance begins again...
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
When I got my first bill a month later after signing up for cingular service, The bill I got was around $260. I knew it was going to be a bit more as I was paying the activation fee of 2 phones and my first month of service but yeah?...Turns out something wasnt processed correctly I guess on the sales man side at the store, that both of my phones were put on their own seperate plans. So a month later when I received my bill a quick call to cingular, maybe on hold for 5 minutes while the cs rep processed everything, I got the second phone put on my account like it should of been, but overall I was pleased at how the cs rep who was helping me handled things. I also use cingular's online payment to pay for my services and I havnt really ever had any problems with it.
Dell had a problem with multiple remit lines on a check. For those of you who do not know, remit lines are the break out of a check to pay multiple invoices. This way I could pay 300 invoices with one check. Dell tends to credit the whole amount to one lease structure (we have several hundred due to Dell's efficient billing scheme) and cut us a check for the remainder of the check. Following that, they send us a nasty gram about not paying on the other accounts.
This happened to me on two personnal DFS accounts. I had bought a laptop one year and another two years later. I had $34 left on the first and wrote a check for that amount and wrote one for $170 on the other laptop. A month later, I wrote a check for $170 on the second laptop and two days later, got a check for $170. Calling Dell, I pointed out the issue. Mr. English-is-probably-not-even-my-second-language had no clue what I was saying when I pointed out that they were applying my payment wrong. So, I figure they will get a clue. I send another check the next month for $170 and get one for $170. They also send a paid-in-full letter for the SECOND account. I call and get Mr. English-is-probably-not-even-my-second-language again and get told that this was not a mistake. I stop sending checks.
A year later, I get a letter from a collection agency, asking for the amount of the laptop. I send them a letter within 30 days and ask for proof of the debt and send the payment-in-full letter, asking for response in 60 days as required by law. I don't hear anything from that collection agency again; but six months later, I get another asking for the money. Wash, rise, repeat. Flash forward 3 years later. I am still getting letters every six months, which I challenge. By my state law, they can't collect. By federal law, they have refused a valid payment.
What is funny about this situation is that I am heading the team reviewing the vendor we use for PCs at work. The company I work for have 5,000+ desktops and laptops, plus servers. We already get our servers now from IBM. We have a final three for the PC decision. I can't tell you who they are, but I can tell you Michael Dell is not amoung them due to billing issues. Our PC Lease contract is for about $1,000,000 per year and Dell is losing it due to inability in their AR department. DUMB!
In God we trust, all others require data.
BTW, I have no problem with people who have English as a second or third language. I even don't have problem with non-english speakers. I do have a problem when they are not fluent in English at all and are put on Phone Support duty.
In God we trust, all others require data.
Many years ago, I got hoodwinked / pressured into signing up for the credit card "payment protector" plan. Essentially, they would bill me 1% of the previous month's balance for the program, and charge that to my card.
...the *NEXT* month, I get a bill for $0.02... the payment protector premium for the previous month's bill of $1.69. It's bad enough that they charged me a premium to protect the previous month's premium... but then on top of it they actually paid postage to mail out a bill for $0.02. Highly cost-effective :)
So after a few months of not using the card, I finally charged $169 to it and promptly paid it off. I got a bill in the mail the next month for $1.69, charged to my card. That was entirely 'payment protector premium. I was a bit steamed, but I paid that off anyway...
I proudly paid the $0.02 at an ATM, and then gave their customer service department a call. They took me off the program without any problem, and even paid me back the $1.71 I'd paid in premiums.
Similar story as the thread's opening one about Sprint, except without the account being deactivated. I have a pay-as-you-go plan with Virgin Mobil where you have to "top-up" your balance by $20 every 90 days to keep your account active. I have auto-top-up configured which tops up by $20 (+$1 fee) from my paypal account whenever 90 days passes (or my balance runs low.) And I still get emails like "Better top up now or your account will be deactivated" and "90 days has passed without topping up, so your phone has stopped working." Auto-top-up works fine, as does my phone. This seems to be a case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing.
I switched from Cingular to AT&T right when they were merging, worst service mistake of my life. AT&T was marginally cheaper and had the phone I wanted on special. I was happy with Cingular, but I figured that they just finished the merger, and I would end up with a Cingular contract (with roll over in a month or two). My first bill was for like $800 dollars, they charged for some 'no minutes' plan on all three phones (rather than the 1000 minute family plan I signed up for), It took me over two hours on the phone to straiten out that mess. The next month the bill was 'only' $400, which was also a screw up which cost me two hours on the phone, to fix what I thought was already fixed. The month after that the bill was still high, I called again to find out that the 'extra minutes' were calls between my three phones, apparently when I was 'roaming' on the cingular network (which I had no choice over) my 'free' calls between the phones where charged to the anytime minutes. Too top it all off I had for the first time signed up for a two year contract. I finally found a 'conversion' plan from AT&T to Cingular which could be done without penalty, and I took it. Since then I have been reasonably gruntled again.
The grass is only greener, if you don't take care of your own lawn.
Telstra is the (partially) government owned telco in Australia.
I get my phone through another telco with my ADSL, but I still had to get them to connect my phone line. (they own all the hardware)
All in all, this cost about AUD$80 and I received a bill (which was promptly paid) for this amount.
However, somewhere between receiving the bill and paying it, AUD$14.95 was deducted from the amount, meaning that Telstra now has AUD$14.95 of mine in credit on an account I don't use.
To make matters worse, their automated billing system sends me endless bills informing me that I have AUD$14.95 in credit with them.
I'm sure that with postage, paper, time and effort and all, it'd just be easier to send me a cheque for the amount. However, I'm fairly sure that the only human who handles the bill before it reaches me is the postie who puts it in my mailbox.
I suppose that when I move out of this place there will be some form of disconnection fee, so it can go towards that.
That's an interesting point, which I just noted this morning while paying bills. Discover and Capital One assume same-day payment (as long as it's before a reasonable time like 5:00 p.m.) when you're entering a payment online, but MBNA (now Bank of America) schedules your payment for the due date, by default, and the earliest you can submit it for is the next business day. If you want it to post on the same day, they charge an extra $12.95! Talk about bull$hit fees...
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I do frequent this tech message board that puts up the stupidest questions and stories sometimes...
I've got a fun one...
So I sign up for an SBC phone line when I moved into my first appartment last year. Being that I hate talking on the phone with people, I decided that I'd do it online. Punch in my address, and cool enough, they even give me a list of about half a dozen phone numbers to choose from. All is done and taken care of. About two months go by, and I then realize that to my knowledge, I had not gotten a bill yet. So, I hope online to see if I can sign into my account without an account number. Strangley enough, I can. I'm then shocked to discover that my bill is two months past due. I'm sitting there dumbfounded when I then see that the address they have listed for me is the completely wrong zipcode. When I signed up, I didn't have the option of giving them a seperate billing address, so they had to have had the correct address to enable my phone service. I was even more surprised to find out that the address they had for billing me in their system was completely non-existant. So, I call the issue in. Lady first tells me that I have to pay my bill, and when I explain to her that I'm not going to until the issue is resolved, and what my issue is, she then transfers me over to a technician. Unfortunately, at the time she transfers me, they close, and I'm greated by a "please call again" message. The next day I call and go through the same hoops (and I'm delighted to be told that there was no record of me calling in last night despite the CSR saying they'd log it). Finally I get to a technician and he goes to correct the error in their system. While I'm sitting there he elicits a, "hmmm that's odd," and then explains that the system had changed my number back to the invalid address after he fixed it. He then does something else and convinces me that he has indeed corrected the issue and after asking him to waive my late fees, he checks with his supervisor and does so.
To this day I have no idea what happened to my first two bills. Any slashdotters know if that's going to come back to haunt me?
Never. Let. Them. Get. At. Your. Money.
Push not pull: If automatic withdrawal or credit card billing is optional, do not opt in. If you don't want to deal with manual payment, you can setup your own transaction to send them a payment automatically.
Minimize the liability: If they insist on 'pull' transactions, opt for credit card billing, using an expendable credit card with a very low credit limit i.e. less than $500.
Paper billing: You can't accidentaly lose paper to a drive failure or virus/malware. Tangible stuff with big yellow highlighter that says "PAY ME" is easy to see on a kitchen fridge.
In the summer of 2000, I did a short stint at the Sprint campus (KC), working in their DP.
One Monday, I was brought a problem to work on. Apparently, this one discount program could not handle duplicate records, and they wanted me to handle the program change to do it. Evan gave me a sample data file to use.
Cool, so I made the change, then after testing the sample file, went back to the manager and asked for a larger test file (the one I was given had 3 records in it, two of which were the dups). Didn't I understand? That was the production file! And the discount program was to last for the rest of the year, and they didn't really expect anymore records in the file to show up. They spent a week of my time just to handle three records! (Most of that time was spent writing the doc for the code review at the end of the week.)
I got out of there fast, and wasn't surprised when they laid off 2000 from their IT campus a year later.
Time Warner cable, the broadband service provider I cancelled over a year ago, sends me a bill notifying me of a $5 credit every month. Multiple calls to their hell desk and customer disservice inevitably result in 1) they can't find any such thing 2) Oh, there it is!
:)
What happens next varies. Usually, they promise to get a refund check out. Once, they told me there's some form they have to fill out to get a refund sent, and promised to do so, or send it to me, whichever was the case. I suspect they've spent a largish multiple of that $5 credit not sending it to me. I finally decided, months ago, that it wasn't worth my time chasing it. Instead, I'll just tell anyone who cares to ask.
The second was Earthstink, back when I had dialup. I cancelled a credit card (credit cards bad!), notified them that I they shouldn't use the card anymore, and paid in advance for 6 months. For each of the next three months, they cancelled my service because the credit card charge was rejected. Each time I had to call them and point out their idiocy. Yes, I sent a check. Here's the number. Yes, it cleared my bank. Eventually, I even had the bank pull it off microfilm and send me a copy, which I sent to them. The next month, they cancelled my account for nonpayment again. Morons. I had done everything possible to get it *right*, including putting my account number on the check, which I don't usually do. Yes, it was the right account number. Remember, I had to get a copy of the check to prove it. I finally cancelled the service and asked for a refund of the unused portion, which they promised to send. Think I got it? Nope. Losers. I spent years recommending that anyone needing network service use someone else. Anyone else.
After a fair amount of haggling with people on the phone, I eventually got Verizon to set up dry-loop DSL at my apartment (the sales reps refused to believe that they sold DSL without a regular phone line). This service was supposed to cost $35/mo. Right from the start, they were only billing me $30. Which was fine with me. This went on for several months, at which point they stopped charging me at all. They sent me a bill still, but for $0. This has gone on for 5 months now. Oh well.
I've had an AT&T GoPhone for a couple of years; it's a pay-as-you-go deal. Then AT&T wireless was sold to Cingular. I was recently told that Cingular was "cancelling" the service, but it basically amounted to them forcing me to replace my AT&T SIM card with one from Cingular, fine. I was told to call a special 800# to get it sorted out, and I procrastinated a couple of days. Well, by the time I went to do it my monthly bill had come around and my phone was blocked from sending or receiving calls until I paid my bill. This had happened to me a few times in the past, no big deal. But, it means I can't call the 800#. So I try and pay my bill via phone and I can't because they're closing down the plans and won't allow me to pay my bill. So I can't sign up for the new plan because I can't make calls because I can't pay my bill because I have to sign up for a new plan. That was a fun one.
A couple of years ago, Verizon Wireless cut off my service, because I was past due on a balance of $0. I called, waited on hold, and got service re-established, only to have it cut off again the next day for the same reason.
It took two more days of escalating phone calls and waiting on hold to finally get it straightened out. I would have switched providers at that point if I could have gotten reception in my town on any other.
~*~ Tara
I had Verizon for 4 years and decided to switch to nextel because all my freinds and co-workers have the direct connect feature. I went into the nextel store the day before my contract was to end for Verizon, and switch my phone number over and signed the nextel contract. My next Verizon bill had a $300.00 early termination fee which took about 3 hours and 4 people to dismiss. They told me I broke my contract by leaving Verizon a day ealry even though my last contract bill had been paid.
Ad eundum quo nemo ante iit!
Definitely, Trenitalia's (the Italian railroad system) one.
Their automated system generates a number of "solution" to go from station A to station B, and then only sells you ticket corresponding to the ones they have generated. You are smarter than them and you have spotted a different (cheaper) train combo that would get you from A to B faster? No way, you can't have it. You go to the ticket office and talk to an employee? No way. They use the same software to sell you tickets, and there is no way to generate another "solution".
And oh, I forgot, the "solutions" generated by their software always include the most expensive trains...
My first program:
Hell Segmentation fault
In the little farm town of 1000 people where I grew up in Wisconsin, the village clerk who was responsible for sending out the water bills. About seven or eight years ago, the clerk retired and a new one came in. The new clerk discovered that the old clerk hadn't been billing half the town for water for almost ten years. So she sent out bills to half the town for about $10,000. Of course they refused to pay. Meanwhile the other half was pissed because their bills had been artificially high for 9 years or whatever and now half the town still refused to pay. They ended up putting them on a 5 year payment plan but it caused a nice feud in town. What I could never believe is that the half that didn't get bills never questioned that.
I sat on hold with AT&T wireless for six hours. No joke. I was driving from San Antonio to Dallas and simply routed the on hold music though the car stereo.
"Personal ownership is a hallmark of conservative capitalism. And I don't believe I am entitled to anything that I did n
Maybe ACID compliance *is* important. Maybe any programmer or DBA that designs a system that violates the 'once and only once' rule *should* be drawn and quartered. Maybe database design is a serious endeavor not to be left to amateurs.
Most of these problems can be attributed to 2 major causes:
1) Multiple databases used by different departments with no gauruntee of proper synchronization. This violates 'once and only once' and probably ACID, since multiple updates may not go as one transaction.
2) A badly normalized database which has multiple tables storing the same information. The problems are the same as above.
Yes, I know, this will probably start a flame war.
But as an excercise, let's discuss the implications for a person's credit rating and/or the impact on the Department of Fatherland Security's (Bias? I've heard of it) datamining efforts.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
I recall when A&T Wireless moved their payment center from Los Angeles to somewhere in Arizona. And didn't update their billing software to put the new address on the payment coupons in the statements. For so long that payments started being returned as undeliverable (forwarding addresses are only good for a year). Got three months of free service, after the Public Utilities Commission got involved.
For years, I'd get a $0.04 tax bill for a little sliver of land behind my house (long story short, there was a mis-surveying when my house was built, and to "fix" it while allowing enough space for a flag lot next to mine I was deeded a sliver about 2000 sq ft (my lot was 1 acre, ~40,000 sq ft). Every year, the county would send the 4 cent tax bill, and I'd pay $0.3x cents to mail in my 4 cent check. (School taxes actually were noticable, all of $4/year.)
but why, pray tell, should they waste it doing anything for you? you sound like a condescending dickwad.
they save it for the weekends and after work, when they do important things.
Even better-- MBNA has a service attached to its credit card accounts called "ShopSafe". This allows you to generate a unique CC number for each purchase you make, set a maximum withdrawal amount, and set an expiration date for use. This way, if an employee of some vendor steals your number, he's out of luck. It won't work.
I mention this in connection to bill payments (pull payments, in your terminology) because you can also create something like an "open purchase order"-- that is, a vendor can withdraw from a card (which is a uniquely generated number) once a month up to a certain amount. I use it, e.g., to pay Netflix bills, and so on. Unfortunately you still have to trust the CC company-- but you have to trust someone, somewhere. I've been using ShopSafe for about 5 years, and I'm quite happy with it.
Repeated phone calls to the company got him nowhere (which just goes to show we have no need to out-source customer service since we are perfectly capable of providing terrible customer service domestically). Back in those days the billing systems were just getting computerized which was why this mistake was made and also why this man was having a hard time getting his problem solved.
Back in those days the companies actually sent all of their customers a punched card in each monthly statement and the customers were supposed to send this card back with their payment. Well, this man knew all about punched cards since he was in charge of several computers that still used them. So he simply punched in an end-of-file on a blank card and sent that back instead of the card the company sent him.
A couple of weeks later he got a phone call from the company asking him what he did and why he did it. He explained and they said they would correct the problem as long as he promised not to tell anyone else about the trick he had pulled.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
Sprint's billing system kept my account active for about six months, despite repeated cancellations by me. The software wasn't really the culprit, of course; they deliberately make it difficult to cancel an account. This wasn't a contractual obligation; I just wanted to cancel after several years of service.
I have Virgin Mobile now. Their software warns me when it's time to "top up", and I haven't had any problems.
We were on automatic billpay with our mortgage company. Takes some of the stress out, right?
So, the annual adjustment happened for taxes/ins (escrow), and there was a small increase. And the automatic bill didn't get adjusted, so they debited the old (smaller) amount. $50ish difference. Fine, we called them to fix it, and gave them a payment over the phone. Apparently this happened to a few thousand people who's accounts were charged the day they updated the escrow, or some such. That solved it, right? Wrong.
The $50ish was credited to the escrow account directly, not to the currently due payment. Next billing cycle comes, and we see that it's wrong, and call them again. They correct it again, and it's credited wrong again (this time to principal). A third billing cycle, and we see it's wrong (and now the payment amount on the account is wrong), and we also get a you're overdue letter. Finally, after a LONG time with an agent, and having to give them another over-the-phone small payment (it was valid, to correct for other mistakes and so that everything would get properly set so the payment would go back to the correct amount), they FINALLY got it right. We tried to get them to send a letter saying "they made no late payments", etc, and couldn't, but they did finally send us an accounting of payments showing those months as paid in full on-time. Though we waited a few months before celebrating.
1) When we went to purchase our first home, the credit report showed my wife in default on her student loans, despite her being in grad school and having a deferal. The bank holding the loan claimed that they had been unable to contact her for over a year, despite using "all resources at their command." When we asked why she was still getting her checking account statements at the apartment we had been in for over a year, the until then surly manager sat in stunned silence, looking a bit ill. He pulled up her checking account information, and saw that it had our current address. When I pointed out that their customer files might be considered a primary resource at their command, he had to agree. The next morning, the correction had been made to our Credit report. That bank has since gone out of business.
2) Several years later, my wife and I separated for awhile. I called the Cable company, and had my service moved to my new place, and told my wife that she should contact them to have her service moved into her name. The cable came up at my place, and I never thought about it again. A few months later, we reconciled, and I moved back into our house. She paid the bills that had been moved to her name, I paid the others. About a year later, I decided to move from dial-up internet access to a cable modem. I called and asked the Cable company to add broadband service. "Would you like to reactivate your TV cable service at the same time?" Huh? We already have cable, just add the broadband. "Well... I'll have someone contact you about adding that."
The next day, a cable supervisor shows up at the door, and launches into this long lecture about Cable piracy and how we were in "big trouble." Eventually, I demand they show when they disconnected the cable when they transferred the service to my new place. They, of course, discover that there was never a work order issued to disconnect the old service. Since my wife had never seen a cable bill, and I hadn't been expecting to pay one after I moved back in, we had never realized they were not billing us. Of course, we then get a bill for the 18 months, which I refuse to pay since I had canceled service for that address. Eventually, they relented and cancelled the bill when I mentioned Satellite TV.
In the end I have a (few) notice(s) that my balance is overdue and I need to make a payment. It remains that way until I actually use the card again and owe them something.
We're using this where I work. It's awful. It's a Windows-only piece of crap with proprietary ColdFusion web pages that have been encrypted (yes, I can decrypt them, but that's breaking the Terms Of Service). The database schema is the most schizophrenic piece of crap I've ever seen (imagine having to update the customer's address in four tables and their billing data in seven -- yes, S.E.V.E.N. -- different tables if you want to roll anything of your own).
Online, users of the site cannot process a renewal of themselves plus any additional associated records -- they have to either log in individually and update or call us.
ASI is not exactly forthcoming with the data we need to write anything new and our boss and accountant are petrified of moving away from this software, so even mocking up other CRM solutions (Sugar, etc) just strikes fear into their hearts and they start looking like they're ready to hire someone else who will "just make sure it works like it always has."
Support providers don't seem to know very much about the software, and neither do ASI's programmers -- part of why the database is so awful is that it was billed as modular, and it's clear that the modules were developed by separate people who did not develop any kind of API and never communicated with anyone about anything.
It's software that's typically sold to non-profits (which we are) and so most of those facilties just don't have the expertise to know that they've bought into a steaming pile of trouble.
Stay away... Stay far, far away....
Disclaimer: I used to work on the Collections back end for the software Sprint used to use for their PCS billing. I don't know if Sprint Mobile is still using the same billing software as they were back in 2000 when I last supported the Sprint business unit at my former employer.
I was carrying a balance on a Citibank credit card, with auto-pay each month for about $100. A couple months ago I just pay the entire amount via check, thinking surely they wouldn't process the automatic payment when they see I paid myself. Well, they did, leaving me with a credit balance - which of course takes weeks to process. How hard would it be to check the balance right before processing the auto-pay to verify if there's still a balance on the account? This is assuming they're not doing it on purpose...
I've been getting a bill with associated legal threats for -$0.01 every month for about 3 years now from a county government agency. The first few times I called the assured me that it wasn't a problem and that the bill was satisfied and they would take care of it, but the letters keep coming. I had the bill set up on auto-pay, divided into 4 equal payments. Apparently I over paid by $0.01 on the last payment and that has triggered this bug in their software. I've just started looking at is as a simple form of entertainment. As long as it doesn't show up on my credit report and they don't take legal action, I don't care. I can't immagine it getting very far once a real person is tasked with looking at it.
Another government agency once got their computer panties in a bunch over a $0.50 short payment. They had deposited the check as $xxx.2x and the check was written for $xxx.7x. Took forever to get that resolved. I had to wait for the check to clear at the bank, get a copy of it, and go down and show them that they screwed up entering the deposit before they would refund the disconnect/reconnect fees. Never did get an apology for that one.
I had an account with hosting company ServerPronto.com, cancelled in early 2004.
Just a few weeks ago the fraudulent suckers billed another $70 onto my credit card! I haven't done business with them in over 30 months!
I told them it was fraudulent and that I'd fight it, and they replied "We have already notified our merchant bank of these issues" and that they would not refund the money.
Pre-emptive attack, nice.
So far they have my money and I only have the satisfaction of complaining on Slashdot...
I do not recommend their crappy service or practices to anyone.
Lose Weight and Feel Great with Isagenix
For some odd reason once it became Y2K, Convergys wanted to change the name of their flagship PCS billing software from Precedent 2000 to something else. I wouldn't be surprised if Atlys was still around, but when I left Convergys in Jan of 2004 it was supposed to be integrated into their brand new superstructure (I want to say Catalyst, but that can't be right) of which I cannot remember the name. Except for pieces of Atlys that could be canabalized for the new system, Atlys was destined to be shortly retired. The actual billing portion was supposed to be based on the Geneva engine that Convergys ended up with through an acquisition. Of course, that was over two and half years ago when I left. Plans may very well be behind schedule or have been changed entirely.
But what most people don't understand is that (at least in the past, and I'm assuming this is still the case in the present) is that most phone companies (mobile or otherwise) have a conglomerate structure where each region largely makes it's own decisions. One region may very well decide to use different software than another. If a region is gained through acquisition, they are usually only converted to another billing system if a business case can be made that doing so will reduce costs. Hence, the large providers tend use multiple software vendors and sometimes even when they use the same vendor across the board, they have the system partitioned so that each region is run independently.
When I was a starving college student I had phone service through Qwest. After a few months I started getting two identical bills as well as missing payment notices. I checked and they were cashing my checks so I called them up and they said the notices were sent in error, my account actually had a credit on it so just disregard them. Not too long after this my phone was disconnected and more angry notices arrived threatening to send collections after me. So I call them up and wasted several hours of my life talking to various people and explaining that my bank shows they are cashing my checks. Eventually someone discovers that for some reason I have two separate accounts with them, one of which has no services of any sort associated with it. For some mysterious reason all of my payments were being shuffled into this other account and just sitting there, probably waiting to be siphoned off into some slush fund somewhere. Because this included the late fees and missed payment fees as well it added up to quite a bit of money. It took them nearly a year to refund me the extra money.
I've boycotted Qwest ever since.
Other fun billing experience was with Nextel. In addition to totally lying about the "contract" I agreed to and shipping me a broken phone, they were charging me California state phone taxes, which conveniently are some of the highest in the nation. I don't live in California. They aren't based in California. The phone support people couldn't explain it and kept asking me to confirm my address. Eventually after more than an hour and getting transferred around to a half dozen different people they agreed that they should refund me the money and charge me the proper state taxes. I've had nothing but trouble with those bastards, they a bunch of incompetent liars.
Billing systems are heavy on not only customized coding, but also on configuration. Back when I worked for a telecom billing provider I couldn't tell you how many times I made absolutely clear to our clients that they were shooting themselves in the foot with the way that they wanted to configure the system only to have them refuse to change course.
When my girlfriend had her own place, she had phone and DSL through Verizon. She moved in with me about 20 months ago, and cut her phone service off a little over a year ago when the lease expired on her apartment and she was done moving stuff out of there. Nothing more came of it... ...until 2 months ago, when we suddenly got a Verizon Wireless bill for her brother at our address. (He had just gotten a new cell phone with them.) He doesn't know our mailing address, and Verizon doesn't have any record of my girlfriend living at the current address -- not that that would matter. Obviously a glitch associating the wrong name/address pairing, but how freaky is it that it ended up being one of our family?
The problem has since been corrected, but we can still kid him about trying to duck paying his bill...next time, don't use your sister's address as a fake!
We can believe in you for 3 minutes, but beyond that, even the King of All Cosmos can't be expected to wait.
Adobe Store - criminally incompetent. It is beyond belief how screwed up that store is. I had TWO orders with a line item of $99.99, and between it and the $499.99 subtotal, nothing. Then when these ship, I get two more but the line item is now $499.99 and the subtotal is 599.98 (nothing in bewteeen). And to top it off, some numbnut from this Adobe company tells me it can take two BILLING cycles for the credit to appear. Did I mention you can't cancel an order? It took four days between an order and the ship, but nothing could be done.
I work for a company that offers this sort of service, so I'm posting anonymously (you wouldn't have heard of us though, we're small and just getting started).
These are great examples of things to avoid, but does anyone have any tales of billing software that "Just works?" My personal experience is that there doesn't seem to be ANYONE doing this properly, or even remotely competently. But you would have to figure SOMEONE must have a clue.
So, any (admittedly boring) tales of billing software that didn't consistently pass the Turring test for insanity?
Sometimes I think "software error" is deliberate.
/. before, that these companies almost always seem to make money on their mistakes, never lose it. Sure, a $3 overcharge per month isn't much, and for many people it's not worth going over 5 pages of billing to determine where it was screwed up. For the company though, $3 times 100,000 customers is $300,000 a month, and in $3.6 million per month. It costs them to fix their systems, so assuming the bill wasn't deliberately overdone in the first place, why would they correct such a profitable "mistake"
My co-worker had a bell cellphone with a companion plan. Essentially this means that both he and his wife have phones which share a plan/minutes/etc. As part of the plan, he can call his wife's phone any time and vice-versa.
In theory anyhow
In practice, he would have to call the cellphone company after every bill, wasting at least 1-2 days worth of lunch break, and explain to them how it had decided to bill his phone, or his wife's for a companion-call that should have been free, and for various other little differences. In addition to this, the customer service people were rude, unhelpful, and for some reason they couldn't read a case-file or whatever to determine that it was happening month-after-month, so it usually had to get called up through a few tiers every time.
It was still going on for about 6 months when I moved to a new job, so I don't know if they're still screwing up his bills. The fact is though, and I've pointed it out on
Personally, the last few bills I've had screwed up in my favour (these being the employee-entered type, where they undercharge me, such as $0.05 for my burger-meal instead of $6.05) I've been honest enough to correct it and pay up. I wish these companies had a smidgeon of honesty in them, but somehow I'm betting that the CEO's would just keep seeing $3.6 million in free burgers for them...
Back in the dot-com days the company I worked for contracted with an expensive full-service managed hosting company. At the time the servers were running NT and there were stability problems. When one of the bank of servers crashed, someone at the NOC had to go reboot the system (simple press of the reset button - 0.1 hours tops). Then we got a monthly bill with huge charges for going over the alloted remote-hands time.
Turns out we were getting billed for 1-2 hours of time for every reboot. When a server died, all the alarms went off (web down, can't ping, smtp down, unable to get disk-status, unable to get cpu-status, unable to get memory-status, etc. etc. - a dozen or two alarms). The NOC guy would push the reset button and clear all the alarms with 0.1 hours spent then they would bill us for 0.1 times the dozen+ alarms.
We contested the bill and they told us that we needed to go through the bill and tell them which items were wrong when it was clearly a fubar bill that was their responsibility to fix. We finally had to withhold payment to force them to produce corrected bills.
Of course this was the same company that didn't put their name on the building for "security reasons"...a fact noted on their contact-us web page - the same page that provided detailed maps/instructions right to the entrance of the facility. And the same company that would quickly "schedule" some downtime to fix a live problem so they wouldn't have to pay for unscheduled downtime. And the same company that spectacularly crashed in "double-Bud" fashion from a reverse-split-adjusted high of >$2500/share to the current $3 and change. And don't get me started on their load-balancer and router issues.
So I guess the billing problems shouldn't have been a surprise.
~~~~~~~
"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
I'm not going to go into specifics, but I think you've just made me several thousand dollars richer. Have a very, very nice day.
I have my car financed through BMW of North America. First, I can not quite figure out how they are calculating the interest on this account. It must be some sort of average daily balance with a daily compound rate, because it never, ever matches (nor is ever close to) the APR on my loan. The funny thing is that I think it is in my favor, so I don't complain. One day I suppose I should try to figure it out.
But my biggest gripe is the rounding errors. On each statement is shown a starting balance, a payment, split into principle and interest, and my new total loan balance. On some months, (Starting Balance) - (Payment Principle) != Ending Balance. It is off by one penny.
How can BMW engineer such fantastic cars, but make such an elementary mistake in their billing software?
Some years ago I purchased a cheap 20" TV box from a big online store, and I was informed it would arrive in some days. That would be it were not for the fact that I received a 10% discount coupon from an affiliate of the store. I though: "Nice! Since the TV wasn't sent yet, I'll try to apply this coupon to it." But an attendee told me the policy of the site didn't allow for discount codes to be applied to finished sales. So he advised me to cancel the previous purchase and purchase the TV again, this time applying the discount. I did so, and used the discount amount to include two books in the order.
Some days later a truck stops in front of my house with my TV. My aunt, who was there, signed the invoice, got the box inside the house, and proceeded to install my new TV, so that it was in place by the time I arrived coming from work. And what I found when I arrived was that my the books hadn't come.
I called the store to complain about the lack of the books, and was amazed to discover that my TV wasn't delivered. What they actually sent was the first TV, the one I cancelled. And that was because I cancelled it in the same day it had entered "delivery status" and began to be sent from one place to another in the chain that would end in it getting to my house. I asked them to get it back and send me my actual TV with the books, and by the next day they came to gat it back.
Then, some two days later, my actual TV with my two books arrived. And everything seemed correct. But that's not the end of the history, oh, no!
Although the first TV had been cancelled, and returned, it was still billed from my credit card. I called the store again to cancel that amount, explaining the whole situation, and it got cancelled, okay. But then, for some reason, the billing of the second TV was ALSO cancelled. And thing got even stranger: the amount of the monthly parts of the payment of both TVs kept appearing in my credit card statement, together with their refund, for some months. No one to whom I talked about this had a clue on what was going on. And then, as if by magic, these strange payments and refunds simply stopped.
Some months after that, in what I think was a cleanup of messed up database records, my account at the store got deleted for good. I called them to complain, but they couldn't recover it. So, I created a new one and still shop there now and then.
And as a result of badly written databases interacting with badly written software to make an insane delivery logistics somehow work, I ended up with a free TV and two free books.
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
I had Farmer's Automobile Insurance for a *very* short period of time last year.
I had a multitude of complaints*, both with my agent and with the company, prompting me to cancel my accounts and move to a different insurance carrier. Finally, they returned the unearned portion of my 6-month premium (the pro-rated amount). Everything appeared to be the correct amount, so I cashed the check and hoped to never hear from them again. Two weeks later I got a bill for $12.00. The bill had the account number from one of my cars, but the VIN number from the other. I don't understand how their system let them generate a bill after my premiums had been refunded. I called my former agent and told him to eat it, because I was not paying another dime for a policy that had already been serviced, closed and refunded.
* The straw that broke the camels back was shortly after I signed up for the policy in the first place. I signed the policy in person in his office. He quoted me the price, I signed the paperwork and wrote a check for 6 months of premiums, and went on my way. Soon I received an unitemized bill for $8.00 from the corporate billing office. No big deal, I didn't want to make a stink about $8. I just called the agent and told him if he could send me an itemized bill indicating which particular premium on my previous bill had been adjusted by $8, I would remit payment. He must have wasted hours on the phone with corporate trying to get them to generate a line-item bill, but in the end they could not even tell me what the $8 was for. I refused to pay and made him eat it. I refuse to be nickel-and-dimed without at least making them make up a story as to why. The trouble all started on the very first day when his computer quote did not match the quote he had given me on the phone. Needless to say, I will never use Farmer's again.
Worst. Billing. system. Ever.
I used to have internet service with them, several years ago. I was moving so I cancelled my account. I paid the final bill and that was that. Just before we moved, I received another bill, stating that I owed them ~$10. OK, their billing system fucked up. I called them up and they agreed, the bill was in error, so they told me they would take care of it.
The next month I get another bill from Time Warner forwarded to our new address. It is for ~$10. I call them up and explain that I was told last month it would be fixed. They apologize and promise to fix it.
Next month, same shit. I think they also added a late charge to the $10 on this bill. Called them, they apologize and promise to fix it.
Next month, I am really getting pissed. They are sending the bills on bright yellow paper now, declaring the account to be delinquent. I don't even have service with them anymore and they are still harassing me about this bogus bill. I call them up and wait forever while the CSR "investigates" the issue. She finally comes back and tells me there was an error on the bill (no shit!) and then she says the truth is that they OWE ME $2.50. Um ok... She said I could expect a check from them in the next few weeks.
Next month.... I just about lose it when I get another bill for $10 plus late fee, on yellow paper. I called them up and I really let them have it. I felt bad for whoever it was the took my call. After I calmed down, they checked the system and fixed the issue once and for all and that was FINALLY the end of it.
--TWC II, the sequel
So then last year my friend buys a new house and decides to go with Time Warner. I desperately tried to talk him out of it, but he couldn't be dissuaded. He orders cable TV and internet service from them. First thing they do is charge him for installation, even though they were advertising free installation. After arguing with them, they remove the installation charges from his bill, but he still gets charged $10. He calls them up to ask why, and they explain that was the cost of the big ass gray plastic box they put on this house. (The same thing they had put on my house for free).
He was annoyed but got over the $10 plastic box fee. Then, six months later, he decides he wants more TV channels so he upgrades his service. They do the upgrade, but later that month, around the time he gets his bill, it never shows up.
He waits another week and calls them up. They say they mailed it and he should check with the post office. Honestly, WTF is the point. Are you going to call the post office and tell them you haven't received your cable bill and they will say "oh, yeah I've got it right here, sorry about that, we'll get it right over"? Riiiight. In the meantime the post office delivers all other bills and mail just like always.
My friend calls them up several times more and they brush off his concerns, maintaining that they mailed the bill. He is worried about having a late payment, so he goes to their website to access his account online and pay his bill. He makes the payment on their website with a credit card, but the system never sends him a confirmation email like it says it will.
He waits a few days and calls them up again to make sure they received the payment. They claim that they have not. He hangs up and calls the credit card company to see if they have a charge from Time Warner Cable on his card. They confirm, his credit card has been billed by them for the amount of the cable bill! He calls Time Warner again and asks them about it. He told me they were rude to him at this point and told him that his bill is due TODAY and they have not received payment so he better give them a credit card number to pay it NOW or else he is going to be charged a late fee! Needless to say he did not pay for the bill again, since it was already charged to his credit card.
Eventually the charge cleared and Time Warner confirmed that his bill had been paid, but my friend was pissed. The following month,
Hah! You must not know much about corporate accounting work. I used to work in the IT department at a medium-sized manufacturing plant, and you would not believe the sheer volume of data that is kept in Excel files. It would blow your mind. And I don't think this was anything out of the ordinary.
Of course it wasn't "out of the ordinary"! Don't any of you geek kids remember your computing history anymore? Accountants were the ones who wanted electronic spreadsheets in the first place! The use of spreadsheets in accounting predates computers; the reason that they're called "spread sheets" is because "spread sheets" used to be big sheets of paper with folds in them that you would "spread" out to do various forms of data analysis.
My Dad was an accountant; I remember how pleased he was that electronic spreadsheets could automatically calculate his totals for him. I also remember his ingrained caution with regard to new technology; he cross-checked his Lotus-1-2-3 spreadsheet calculations against the same calculations with a calculator for the first few months he used his computer, before he was willing to credit that it would get him the correct totals.
Spreadsheets were the killer-app that brought desktop computers into the mainstream. Suddenly, the problem was not "is it worth crunching the numbers", but rather "What can the numbers tell us about our business?" And it was accounting that was in charge of crunching the numbers all along...
that level of incompetence really does happen.
For example, I two years ago, I phoned up Bell Canada, and asked for their "High Speed Internet" package. The sales rep quoted me a price, and said my modem should arrive in a few days. A few days later, they mailed a package with an ADSL modem, and a "Terms of Service" agreement to my house.
I read the "Terms of Service" agreement, didn't like it, called them up, and said I declined their terms. The rep told me I would be charged for a month's service; I said I wouldn't, because I'd declined the service before activation, as per the Terms and Services agreement. He hung up on me.
I called his manager, complained about being hung up on by his support ech, quoted basic Canadian contract law (you can't be bound by terms you didn't agree to), and was polite but firm. The manager, seeing an upset customer who knew something about the law, apologized repeatedly, and told me I would not be charged.
At the end of the month, however, I recieved a bill for $4. They'ld charged me $0 for the Internet; but somehow still managed to charge me the tax on the original amount. I called again, and told them I wasn't paying them $4 for taxes on the money I didn't owe. They apologized again, and said they would fix the matter.
Two weeks later... I got a cheque for $4 from them! Tired of calling them, I just cashed it in disgust. Hopefully, that zeroed my account...
Modernbill is most definitely the worst billing software out there. I'm amazed at the amount of people who use it.
mstyne: real name, no gimmicks
I had a very similar incident with SBC about 18 years ago. I was living in a trailer in a small West Texas town and ordered phone service just before taking a series of trips. When I signed up I made very sure they had the physical address and the billing address correct even though the billing address was a P.O. box and it should be obvious that the phone was not physically installed there. I'm in and out over the next three months and pay whatever bills come in and when the phone gets turned off I realize I had not received a phone bill. I check with the Post Office and they pull my phone bills out of their undeliverable pile, all addressed to my physical address. I get ahold of SBC and they say "Oh, our mistake. We'll correct that." I then say I'll put the check for the past three months in the mail but could they turn the phone back on. To which I'm told they can't do that until they recieve the three months payment Plus Late Fees and Reconnect Charge. No matter who I spoke to I was told it was their fault and I could be reconnected as soon as I paid the bill plus the penalties. To which I told them that at this poin I was so pissed that I wasn't going to pay the bill at all. They said I'd be unable to get phone service until I did. I replied that the town was only a couple of miles across and I could walk or drive to anybody I needed to talk to. I did without phone service until I moved out of SBC's area five years later. I can carry a grudge for a long time.
I threw out the receipt soon after. As you can guess, the cable box I had turned went missing from the Service Counter (maybe that girl and her boyfriend are enjoying it right now).
The accounting foulup is: On the last bill, I was owed about 13 bucks, ie, a negative balance, it was marked as -13 and change. The missing cable box was marked as 125 bucks owed back to them. So the bill total was $111 and change. I refused to pay for missing box (*I* hadn't stolen it, somebody at the store screwed up or stole it) for a couple months while we worked it out on the phone from my new residence. On subsequent bills, however, the $111 owed was (incorrectly) rolled back into a charge called "Service balance", but the charge for the cable box remained, kindof as a flag I guess, in addition to the newly labeled Service Balance, so the cost was added BACK in, making the whole thing 236 now!
Crazy thing is, on the phone discussing this, they NEVER understood that the $111 fee, since it was smaller than the $125 could possibly hold that $125 fee plus -13 and change! The direction of the previous charge was completely puzzling them -- almost like they couldn't understand negative numbers plus positive number yields a-little-less-than the positive number!
So, the accounting software (this was all in Fall 2000, early 2001) must have been barely hacked together by a recent dropout from dotcom, thinking that if they knew HTML they must be a programmer, and so should be able to put out the shingle as a real programmer, etc. Stupid account software couldn't track a charge as a flagged valued associated with a number, versus re-adding in the value of the missing item every time. Including their hopes at collection, they turned my $13 owed me into about a $360 charge, all by screwing up each time they re-added the $125 in.
(Of course, a tired admission from the call center people, after tons of trying to convice them, "Ohhh.. okay, you're right, I guess that program does that" isn't useful.)
Moral: keep your Time Warner cable box receipts.
I have on again off again insurance with Kaiser. When I go to Kaiser for treatment without insurance, I am required to pay at the time of service. For the first few years, everytime that I went I paid before my appointment, then later received a bill in the same amount. One time, I was even billed for an amount less that I'd been charged at the office because the office has to look up the cost on a printed sheet of paper. In that case the fee had been reduced and the office had not been notified.
The first time I received such a bill, I called and raised a stink. It was clear to the operator that the receipt numbers that I gave her for three charges coincided exactly with my bills. After a couple of days the manager and an engineer called me to tell me that they had no way easily remove such double billing from the system, so they were going to have to go into the database and delete the data by hand.
There was another such incident later involving a call center person who informed me that this had never happened to my account before because the computer had no record of it, even after I asked her if she was saying that I hallucinated the whole incident. Since that got straightened out I have had some activity on my account that I should have been billed for and have not received a bill. I think they put a black hole in my account.
I have some recurring emergencies that are far more easily provable to someone who has my medical records, and some of my doctors are the best doctors I've ever had. But Kaiser is simply not for non-members.
never liked any billing system. who liked to be billed ?
I've been getting a bill every month for almost 3 years now from Suncom. The amount is $0.00 I'd love to know the total amount they've spent on paper, printing, envelopes and postage.
... back when credit cards were still something of a rarity, at least rare enough that most had annual charges ...
I signed up with some bank that had free credit cards, both VISA and M/C. Everything was fine for a year or so, when they announced that if I used the credit cards after a certain date, they would charge me a $15 annual fee. So I cut them up and threw them away.
Some time later, they sent me a statement including a $15 charge for the annual fee. This continued for several months until my complaints eventually made it into the system, and the bills stopped. Then a month or two later, they started up again, but this time showing a $15 credit. I supposed I had actually gotten two complaints into the system and two retractions of the $15 charge. Figuring it would do no good to complain, that they would eventually figure it out on their own, I ignored the continued credit bills.
And at the end of the year, they sent me a check for $15.
I also once complained to Pac Bell, or maybe it was still ATT back then, about a payphone that had gobble coins without any service, and they sent me some pitiful small check, like 15 cents.
Infuriate left and right
I signed up with Verizon phone. And then decided to pay my bills online. I don't trust automated monthly payments, so I always go in to pay my bill.
Early on, and maybe still, Verizon phone company used to have a server system that would bonk prior to due dates. The system would be unavailable, go down in the middle of paying, hang, etc. If a bill was due on the 12th, you'd be having problems as early as the 10th.
This was especially true when, from what I assume and heard from a rep, when they did some daily maintenance of some sort.
So, you'd come back from school or work, and try to pay your bill. Couldn't log in. Server unavailable. The account accessing screen would hang. Again the next day. Again the next.
Then you're late.
The problem? If you are late more than once, Verizon puts a note in your credit report as a matter of fact. So I apparently have 6 notes in 2 years in my credit report saying I was late on a $22 bill, etc.
I didn't realize Verizon was doing this month by month reporting until too late. I found out, I cancelled my account with them. So nice that their billing practice, an inept server, will end up costing me thousands in financing.
(A point--Find a list of what companies do month by month reporting and do NOT do business with them. While it is certainly my responsibility to make payment, offering a system that does not work seems more like baiting or even fraud (even if there is some disclosure saying such-and-such a system might be unavailable), esp. one that they know is down and they still count things as late against you on 2 fronts (late because of their system which they in turn report late to a credit rating agency).)
Sprint had another quirk that I've got burned by several times. It appears that once a bill is sent out, you must pay at least that amount or the difference will be sent forward to the next billing cycle, or the act of adjusting a bill by the CSRs must be very obtuse and that process is not explained to them. Explanation. You get a bill for $150. You notice an error on the bill and call a CSR. The bill is "corrected" and you are now told you owe $135. You send in $135. The following month you will see a $15 balance and a penalty for an unpaid balance but also see a $15 credit adjustment. They apply a credit but add it right back on again. The bottom line, that $15 difference is still there and you still owe it. I had this happen to me 2 different times for 3 straight months. The only way around it appears to be to pay the actual billed amount and the following bill will show the credit. I guess credits can not apply to the current outstanding billing cycle without some CSR trickery.
I had another issue with Verizon and electronic payments. I was using checkfree and electronic billing through my bank to pay my Verizon bill on the date it was due (like I do with all of my other automated electronic payments). For some reason, Verizon would not apply the amount to my account for another 5 days after recieveing the electronic payment and my bill was always "late". The money was withdrawn from my account at the right time but just not applied in the Verizon system. It took many phone calls between my bank and Verizon but they finally figured out what was happening after 4 months and my late fees were refunded.
Not related but I've had many issues with Verizon for billing and service at work. As a whole, Verizon seems to use the excuse of blaming other internal departments a lot, as if they are different companies or something. "Oh, our business sales deparment doesn't know anything about provision times, they can not give install dates, you will have to wait another 10 days for that line" or "I don't know why our provisioning department told you were getting a static IP, that has to run through us at sales".
About 5 years ago, Verizon had a silly system for handling acount plan changes in the middle of a billing cycle. If you changed your plan in the middle of a billing cycle, the computer would do this:
For example, I once upgraded from a 300 minute plan to a 1000 minute plan about 2 days into the beginning of a billing cycle. The computer decided that I was only allowed to have 12 minutes at the beginning of the month, and about 900 minutes for the rest of the billing cycle, and chaged me about $70 for a 50-minute call. Needless to say, I was rather pissed off when I only used a total of 400 minutes during a billing cycle, yet had a charge of $70 for going over my minutes.
I now go with T-Mobile pre-paid and Vonage.
No, I will not work for your startup
Sprint finaly figured it out and told me what was going on, they waived the extra fees and all I owed was my normal bill but wouldn't turn the phone on untill it was paid.. I told them I switched to nextel and didn't want to deal with them again. After a few months, I finaly paid the bill off and didn't hear form them again untill about 3-4 montsh later. Evidently they turned my phone back on after 6 months when I paid the bill in full. I now owe them for 3 months service. They wouldn't budge in this bill and even reported it to my credit report. Sprint even acknowledges that no calls were ever made after they turned it back on. I wasn't planning on paying it even if they put a gun to my head. Now sprint owns nextel and i'm thinking i need to switch again! (thier coverage went to crap since the merger, the old bill hasn't came up yet).
has a billing system/customer database based around Personal identity numbers. That's pretty usual in Sweden, so that's not a problem. The problems started when I moved, but didn't cancel my subscription (I shared the house with my sister and her boyfriend - and they didn't move out of there). I didn't think more about it and sent in a form for a new connection at my new flat. When I was connected (I'm on a special net - I pay for physical connection to one company and have the possibility to choose from four different ISPs on top of that), I got a snail-mail from the company managing the physical connection, telling me I hadn't chosen an ISP.
:)
But I had? When calling my ISP, they told me their customer database only could manage one connection per customer, because it was organised with the personla identity number as primary key - so they had just dropped my application out of the process without contacting me. Short story, I went to ther competitor instead.
I have a really elegant proof for Fermat's last theorem. If this sig was only a bit longer...
Given that the series of credit card numbers is unique and limited globally, and that there's restrictions based on the fact that institutions are allocated blocks, I'm getting all sorts of pictures of another IPv4 / Y2K situation occurring. What's the estimated TTL of CC number allocation, and the cost of changing all that software worldwide that does mod-10 and other validations of numbers?
Contrast that with Citibank. They also give you a dropdown, but sneakily, they give you all dates between now and your due date, plus another week! So if you are in the habit (like I am) of just selecting the last date in the dropdown, you are paying late. Hello, Citi! What rational person who is scheduling a payment, would knowingly schedule it late? Do you think that people just pay late fees to get their jollies? Fortunately, I've never been burned by that, but I'm sure they've collected many millions of dollars in late fees for that "feature".
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
Ii was under the impression that all of the information on the card is taken together as a unique identifier: CC #, name, issuer, CVC, and expiry date. If that is indeed the case, there are a lot of possible combinations. So even if I use all of the available CC #'s, there's still my name on the card and all of the other info, so it should never conflict (or it is unlikely to, anyway). Good question, though. I'm curious to see if my guess is correct.
Unfortunately not. All that is needed to charge a card is the 15/16 digit card number, and the expiry date. CVC is an additional check, not required (and possibly only a checksum, though I think it's random). Issuer is a subset of the card number - the first four or eight digits are identifiers for the issuing institution. Name is not relevant - many couples have cards issues with the same number, differnt name.
I had a huge billing problem with SBC. They sent me conflicting bills all the time. I ditched them for Eschelon. They treat their customers like human beings. Now everything is fine.